149
All knowledge of these various organizations was kept carefully
concealed from the English and American people. Even many officials in
both governments did not know there was such a thing as British
propaganda. When the Prime Minister was asked about the activities of
Mr. Masterman, he replied, "The work is of highly confidential nature,
and much of its efficiency depends upon its being conducted in
secret."
In her recent biography of her husband, C. F. G. Masterman, his widow
emphasizes the secrecy with which Wellington House was conducted. "So
well was this secrecy achieved and maintained that of all the books on
propaganda that I have read for the purpose of this memoir only Mr.
Duane Squires in his Harvard Essay has more than a passing reference
to Masterman."
"When propaganda must be carried on in secrecy, the utmost ingenuity
may be shown in developing flexible and effective forms of
organization and procedure. During the period of neutrality before the
United States entered the World War, the English had six or eight
different offices in the United States, so that no one man, in or out
of the service, knew all the secrets.
"When a compromising document was of such importance that it could
not be destroyed, it was marked 'confidential,' 'for the information
of the U. S. Secret Service only.' If it were seized, the plea could
be made that it was the intention all along to communicate with the
government." (Lasswell, Propaganda and Promotional Activities.)
This falsification of the news of events, unsuspected by the American
people, changed their mental content and feelings, made them hate
Britain's enemies, and aroused their idealism and enthusiasm to give,
and to fight for Britain as the upholder of the right.
The most recent study of British propaganda is H. C. Peterson's
Propaganda for War: The Campaign Against American Neutrality,
1914-1917 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1939). Through
investigations in London he discovered much new material, notably
"The America Press Résumé." This was prepared secretly
by Sir Gilbert Parker's organization in the United States for the
British Foreign Office and Ministers. "The traditional information
agents, ambassadors, and consuls, naturally sent in regular reports.
In addition, the Morgan firm kept British officials informed as to
conditions in the United States."
Later many writers were sent over. John Masefield, one of the 1916
contingent, reported "I have the honor to present to you my report of things noticed during my stay in the United
States between the 13th of January and the 18th of March."
"The immediate task of British propagandists was to make an ordinary
political power struggle appear to be a fight between the forces of
good and evil. ... The primary objective of a political propaganda
campaign is to establish an attitude of mind, a climate of opinion.
When such a campaign is successful, the point of view which it has
created acts as a censor or interpreter of news and turns those
propagandized into propagandists. ...
"Starting as early as August, 1914, prominent men of America hastened
to join a cause that was intellectually fashionable. Industrialists
and financiers one by one took up the cudgels for the belligerents
with whom they were doing so much profitable business. ... College
professors and school teachers repeated with a great show of wisdom
the arguments which had originated in Wellington House or in la
maison de la presse."
It has become fashionable in university circles for professors to
belittle the importance of propaganda. That's part of the game of
helping the new unseen propaganda to bring us in again. The
professors don't know what they are doing. They don't know that they
are traitors to their country, prostitutes to powers the existence of
which they only vaguely surmise. The evidence presented here and in
the books referred to should be sufficient to those open to conviction
that Allied propaganda won the war. It broke Germany behind the lines.
It brought the United States in. Up to the time it began to work,
Germany had done everything, the Allies had done nothing and were on
the verge of disaster. The best men, the best brains, were put into
the campaign to win our sympathies. There was no limit to what could
be spent. There was nothing that was not distorted or lied about or
misinterpreted to bring us in. The propaganda campaign affected every
phase of American life. It was a success. It brought us in on a wave
of emotional idealism.
"Emotional appeal was made in every major section of British
propaganda," writes Peterson. "A most important phase of this
technique was the practice of exploiting idealism. The British did all
they could to identify British and American ideals and to picture
Germany actions as attacks upon democracy the symbol of American
idealism. The almost hysterical reaction in the United States to
British propaganda demonstrates very clearly the effectiveness of such
appeals.
"The fact that it was especially influential among the highly educated
seems to indicate that learning is not an impregnable defense against
appeals made to the emotions."
151
Great as was the success of British propaganda in bringing America
into the last war in a state of idealistic exaltation, the technique
now seems crude. The art as it has since been developed is more
subtle, the methods more nearly perfect.
