War Propaganda
such madness could really all be ascribed to pure stupidity.
What, for instance, would people say to a poster which was meant to advertise a new soap, but which also described other soaps as “good”? They would simply shake their heads.
But the same thing is true of political advertising. It is the task of propaganda not, for instance, to assay the various causes, but to emphasize exclusively the one cause it represents. It must not objectively explore any truth that favors the other side, and then present it to the masses with doctrinaire honesty, but must perpetually labor for its own truths.
It was a fundamental error to discuss guilt from the standpoint that Germany could not be made solely responsible for the outbreak of the catastrophe; the right way was to load the guilt solely upon the enemy, even if this had not corresponded to the actual situation, which in this case it really did.
What was the result of this half-measure?
The great masses of a people do not consist of diplomats or even of teachers of international law, in fact not even of people capable of a reasoned judgment; they are human beings, wavering, inclined to doubt and uncertainty. The moment their own propaganda concedes so much as the faintest glimmer of justice to the other side, the seeds for doubt of their own cause have been sown. The masses are in no position to tell where the enemy’s misdeeds end and their own begin. In such cases they become uncertain and suspicious, particularly if the enemy is not guilty of the same foolishness, but puts the guilt lock, stock and barrel upon his adversary. What more natural than for one’s own people at last to believe the hostile propaganda, more concerted and single-minded as it is, rather than one’s own? This is most easily proved to be true with a people who suffers from the objectivity craze as severely as the Germans do! For here everyone will strive to do no injustice to the enemy, even at the risk of accusing, nay destroying, his own people and State. The masses never become conscious that it is not thus intended in high quarters. The overwhelming majority of the people is so feminine in tendency and attitude that emotion and feelings rather than sober consideration
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