TELLING THE MIDDLE EAST
By A. C. PRIESTLEY
EW Englishmen like the word " propaganda." It has a sug- r gestion of showing-off, of self-adulation, that is very distasteful to the English mind. We like our facts, however disagreeable, given us as facts, without trimmings, so that we can form an unbiassed opinion of our own ; and we assume that the rest of the world likes to be treated in the same fashion. Propaganda must neces- sarily involve talking and writing with an intention to impress ; and perhaps it is our natural repugnance to meddling in this kind of work that makes us, on the whole, such bad propagandists and enabled the enemy to start so far ahead of us in this vital field of operations at the beginning of the war. Much of this is an old story now, but it is by no means clear that the lesson has been fully learnt. Hence the desirability of a little retrospection.
The seeds of German propaganda were so well sown in the Middle East before the war that again and again discontent reached a dangerous pitch in countries which, because of aheir pre- vious histories, should, if rightly handled, have inclined to a pro- British point of view, countries whose territories in this war have carried our lines of communications to Russia, India and the Far East. The secret of the Germans' success in propaganda is not far to seek. Their policy of world domination precludes a need for allies in the future, and so they promised their audience anything its heart desired, regardless of any need to substantiate such promises. These dazzling promises, made before the war, were followed by the spectacle of Germany crushing Europe, and threatening Great Britain, with little opposition. Force, the instrument of policy understood best in the Middle East for untold centuries, was on the march again, and many men of power and influence throughout the area were ready to pay homage. Eve Curie, in her Journey Among Warriors, writes that an Englishman said to her at Basra
in February, 1942: " A good many Iraqis are pro-Nazi, without clearly knowing what this means. They admire strength, and they want to be firmly ruled. Hitler fits into this programme, and his • propaganda here has been clever. We, the " democracies," offer the Iraqis neither freedom (for we occupy the country) nor leader- ship (for we interfere but little with their internal affairs)—so they despise and hate us." There is a vast amount of truth in those few lines.
British pioneers sent out to counteract German propaganda found their task to be infinitely more difficult than the enemy's. As Britain has no ambition to rule the world, the German solution of turning the troublesome kinglet of one day into the submissive slave of the next was not open to them, and they found themselves in the delicate position of having an excellent line of sales-talk with nothing to sell. " If you are so powerful, why are your enemies advancing on Egypt? If your Allies are so great and wonderful, why did you allow Germany to overrun France? " Difficult questions to answer ; for the illogical but ineradicable belief in ultimate victory for the Allies, shared with the rest of the nation, was something that could not be communicated to a bewildered neutral. Similarly the Government, mindful of the harvest of bitter- ness reaped from unredeemed promises made in the last war, refused to allow the propagandist to promise anything at all for the future.
All over the Middle East the rich, remembering the famine brought about by the last war, were hoarding wheat. Prices 01 basic foodstuffs went higher and higher. " If you are our friends," said the people, " force our rulers to feed us. Do not mock us by saying you cannot interfere because we have self-government. If we are self-governing, it is because it is your will. If it was your will we should be fed. Give us bread for our starving families,—not talk. How can a man worry about the rights and wrongs of your quarrel if his children are hungry? " We tried to meet this demand by flooding the markets with wheat imported from more loyal countries, to bring the price down and force the hoarders to disgorge ; but faith in an Allied victory took a long time to come, and the owners of wheat said, " What is the good of selling wheat, which guarantees my family life for years to come? True, I could get much money if I sold what I have, but as all imports have stopped, what should I do with my money? Gold will not feed my son when the British are beaten." Conse- quently a situation arose where some countries had as much as ten years' supply of corn hidden away, and the poor people who owned no land died every winter of starvation.
The only way this evil can be overcome is by painfully educating the people in their responsibility to their neighbours, urging them that there are wider claims on their charity than those of their own family, and adding at the end of each homily a rider that the Allies will see them through. But to people who will cheerfully hoard while their fellow-countrymen starve, any idea of disinterested service is fundamentally foreign, and until the victories in Africa upset their calculations, all talk of help and friendship on our part was considered a sign of weakness. The revolution in the military situation has improved the outlook, but very much room for im- provement still remains.
Preaching brotherly love to backward peoples brings home most strongly our own failings in this respect. We are just emerging from a period of isolationism, during which the old Imperial policy has been discredited. As a result we find that we are now in the habit of considering we have done our duty if we succeed in foisting democracy on people in no way prepared to attempt this most difficult of governments, and several calamitous failures have been the result. Democracy, as we understand it, depends on the willingness of the party in power to bow to an adverse vote and let some more popular party govern in its stead. How, therefore, can democracy function properly in countries where the party in power will never allow an adverse vote to be registered? Nepotism is rife in the Middle East to such an extent as to make any attempt at real democracy laughable. We have given the Middle East countries freedom from mandatory strings, freedom to govern them- selves as they think best. All that sounds excellent. But, in practice, we have said to the few men in power, " We are removing the tiresome restrictions by which you have been hampered for the last few years ; now you can do what you like with the country." Meanwhile the people, the eighty-five per cent. who are. nobodies and know little about government, realise that prices and taxes are rising and the old days of bribery are back again, and they clamour for a restoration of the days when things were controlled by the British. They have no faith in their own countrymen ; they know what they would do themselves if they were in power. To counteract the resulting feeling of dissatisfaction with Britain, more men and women are being appointed to spread British pro- paganda. Their job is to keep the people friendly and to encourage them to help themselves as much as possible in order to reduce the drain on the United Nations' resources. But propaganda is still tainted in official eyes, and so few people suitable for this very specialised type of work are released to perform it. Consequent!y persons with no knowledge of the languages or customs of the country they are to influence are posted to senior jobs. However
enthusiastic these officers are, their work must inevitably suffer in passing through the hands of an often indifferent translator whose ability they are not able to test. In fact, before the war such an idea would have appeared ludicrous. As if the natural difficulties were not enough, the propagandist in the field is up against his own side in the unbelievable " blimpislmess " of many of the more influential British residents overseas. Young people of the Middle East, like their fellows everywhere, are desperately interested in plans for the new world we hope to build after the was. Pro- gressive articles written by famous men of all nationalities meet powerful opposition from reactionary British communities, which in many cases are completely out of touch with modern Britain. It is time we realised that we have responsibilities towards the weaker peoples of the globe. It does no good simply to hand them over prematurely, in the name of democracy, to the mercies of their own powerful leaders. We have never lacked men with the vision and the strength to govern and help alien people to live peacefully with one another. Democracy is the highest ideal for many peoples —perhaps in the long run for all peoples. But democracy without education may be a disaster. It is a question of pace, and pace cannot be forced beyond a point.
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