There is no propaganda today, we are assured by professors of history,
government, and whatnot in our greatest universities. There's no use
for it, they tell us, for we are "propaganda proof." These same men,
or those who were warming their chairs for them, knew nothing of
propaganda in 1916 or '17, and they are the men who had time and
leisure to study and know about such things. Had they been on their
toes they might have prevented the death of hundreds of thousands and
the starvation of millions. Little credit is due them for what they
did then and less should come to them for what they're doing now.
Theirs is the highest testimonial to the improved, subtle technique
of British propaganda. They tell us it is our moral duty to support
the British Empire. They are oblivious to the deceitfulness of our
Administration, the stupidity of our military, the waste of our
natural resources. They are interested only in "morality" and
"religion," and interpret "civilization" as British imperialism.
Consequently, they believe it is our duty to be unneutral, strongly
partisan; and while they haven't the courage to advocate war, they
will soon be whooping it up to hang Hitler, and urging our
undergraduates to enlist and shed their blood.
They are as gullible as their predecessors of 23 years ago, but not
yet so vituperative. They may be later. They have not yet reached the
abusive denunciation given the Kaiser, then "the Mad Dog of Europe who
should be hanged," in their remarks about his American and British
made successor. In comparison to the 1918 obscenities of Harvard
professors the words of the most violent Anglophiles who have
succeeded them seem tame.
We can only become conscious of a force by observing the
results. This is particularly true of moral force. We recognize that a
man has "got religion" from his changed behavior. We recognize that a
man has "got propaganda" from his aroused emotions, when suddenly he
has gone hell-bent for "morality," "religion," and "moral
responsibility for civilization." Such hysterics
regard with contempt as an over suspicious snooper, the man who
accuses him of being the victim of propaganda.
Those who planned the propaganda to involve us in this war must be
elated at the attitude of these professors and intellectuals. That's
what they have been working for. That's the reason they have put their
best brains on the job, sent their best men over here, spent hundreds
of millions. It's the best investment they can make, for it has always
yielded big returns.
With the President leading the way, with university presidents
following their finance-minded trustees, all the little professors
must vie with each other to show interest in the preservation of
"morality" and "religion," by the British imperialistic method.
"Large as the part played by propaganda in the war of 1914-1918 there
is every indication that it will fill a still bigger role in any
future 'great war'," writes Captain Liddell Hart, editor of the
series The Next War (Geoffrey Bles, London, 1939), in his
preface to "Propaganda and the Next War." The author, Captain Sidney
Rogerson, was in the propaganda service of the Foreign Office during
the last war, but without giving away any inside information, he tells
cynically what the English believe must be done to bring America into
the next war.
"The next war will be billed as a fight between democracy and
dictatorship. ... We shall almost certainly represent the struggle in
the propaganda we shall be compelled to do toward France, the United
States of America, and our own Empire as democracy and freedom versus
dictatorship and persecution ...
"Most of the feeling of one ally for another is manufactured and this
is particularly true of the British, with whom, as I have indicated
earlier, a potential enemy may change with the turn of the political
weathercock into a trusted friend. ... If the French are our allies,
it will be our concern to insure that our people think well of
France, and vice versa. ... Geographically, we are bound to France as
inexorably as one member of a chain gang to the next. ...
"In the next war, as in the last, the result will probably depend
upon the way in which the United States, the great neutral, acts, and
her attitude will reflect the reaction of her public to propaganda
properly applied. ... They are more susceptible than most peoples to
mass suggestion -- they have been brought up on it -- and since 1918
they have shut themselves off from reality. ...
"It will need a definite threat to America, a threat, moreover, which
will have to be brought home by propaganda to every citizen, before
the Republic will again take arms in an external quarrel. ... The position will naturally be considerably eased
if Japan were involved and this might and probably would bring America
without further ado. At any rate, it would be a natural and obvious
object of our propagandists to achieve this, just as during the great
war they succeeded in embroiling the United States with Germany."
