White Papers: More Good Reading

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In Europe's propaganda* war the Germans have, as might have been expected, come out second best. They often handle the art of communication clumsily. In War II, when they have not been caught stupidly lying—as when they insisted the Ark Royal had been sunk, even though a U. S. naval attache lunched aboard her and found differently—they have artlessly suppressed information which would on the whole have done their cause good rather than harm. Last week Germany had yet to admit the loss of even one submarine in seven weeks' warfare at sea.

The British do it differently. Masters of fact-presenting as well as of fiction, they have managed to convince the world, by promptly reporting disasters (and, not so promptly, victories) that whatever comes from their official spokesmen is accepted as dead on the level.

But straight truth is not the only instrument of propaganda that the British use. Their statesmen happen to possess a grade of literary finesse surpassed by no ruling group in the world today, and one in particular has contrived to bring to the Foreign Office publications the quality of the bestseller.

Last week, following up the sell-out achieved by his collected messages to his chief while Ambassador to Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson authored another White Paper. It was a 12,000-word first-hand study of Hitler, the Nazis and the Germans, written as his final report to Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. Perceptive, witty and compassionate as a Jane Austen novel or a Lytton Strachey biography, it steered hard away from the old 1914 concept of the Germans as Huns or their ruler as The Beast of Berlin. Instead, it described them as understandable dupes and Hitler as a powerful but pitiable man. Sir Nevile had further broken precedent by writing the best of his memoirs 30 days, instead of 30 years, after the events happened. Excerpts:

"My Lord:

"Events moved with such rapidity during the last fortnight of my mission to Berlin that it proved impossible at the time to give any consecutive account of them. If I have the honor to do so now ... it is with the hope that such an account may be both of immediate interest to your Lordship and serve a purpose from the point of view of historical accuracy.. . .

"Herr Hitler and National Socialism are the products of the defeat of a great nation in war and its reaction against the confusion and distress which followed that defeat. National Socialism itself is a revolution and a conception of national philosophy. Contrary to democracy, which implies the subordination of the State to the service of its citizens, Naziism prescribes the subordination of its citizens to the service of the State, an all embracing moloch, and to the individual who rules that State. . . .