"The natural love of our people for peace" to which the President referred in his Jackson Day speech March 29, 1941, had to be overcome before we could be brought to war. It is easiest to do this on moral grounds, to show that the enemy follows outrageous, to us unfamiliar, customs, that he breaks tabus which to us seem sacred.
"So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate", observes Lasswell in "Propaganda Technique".
The President in the same speech denounced those who "have tried to shatter the confidence of Americans in their Government". 'Government' seems in his mind synonymous with president, as it is very nearly today, as it was for Louis XIV. "L'etat c'est moi."
The venerable Cardinal O'Connell warned the same day, "The trust of the people in their Government is a dangerous thing to toy with. There is a distinct feeling that things are going on behind the scenes, unknown to the people. This is the sort of distrust that brought about revolutions in Europe--the distrust of the people in their government."
The strategic management of all the propagandists' propulsions have, however, allayed the suspicions of most and brought us to the verge of war. The technique and publicity methods by which our intellectuals have been brought to serve the purposes of the Tory crew that is ruining the British Empire is worthy of the greatest admiration. Pearson and Allen in their column, and Senator Wheeler in a radio address late in March, 1941, have given some admiring recognition, as has Garet Garrett, editorialist for the Sat Eve Post, who, Feb. 1, 1941, expounds,--
"It was perfect strategy. . . . The and- America strategists who controlled the war propaganda knew better than to name their objectives in the beginning. Therefore, they advanced under such hypnotic phrases as 'measures short of war', and 'defend America by aiding the Allies', which gathered up in one emotional mass all the hatred of Hitler, all the natural feeling among us for Great Britain, all the abhorrence of war and all the hope there was of keeping the war away. On the ground they occupied they could not be attacked precisely for the reason that it
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Getting US into War.
Contributors: Porter Sargent - Author.
Publisher: P. Sargent.
Place of publication: Boston.
Publication year: 1941.
Page number: 83.
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