Gone are the days when the British propagandist depended upon tales
of atrocities, and the affidavits of men like Lord Bryce as to their
truth. The Ministry of Information, recently set up, in its clumsy
rumbling way has put forth such things, but the propaganda that has
accomplished the big result with the intelligentsia is of another
kind. Perhaps it is because our college professors haven't been
regaled with sadistic bloody tales that they say there is no
propaganda.
Today there is an avoidance of statements which can later be proved
lies. That crude practice was indeed given up after Lord Northcliffe,
as Peterson remind us. "It was much easier and much safer to give
warped interpretations. ... This technique of exploiting part-truths
is characteristic of all propagandists. At the hands of the British it
became high art. ... They told only that part of the truth which
benefited their cause; they utilized background material to imply
things for which there was no evidence; they exploited to the fullest
the emotions and ideals of those being educated; they gave their
propaganda an aura of authority by using big names, by quoting their
enemy, or by appealing to legality; they made their arguments simple
and eliminated all qualifying statements; they used endless
repetition."
The most effective propaganda success presents with apparently
convincing candor part of the story, suppressing part of the truth, so
as to create the sort of false picture desired. The propagandist
conceives his picture just as an artist does, and selects those
elements from the international landscape that will serve to make the
picture produce the reaction that is desired. It would not help the
propagandist preaching that this is a war for "religion" to bring out
that the state in Germany still pays the Catholic priesthood the
equivalent of some $40,000,000 a year, from tax-raised funds.
It would not help him in stimulating our enthusiasm to "save
civilization" to have it known that there were more than 50 opera
companies -- I was told 57, I saw evidence of scores when I was in
Germany in the summer of 1938. When my son mentioned this recently to
a young American who had returned in September, 1939, from several years music study in Germany, he was told that
the number had increased, that there were now over 80. It would be
interesting to know but we are not permitted to.
Those who don't know constantly repeat what they have been told, that
the Salzburg festival has been reduced to a low aesthetic level. In
1938 I know that the performances were on a high plane. In apology
for such a statement I may say that since the early nineties until
quite recently I have heard all the great orchestras and opera
companies. Who knows about the great Shakespeare festival at
Heidelberg in the summer of 1939? Who will tell me about the elaborate
production of King Lear planned for this year in Berlin? Such matters
are superfluous to the propaganda picture that is being painted. Our
periodical press is so controlled that after a returning visitor to
Central Europe gets across his first interview, no more is heard of
him.
Germany, of course, comes back at us by presenting a picture of
America which is anything but flattering. Third degree in police
stations, lynchings in the south, "Okies," strikes, Chicago
massacres, enables the German propagandist to build the picture that
convinces the Germans that Hitler is more successful than Roosevelt.
In prognosticating the coming war, Maj.-Gen. J. F. C. Fuller, holder
of many orders and author of many books, in Toward
Armageddon (Lovat Dickson, London, 1937) wrote that it would start
with what he called "'a blue lie.' Such lies ... consist in
suppressing that part of the truth which favours an opponent."
"All art," Michelangelo said, "is the expurgation of the
superfluous." Feed the people on expurgated, selected information, if
you would rule them. That's the art of government. That makes
Vansittart a great artist.
The greatest of arts is that of influencing people, even to making
them give you their money and/or their lives. It flatters them to be
called your allies. To do this the first time was not so difficult
but to do it again, just a generation later, is some achievement. It
requires a great directing brain, a great artist. Only three years
ago the American people were neutral in thought and action. The
President, anxious to keep them that way, told them at Chautauqua how
he hated war and warned them against the fool's gold of war profits,
and those who might mislead them. The great change in the President's
and the people's attitude some think is due to events. There have been
events, but not full comprehension of them or understanding of their
backgrounds. It is the way these events have been presented to us that
has produced the change in our views, in our
emotions. We know that 20 years ago events were more crudely invented
and presented to work us up to a state of hysteria. At present we are
unconscious, unsuspicious that anything like this has been done to us
though we know that the need on the part of Great Britain for our
resources and our help is greater now. If they failed to improve on
their propaganda methods of the last war, then they have failed
indeed.
The story of how all this has been accomplished will be known, as it
was in the last war, only when the participants write their memoirs.
But there are some old-fashioned Americans who were so completely
fooled a generation ago that they became "propaganda snoopers."
Putting together the little bits of news from the back pages of
newspapers, newsletters, and clandestine sources, they arrive at some
understanding and interpretation of what has been intentionally
misunderstood or concealed. There is evidence of design, that a great
artist has been at work, his wonders to perform, creating a picture
which the American people and their Administration have accepted.
Who is this "great artist?" Sir Robert Vanssitart, the unknown, the
mysterious, is the symbol if not the chief who coordinates all the
propaganda services of the Foreign Office and the Intelligence
Services. Like a magician he has kept Americans' attention fixed on
unimportant things while he was putting over his trick. His art has
been to get us aroused emotionally. Are we? Is his art a success?
Up to the time of Stalin's speech in March, 1939, Vansittart's job
was to build goodwill in England for Germany and have Hitler looked
upon as the "White Knight" who would carry the crusade against
bolshevist Russia. At the same time, as an anchor to windward, his
purpose was to create hatred in America of Hitler and Germany. When
Stalin laughed at the Tories for their silly plan, then it became the
task of Vansittart to suddenly turn English opinion and animosity
against Hitler. And that, too, was done. It was a great stunt.
Of the inside working of the Foreign Office as it is today Rogerson
gives us no information and perhaps has no knowledge. He writes, "I
must not, however, give the impression that we are doing absolutely
nothing at present to direct propaganda toward foreign countries. That
would be unfair to that esoteric body, the British Council, which
occupies itself in what it calls 'cultural propaganda'... coordinating
the propaganda activities of other bodies, excellent in their own
spheres, like the Travel Association (the old 'Come to Britain'
organization) and the Film Institute."
The British Council, set up in 1934 at the
instigation of the Foreign Office, is supported partly by government
appropriations, partly by private interests. It is but one of the many
coordinated, money spending organizations under the mysterious
Vansittart Committee.
Harold Nicolson in his Diplomacy tells us that this "officially
created and subsidized body" has had its appropriation increased more
than twentyfold in the last four years. Other sources indicate that
its appropriations have increased from about $20,000 to over a million
and a half in the past five years. A London dispatch to the New York
Times, July 12, 1939, reported, "The British Council, which
operates under government auspices, will receive £150,000 to
extend its work of sending out British lecturers." July 29, Sir Samuel
Hoare asked additional appropriations of £260,000 "for putting
the British case abroad." He said, "The money will be used for an
expanded publicity section of Foreign Office for various propaganda
work abroad and for the work of the British Council which tells other
nations about British culture."
It is impossible even for an Englishman to ascertain how much money
is spent on these services, now reported increased to £386,500.
But the stakes are so high, no sum can be too great. In his New
World Order, H. G. Wells speaks superciliously of the British
Council as "that curious and little-advertised organisation ... the
creation I am told of Lord Lloyd," which "sends emissaries abroad,
writers, well-dressed women, and other cultural personages, to
lecture, charm, and win over foreign appreciation for British
characteristics, for British scenery, British political virtues, and
so forth."
The structure and control of the British Empire is complicated beyond
simple description. Of the men who played the most important parts in
determining events perhaps no one has written more freely from his
knowledge than the German correspondent, Karl H. Abshagen. He explains
that he wrote his book merely because no one else would and that was a
risky task, for almost anything one can say about so complex an
organization can be shown to be untrue.
"In connection with the concentration and intensification of British
propaganda abroad which began in the spring of 1938, the Council
achieved an importance far beyond that of its original objectives,"
Abshagen tells us in Kings, Lords, and Gentlemen. "Lord Lloyd,
a man whose true field of action is the overseas empire, stands at the
head of a propaganda organization which has set itself great tasks.
... Lord Lloyd is, moreover, an imperialist and a Conservative
'diehard,' with little liking for democracy and
internationalism. His conception of the role of Britons overseas has
always been that of the ruler of men. In his colonial posts he always
felt himself to be the heir of the Clive and Warren Hastings
tradition."
When he was appointed Governor of Bombay in 1918, "India was seething
with unrest. ... On his own responsibility he had both Mr. Gandhi and
Mohammedan leaders of the seditious movement arrested." As High
Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan from 1925 to 1929, when "the
situation was a difficult one -- Lord Lloyd succeeded in maintaining
British predominance."
Lord Lloyd has been active in the Near East during 1940, checkmating
Germany. He has bought off Turkey, made Rumania a republic and Carol a
hero. There are others who like Abshagen regard Lloyd as the greatest
administrator of the Empire, just as Lothian is the greatest diplomat
and Vansittart the best political strategist. That does not mean that
men like Deterding in England and Zaharoff in France were not the most
powerful men at their time. These men, who come to life in Upton
Sinclair's new novel, World's End, had command of the immediate
essential supplies and could bring monetary gain not only to
themselves but to the rulers of each country with whom they shared.
The Ministry of Information set up since the war broke has had
successive heads, provided jobs for the deserving, and rumbled as
clumsily as German propaganda, serving to distract attention from the
smoothly working machine behind the scenes that has so changed
American opinion in three years.
H. G. Wells, who has had experience with the personnel of Ministries
of Information, in his New World Order writes, "One of the most
unpleasant aspects of a state of war under modern conditions is the
appearance of a swarm of individuals, too clever by half, in positions
of authority, excited, conceited, prepared to lie, distort, and
generally humbug people into states of acquiescence, resistance,
indignation, vindictiveness, doubt, and mental confusion, states of
mind supposed to be conducive to a final military victory. These
people love to twist and censor facts. It gives them a feeling of
power."
"It is not only that the Ministries of Information and Propaganda do
their level best to divert the limited gifts and energies of such
writers, lecturers, and talkers as we possess, to the production of
disingenuous muck that will muddle the public mind and mislead the
enquiring foreigner, but that they show a marked disposition to stifle
any free and independent utterances that may seem to traverse their
own profound and secret plans for the salvation of mankind."
158
Lasswell speaks of H. G. Wells as "an example of the pacifically
inclined Liberal, more gracefully articulate than most, whose support
of the War came at the cost of inner struggle, and whose enthusiastic
aid" was finally won by "an elaborately rationalized cluster of war
aims." Foremost survivor of the propagandists who went into the last
war for idealism, Wells last November revealed that he had been
invited "more or less officially, to do propaganda in Europe or
America." In the New Statesman he declared, "We who lent
ourselves to propaganda, were made fools of and ultimately let down by
the traditional tricks of the Foreign Office. ... The evil state in
Europe today is traceable almost directly to the want of imagination,
the self-protective cunning, and the deliberate breaches of faith made
by British politicians and officials during those eventful years that
immediately followed the Great War. Well, once bit, twice shy. I am
not going to be a stalking horse for the British Foreign Office
again. ...
"If I lend myself to any propaganda, then by all my standards I shall
be damned. And I will be damned if I lend myself to any propaganda.
... Most of us know that this time the propaganda activities are going
to be much intensified, far more cunning and elaborately misleading,
than ever before."
Parliament a few years ago appointed a committee of some 60 members
to look into imperial policies, just as 25 years before. "The
Committee began its study of the foreign situation in 1935 ... has
gradually improved the technique of production. ... The Memorandum
contains no propaganda and is a pure statement of fact. ... The fact
that it is wholly unofficial, though produced by a secretariat
supervised by an informal group of members of the two Houses, makes it
very independent. ... During these five years, the Committee's
observers have been on unofficial missions of enquiry to many
countries, and ... In 1937 five observers visited the United States."
As an example of how the Policy Group puts forth propaganda under
guise of "reporting," a "Memorandum" early in 1940 considered the
employment of Turkey as advance guard in the drive against the
Soviets, and how to stimulate Turkish aspirations for territory beyond
the Caspian. German and Russian propagandists, they report, are making
no headway. The younger elements in Turkey must be stimulated to fear
Russian aggression. In addition to Iranian Azerbaijan, "the Turkish
demands must also include Iranian Turkestan, and Russian Azerbaijan,"
wherein lies Baku. The appetite might be stimulated
for Russian Turkestan as well. "The achievement of such ambitions
would in no way embarrass the Allies." The need of "sympathy and help"
is emphasized and assistance in development of "Turkish industry." All
this requires loans, which are being advanced.
