MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
PROPAGANDA, as other forms of human excitation and incitation, is subject to the law of diminishing returns. There always comes a stage at which the narcotic or the stimulant fails in its effect and thereafter ever-increasing doses of fear or hatred have to be injected. In the end, however, the patient's sensibilities tend to become numbed and deadened, and no amount of terror, loathing or self-pity will tauten his emotions. I have been told by German and French friends that in the later years of the war the gifted propaganda of Goebbels, the passionate exhorta- tions of Vichy, had no effect whatsoever ; they just became " voices off." The heroic French, exiled from freedom within their own country, would cluster round the wireless seeking delicately to isolate from the wild jamming around them the solemn gong of the B.B.C., those stimulating and defiant words, "Ici Londres." " We squeezed and edged round it," Paul Claudel told me after- wards, " like little pigs around their dam." Certainly the factual understatements of the B.B.C. foreign services were during those dark years more effective than any masterpieces of oratory, any corybantic songs of hate. Yet there exists a danger that we, in thus estimating the diminishing effect of propaganda upon human consciousness, may underestimate the effect which it may produce upon the sub-conscious. The actual statements made in the Press or on the wireless, the actual phraseology of any given piece of exhortation or invective, may, it is true, scarcely register ; but the constant background of shouts and cries may certainly create an atmosphere of tension and that prevailing disquiet which, we may suppose, is the very mood which the propagandists are seeking to create. All tyrannies must endeavour to convey the impression that their discipline is indispensable owing to the grave and evil external menaces to which the State is exposed. It is easier to spread general anxiety than to secure general acquiescence.
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In estimating the effect of Soviet propaganda we are, moreover, apt to attribute much of its unreason to dogmatic causes. All true Marxists are obsessed by the antithesis, and their minds slide naturally into the dialectical confrontation of opposites—into that unhappy chess-board of thought in which there can be no gradations between the black squares and the white. In demagogic propaganda, as Hitler taught, there must never be any zones of uncertainty ; one's own side must be right without the slightest reservation, whereas the opposite side must be wrong, without any mitigating circum- stances. No alternatives should be suggested, other than the central antithesis. It may well be that the exaggeration of this method as practised by the Russians deprives these propaganda slogans of any real content, rendering them as meaningless as the cries with which cowherds muster their cattle, "En criant-fluah! En criant Hu!" Yet we must not forget that the cattle are, in fact, disciplined and directed by such shouts ; that they are checked thereby in their strayings and diversions, and turn with slow obedience back into the strait and narrow gate. It is said again that we of the Western world fail to realise the part played by what are called " polemics " in the mental equipment of the indoctrinated Communist. A foreign representative at a recent international conference told me that one morning he received a message to the effect that M. Molotov would like to see him at his hotel. He was somewhat embarrassed by this invitation, since on the day before M. Molotov had delivered a long and impassioned oration in which he had accused my friend of being both a Fascist beast and the lackey of the capitalist war- mongers. But when he called upon M. Molotov and hinted that his invectives of the day before had been a trifle wounding, the Russian Minister assumed an expression of injured consternation. " But that," said M. Molotov, " was merely polemics."
* * * * It is possible for these reasons that Soviet propaganda is intended mainly for consumption within their own areas, and is not addressed to those who live and love and worry In partibus infidelium. Yet whereas we may be mistaken in attributing too literal a significance to their wild utterances, yet there exists the opposite danger that we may fall into the habit of discounting them entirely, and of thereby ignoring both the intentions which they reveal and the effects which, within their own area of attention, they are calculated to produce. It would be an error, for instance, to underestimate the importance of the reception given by the Soviet Press and wireless to the seven-pronged olive-branch tendered to them on March 17th by Mr. Dean Acheson. The American Secretary Of State delivered in California a speech of the utmost moderation, in which' he sug- gested that there were seven'directions in which the Soviet Govern- ment, did they so desire, could give evidence of their goodwill. They could join with the West in uniting the two sundered halves of Germany, in providing that free elections are held for the whole country, and in thereby securing a Government representing a united Germany with which a definite treaty of peace could be concluded. He suggested that Russia could abandon her artificial obstructions to the conclusion of a treaty of peace with Japan, and that she could join with' us in liberating unhappy Austria from her prolonged servitude and by restoring to that deserving country the unity and peace which are now, and quite unscrupulously, denied to her. He suggested that Russia might withdraw her military and police forces from her satellite countries, and enable the peoples of those countries to elect the Governments which they desired. And he suggested that Russia should discuss realistic methods for controlling the use and manufacture of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. * * * These were not provocative or menacing proposals ; they were proposals which will commend themselves to all reasonable men. Mr. Acheson also suggested that, if Russia wished to provide evidence that she admitted the possibility of the coexistence of the Western and the Eastern systems, she might cease attributing false motives to the rulers and statesmen of the Western world, and might resume the accustomed courtesies and conventions of diplomatic intercourse. It may be utopian to assume that, in the present phase of the cold war, relations of trust and cordiality can be established between the two systems , but if the Russians believe that it is possible that the two systems can coexist without exposing the world to a third conflagration, then assuredly Mr. Acheson's proposals represent an excellent opportunity for relaxing the present largely artificial tension. It is self-evident that diplomacy conducted by insult or invective can never lead to understanding, and that no dip- lomatic missions can possibly function if constantly exposed to inter- ference, injury, delation and defamation. The reception accorded to Mr. Acheson's proposals was discouraging in the extreme. The full blare of Soviet propaganda was turned on to denounce these temperate suggestions as flagrant instances of capitalist war- mongering ; no correct Communist could hesitate for one moment to reject them as typical of the cunning hypocrisy of the bourgeois mind.
* * * It cannot be denied that the American Secretary of State made a carefully considered and temperate offer, and that it was publicly rejected in the most abusive terms. Those thoughtless people whose minds are affected by proverbs may repeat the adage, " It takes two to make a quarrel." We all know very well that, in fact, it only takes one. But it does take two to make friends. And it is clear (if any further evidence were required) from this crude rejection of the Californian olive-branch that the Russians, so far from wishing to make friends, desire to prolong and envenom animosity. Stalin in the past has stated that there is no reason why the two systems should not coexist. The reply returned to Mr. Acheson's seven points does not suggest to us that this statement has bitten very deep into the consciousness of the Politburo. The virulence of their rejoinder can only leave us in a mood of anxious despair.
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