Spectre

WAR PROPAGANDA AND THE UNITED STATES--Harold Lavine & JamesWechsler-- Yale ($2.75).

A spectre haunts the U. S.--the spectre of propaganda. Authors Harold Lavine (of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis) and James Wechsler have seen the ghost, and they believe it is going to get us into war if we don't watch out. They have been watching out for some time. Last fortnight they published their observations in War Propaganda and the United States, a slickly written, epigrammatic, rather loosely organized book, in which the authors, with a great show of objectivity, attempt to expose the efforts of European propagandists to embroil the U. S. in World Wars I & II. It was sure to be read with interest by anxious Americans, startled by the Allied debacle, fearful of the future, above all fearful of being led by their noses.

Sometimes the propaganda spook speaks German, sometimes it speaks French. But it is the spectre with a British accent that scares Authors Lavine & Wechsler the most. Nazi propaganda they dismiss rather briefly as, on the whole, inept and ineffective. But they feel that British propaganda is not just another name for Empire publicity. It is a force dark, sinister, pervasive, ineluctable. Its strength lies in the fascination which the British upper classes exert upon the U. S. upper classes. As proof they submit a somewhat original interpretation of Anglo-American relations before 1917. During World War I, they claim, there was a deep cleavage in U. S. sentiment: "To upper-class America, the Allies truly represented civilization, for England's culture was their culture too." So the upper classes foisted World War I on the rest of the U. S. "The string quartet played dinner music as upper-class America marched to war."

Authors Lavine & Wechsler feel that the only way for Americans to avoid the charms of British dinner music in World War II is to scrutinize every organ of authority and opinion, including the President of the U.S., for propaganda pollution. Most of their book consists of this scrutiny. Anything favorable said about any other nation, particularly the British, is, of course, propaganda.

War Propaganda and the United States is a pretty good job of isolationist propaganda itself.

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