The Royal Institute of International affairs, formerly at Chatham
House, now removed to Balliol College, Oxford, announces itself as "an
unofficial and nonpolitical body, founded in 1920 to encourage and
facilitate the scientific study of international questions." Its
organ, International Affairs, published bimonthly, frequently
carries signed articles by Lord Lothian and Lord Lloyd. The May-June,
1939, issue carries propaganda articles by Lionel Curtis on "World
Order" and by Lothian on "The United States and Europe."
The Bulletin of International News is published fortnightly by
The Royal Institute. Its editor, John W. Wheeler-Bennett, an
international journalist reports, "was the British liaison officer at
the University of Virginia last year. At the time of the outbreak of
the war he was reported to have gone home and organized propaganda
work there for America." His scholarly recent "The Forgotten Peace:
Brest-Litovsk," has for its purpose meeting the current complaint that
the Versailles Peace was responsible for Hitler and the state of the
world today.
The Round Table, founded and until recently edited by Lord
Lothian, forecasts the New Deal's foreign policy, but is not the place
to encounter a square deal. A direct outcome of Lord Milner's
"Kindergarten," it carries anonymous articles of highbrow propaganda
and contributions supposedly from the Commonwealths, including the
United States.
"America and the World Crisis" in the September, 1939, issue
makes clear how far America disappointingly still fails to meet the
requirements of one of the Commonwealths of the British nation.
Ostensibly written from America by an American, one can imagine
Lothian writing or supervising it just before he left England to
present himself as ambassador propagandist. It reveals that though we
are gauche, inexperienced, we have something the British value.
The article makes it perfectly clear that the utmost reliance is put
upon President Roosevelt. The writer knows well in advance that
"President Roosevelt will call a special session of Congress ... and
will seek the practically guaranteed repeal of the arms embargo clause
..." In the December issue we learn Senator Byrnes had the necessary votes pledged to repeal the Arms
Embargo before the President called the session.
The Round Table assumes too that the United States will take
care of British interests in the Pacific and Asia but in the December
issue we learn that American "Far Eastern policy may serve to prevent
a Russo-Japanese deal which would be catastrophic to British interests
in the Orient. But if Russia wins Japan, it is hoped "the United
States will accept Far Eastern responsibilities a bit more fully, and
thereby ease pressure on Britain."
In an address at Chatham House, Lord Astor in the chair, printed in
the May-June 1939 issue of International Affairs, Lothian tells
of his travels in America, where he found overwhelming sentiment that
France and Britain should be assisted "to buy in the United States all
the armaments they need." As for the President, "there is no doubt
whatever where his own sympathies lie."
Important changes in America's and Britain's relations center around
the year 1937. Baldwin goes out, Chamberlain comes in as front man.
Lloyd, stabilizer of India, reconquerer of Egypt, becomes the strong
man behind the scenes; Vansittart, it is announced, is out as head of
the Foreign Office and secretly takes up propaganda activities.
It was in 1936 that Roosevelt at Chautauqua made his famous speech
renouncing the "fool's gold" of war profits. Soon he was opposing the
referendum of war, playing the game for England's Tories in Japan,
Spain, policing the Pacific in Britain's interest, and announcing that
he would protect Canada and Patagonia and the intervening countries.
He begins to refer to the South American dictatorships as
"democracies." America is evidently being prepared for her part in the
coming Asiatic war.
"Evidence that President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull have
been guilty of collusive action" in entering into a 50-year secret
alliance with Great Britain in the Pacific was presented by Rep.
Tinkham of Massachusetts in a speech, fully documented with
correspondence, in the Congressional Record, March 21, 1940,
and in a press release February 19, 1940, which was largely ignored
by the newspapers.
Some years before, the U.S., surveying a route for the Trans-Pacific
Clipper, had under consideration for stations Canton and Enderbury
Islands. Then followed a chain of incidents, the
significance of which has never been fully revealed. Quoting from
Tinkham's statement:
"In March of 1937 the British Government took formal and legal
possession of these islands. A year later, after our State Department had had secret correspondence with Great
Britain, the United States, according to the press, seized the islands
... which act in itself was an act of war, without some previous
understanding with Great Britain."
This dramatic act for the American people concealed the "secret
negotiation with Great Britain," and in August, 1938, a "joint
communique ... announced that the two governments had agreed to set up
a regime for the use in common of these islands." And the same month
President Roosevelt at Kingston, Ontario, guaranteed the defense of
Canada.
In April, 1939, "an agreement respecting the joint control of the two
governments over these two islands" was revealed. Ostensibly this was
"for civil aviation," with "the provision whereby the two governments
may secretly agree to use the islands for any other purpose."
This "joint control" involves joint defense in case of attack. "Such
an arrangement constitutes not only a political alliance, but what is
more, a military alliance." "No such arrangement with any other
nation exists, and it has never been submitted to Congress, although
it is to run for 50 years and is equivalent to a treaty with a foreign
power. This alliance was closely followed by our notice to Japan of
termination of the 1911 trade treaty. Coincident were the increased
appropriations for American fortifications in the Pacific, joint war
maneuvers of British and U.S. vessels at Singapore, withdrawal by
Britain and France of the majority of their China garrisons, leaving
Japan "fulminating against the U.S. in its role of watchdog."
(Time, Dec. 11, 1939.)
"The United States is being deliberately entangled in Asia for
British political purposes. British economic interests in Asia are 10
time greater than those of United States," Rep. Tinkham declared, and
with his statement he released a letter dated July 25, 1939, from
Legal Advisor Hackworth of the State Department, which said: "Without
the consent of British Government ... the exchange of communications
with Great Britain with respect to Canton and Enderbury Islands could
not be made available for your inspection."
Tinkham replied. "A country in which secret engagements are made,
which are not to be disclosed to the legislature or the people
without the consent of the other party, is necessarily living under a
dictatorial regime. ... The acceptance of such a situation ...
demonstrates that the legislature has abdicated its functions. ... It
seems to me that there should be an independent and thorough
examination of the transaction in question by the Congress."
The warning of the Administration through Secretary Hull's statement
to Japan to keep out of the East Indies is further evidence that we have undertaken to do England's dirty
work to protect her interests in the Far East. Our own interests and
trade there are and always have been a small part of England's and
have cost us more than they have yielded.
The long-time foreign editor of the New York Times, the late
Eugene C. Young, tells in his Looking Behind the Censorships of
a reconnaissance he made of the Times morgue in search of
dossiers on Britain's statesmen. Fat envelopes of press clippings were
devoted to the speeches and doings of such personages as Baldwin,
Simon, Hoare, Eden.
"Then I turned to look at the clippings dealing with another powerful
figure in British international affairs. There was a single envelope,
not filled, containing bare details of his career and activities.
There were no speeches, no interviews, no exploitation of him. Yet I
knew this person, in the time under review, had been the real
stabilizing power in the London Foreign Office, the one who always had
to be consulted when great decisions were to be taken. ...
"Sir Robert Vansittart is the unnoticed man. ... Born in a
conservative family, reared in the foreign service and acquainted with
all its practices and precedents, he had been in office all the time
the two Prime Ministers and the four Foreign Secretaries had served
....
"For instance, when Ramsay MacDonald visited President Roosevelt in
1933 to arrange for American participation in the World Economic
Conference, Vansittart was with him and was by his side in all the
vital negotiations. ... Yet, while MacDonald got columns upon columns
of space, his mentor was mentioned only casually. He desired to remain
in the background, and succeeded well."
Since Chamberlain came in as Prime Minister in 1937, Vansittart has
seldom been mentioned in newspaper items or dispatches. It was given
out that Vansittart had retired and that Chamberlain himself would
take an intimate interest in foreign affairs. "Lord Halifax,
Chamberlain's Foreign Secretary, has little flair for consecutive
thought about English balance-of-power history or the ethics of treaty
breaking. ... Critics have joked about Lord Halifax's ignorance of
Central Europe." (Fortune, December, 1938.) Halifax represented
the Catholic interests. As Viceroy of India when he was Lord Irwin, he
claimed that he had never made a decision without praying to God for
guidance. Gandhi remarked, "It is a pity that God always gives him
such bad advice."
