Chinese Uses.
Under "Chiang the Chairman," the Chinese national government waged a dignified, humane kind of psychological warfare against Japan. Few people remember an odd chapter out of modern history, the Chinese bombardment of Nagasaki, although it is possible that Asiatic historians of the future will make a substantial contrast between the Chinese who struck the first blow at that city and the Americans who struck the last. Shortly after the outbreak of the full quasi-war between China and Japan in 1937, the Generalissimo ordered his bombers to attack Japan. American-built Chinese bombers appeared over Kyushu, the first invaders to show up since the shoguns repelled Kublai Khan 656 years earlier. But instead of dropping bombs, they dropped leaflets denouncing aggression and inferentially pointing out that while the Japanese were uncivilized enough to bomb their fellow-Asiatics, the Chinese were too civilized to undertake reprisals in kind.
The Generalissimo's troops also had fraternization and front-line propaganda, but not to the extent to which the Chinese Communists did. The Generalissimo himself followed a very liberal (not in the Leftist but the true sense) political line toward Japan. He uttered no threat of vengeance. He was the first leader of a great nation to say that the Japanese Emperor question was to be settled by letting the Japanese themselves choose their own form of government after the war was all over. He had Japanese on his political staffs—democratic persons whom his officials encouraged—and regular Japanese broadcasts were kept up throughout the war on the Chungking radio.
PART TWO
ANALYSIS, INTELLIGENCE, AND ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION
CHAPTER 7
Propaganda Analysis
Opinion analysis pertains to what people think; propaganda analysis deals with what somebody is trying to make them think. Each form of analysis is a new and flourishing field in civilian social research; the bibliographies of Smith, Lasswell and Casey, and the current reviews in the Public Opinion Quarterly[29] demonstrate the existence of a large and growing literature on the subject. Each year, new textbooks in the field or current revisions of old ones can be counted on to bring scholastic and scientific findings up to date.
Technical writings on visual education, religious conversion, labor organization, practical politics, revolutionary agitation, and on commercial advertising have frequent bearing on propaganda analysis.
Propaganda cannot be analyzed in a logical vacuum. Every step in the operation is intensely practical. There is nothing timeless about it, other than that common sense which is based on the nature of man. The ancient Chinese three-character classic, from which several billion Chinese have tried to learn to read, says: