Jên chih ch'u
Hsing pên shan;
Hsing hsiang chin,
Hsi hsiang yüan.
Freely translated, this means, "When people are born, they all start good, but even though they all start out about the same, you ought to see them after they have had time to become different from one another by picking up habits here and there!"[30] The common nature of man may be at the basis of all propaganda and politics, but incentives to action are found in the stimuli of varied everyday environments. Certain very elementary appeals can be made almost without reference to the personal everyday background ("cultural-historical milieu") of the person addressed. Yet in a matter as simple as staying alive or not staying alive—in which it might be supposed that all human beings would have the same basic response—the difference between Japanese and Americans was found to be basic when it came to surrender. To Japanese soldiers, the verbal distinction between surrender and cease honorable resistance was as important as the difference between life and death. The Japanese would not survive at the cost of their honor, but if their honor were satisfied, they willingly gave up.
Propaganda is directed to the subtle niceties of thought by which people maintain their personal orientation in an unstable interpersonal world. Propaganda must use the language of the mother, the schoolteacher, the lover, the bully, the policeman, the actor, the ecclesiastic, the buddy, the newspaperman, all of them in turn. And propaganda analysis, in weighing and evaluating propaganda, must be even more discriminating in determining whether the propaganda is apt to hit its mark or not.
Monitoring.
In obtaining printed propaganda, better results will be achieved if the same sources are followed consistently over a period of time than if one triumphant raid is carried through. The choice may look like this (see [Chart III]). If, in this instance the propaganda analysis is to be a one-man enterprise in a small country or area in time of peace, the one man can collect all the different kinds of samples in March and can then spend several months trying to see how they add up. By the time his analysis is ready, it will be badly dated and will necessarily be less interesting to the recipients than would a report which was up-to-the-week. Furthermore, unless the analyst knows the area very well indeed, he will risk mistaking transient issues for basic ones. If the Old Agrarians happen to be accused of Right Wing Deviationism during the week of 3-10 March, the analyst may falsely conclude that the Old Agrarian issue is tempestuous or profound.
Unless he has a large staff, faces a special crisis or pursues a scholarly purpose, the analyst does well to pick the alternative illustrated in the vertical column. He should pick his media carefully, accepting the advice of people who know the area intimately. In an opinion-controlled area, it is wise to take both a direct government propaganda paper and an opposition of semi-independent paper, if such exist. Local papers are often better guides to domestic propaganda than are big metropolitan papers. The propagandists of the country know that foreigners may watch the big papers, and they will reserve their most vicious, naïve, or bigoted appeals for the local press.