The resignation or dismissal of a Permanent
Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office is almost without precedent,
unless he is needed for more important work as when Tyrrell was
removed to be sent as ambassador to Paris at the time of the French
retirement from the Rhineland and negotiations for German reparations,
or when Sir Ronald Lindsay was sent in 1930 to America where with his
American wife it was thought he would be a decided asset. For the
position of a Permanent Under-Secretary is inviolable, if he
personally behaves himself, and he is, as Young pointed out, above
party considerations.
The resignation of Vansittart had been demanded by the English press
when it was learned that he was the author of the Hoare-Laval plot for
the partition of Abyssinia, so many people imagined that he had been
shelved by Chamberlain.
The first knowledge we had in America of his new activities came
through Newsweek, November 28, 1938. This said, "There's a
reason why Sir Robert Vansittart has rarely been heard from since his
'eclipse' in the British Foreign Office. The fact is that he's busy
handling one of the nation's most delicate problems -- how to combat
Nazi and Fascist propaganda abroad."
At the same time, some one of the many who contributed to the article
in Fortune, December, 1938, on "Great Britain's Europe,"
evidently had some suspicion, for as they put it, Chamberlain
"politely kicked Sir Robert Vansittart into an upstairs job."
Whitaker's Almanac, 1939 edition, lists Vansittart as "Chief
Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Office," a new title, nonexistent in
1937 when he was listed as "Head of the Foreign Office" under the
title of "Permanent Under-Secretary," but both positions carry the
same salary, £3000.
Sir Robert Vansittart is given more space by Karl H. Abshagen, in his
book, than any other. He regards him "in many respects one of the
most perfect representatives of the type of permanent official." He
has devised and planned most of the features of England's foreign
policy over a period of 20 years. Though he does not belong to the
inner aristocratic circles, he is their man, sponsored by them.
"He is the torchbearer of a tradition associated with such names as
Nicolson, Eyre Crowe, and Tyrrell; and he feels and acts as the
spiritual heir of these men ... Since he first became the head of the
Foreign Office Staff he had at all times, like his predecessors, been
the real initiator of most of the important decisions taken in British
foreign policy. ...
"It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence this highly
intelligent, finely cultured, versatile man has had on his parliamentary chiefs, particularly those who, like
MacDonald and Henderson, were never quite up to his social assurance
and his Eton manners, but also on Mr. Baldwin, whose complaisance and
irresolution in international affairs he easily parried with his
acknowledged superiority in expert knowledge and detailed information!
He had, indeed, and probably still has, fuller and more intimate
information (though coloured and one-sided) in every field of
international policy than any other man in England. Vansittart's
influence over the British diplomatic staff during nearly 20 years in
powerful and, indeed, controlling positions in London has been very
great, and has left traces which will long remain ... He continues to
exercise considerable influence in the Foreign Office and also in a
yet wider sphere, as the real head of the British foreign propaganda
service, which lately has been immensely expanded."
The result of Vansittart's improved technique and coordinated
propaganda services has been most marked in America, as was planned.
With enormous stakes to win or lose, ample funds were provided. His
organization has functioned so smoothly that it has remained
undetected, unsuspected by those in America most affected. In England
few know anything of it. The result is the great change in the
attitude of our President in three years from the time when he assured
us we would never again go after the "fool's gold" of war profits, to
his present dictatorial zeal for "religion and morality" and devout
belief that these are dependent on the British Empire.
Our leaders of thought have brought the people from the "never again"
of a few years ago through "war is inevitable," to the present day
attitude that we must give everything to help Britain and to defeat
Germany. This we regard as due to events, but of course it is due to
the way the news of the events came to us, and the expurgation and
suppression of items that would have counterbalanced.
The result is we are now in an emotional state in which we believe
that right is on one side, evil on the other, that religion and
morality and civilization are fostered by one, destroyed by the other.
Again we are almost at the point where we may sacrifice everything in
the idealistic belief that we can do no other. We must give our
utmost to put down evil.
Sir Robert Vansittart, hard-bitten, cynical, may well sit back
complacently and smile as he contemplates American hysteria rising as
in 1917 and say to himself "I planned it that way."
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Dale Wharton.