In order to follow this type of propaganda, a quantitative chart is needed. A sample imaginary chart for a three-month period is given in [chart IV]. This chart reveals at a glance the fact that the enemy kept mentioning food supply and naval warfare until the middle of March, because he presumably thought his blockade runners would bring in more food. After March, food drops in emphasis but naval warfare continues to be stressed. In May, following enemy admission to himself of the hopeless naval situation, naval warfare drops almost altogether out of sight. Foodstuffs continue to be modestly mentioned as the enemy explained away minor difficulties, but the use of secret weapons propaganda shows that the enemy propagandists had to have something sensational to keep up the courage of the home audience. Whether the enemy really had a secret weapon or not, depends on the national character, past records, and so forth. The Germans and Japanese both said they had world-shaking secret weapons. The Germans delivered; the Japanese did not.
Such quantity records will also be useful in showing the enemy's propaganda statistically with reference to number of words uttered on each of his major subjects, number of inches of newspaper columns for specified kinds of news, and so on. Percentage charts show which major shifts his propaganda performs. Audience charts (that is, how much time he spends addressing workers, pacifists, mothers, minorities, etc.) show which groups he is really trying to reach. Emphasis charts for selected topics on which your own propaganda has been active show how much you force him to talk about something which he may not wish to discuss.
Such statistical use is possible only if usable records are maintained. A basic item-by-item file of all important or new items, combined with a worksheet of the amount of radio time or printed space the enemy put into use for a stated period, will provide the materials needed for propanal. Propanal is indispensable to psychological warfare. It sifts ordinary intelligence out from propaganda in one process, processing straight intelligence ready for the intelligence people to use, yet providing analysis for psychological warfare purposes.
For peacetime purposes, it is to be remembered that though enemies may hide their scientists, their launching ramps, or their rockets, they cannot hide the occasion for war, nor their own readiness measures. No government can afford to seem the plain unqualified aggressor. Propanal may prove to be one of the soundest war-forecasting systems available to us in a period of ultra-destructive weapons. Psychological mobilization may be disguised: it cannot be concealed.
CHAPTER 8
Propaganda Intelligence
The psychological warfare operator can usually count on two basic interests of his listener. In the field he can be sure that the enemy troops are interested in themselves. In the enemy homeland he can be sure that the civilians are interested in their enemy—himself. He has therefore a certain leeway in which he can be sure of doing no harm, and may accomplish good, if he confines his propaganda to simple, factual and plainly honest statements on these subjects. Pompousness, intricacy and bad taste will recoil against him; it is unwise to employ these even when the situation is well under control. In a developing situation the propagandist can remain safe by confining himself to simple statements as to how strong his country's armed forces are, how realistic and effective their leadership. Elementary information giving the favorable aspects of his economic, strategic and diplomatic situation may also prove valuable initial propaganda.
This interest can be counted on throughout the war. The enemy is always news. The wise enemy realizes this and keeps himself in the news, trusting that in the wider understanding of himself, his politics and culture there is the opening for a more favorable peace in the event of defeat, or for a more docile submission in the event of his own victory. Only unimportant enemies fail to become news. (Few Americans, for example, realize that we were at war with Bulgaria in World War II. Had the Bulgars developed sensational weapons, there would have been a sudden upswing of interest in them. People would have realized that Bulgaria, like Hungary and long-lost Avaria, was once a fierce Asiatic state grafted onto the European system; the fabulous power of the Old Bulgarian Empire would have become known, and the names of Krum, Symeon and the Czar Samuel added to our calendar of hate. But Bulgaria never did enough against the United States to count as an enemy, and even succeeded, by diplomatic ineptitude, in getting into a state of war with all the Axis Powers and all the United Nations simultaneously; Bulgaria escaped the fame which goes with hostility. Contrast this with Japan: thousands of Americans have learned Japanese; Japanese national character is known to us; war has done in a five-year span what education could not have accomplished in a generation.) The wise propagandist can, when in doubt, play good music on the air, or he can—with equal prudence—give the enemy his own elementary-school history and language texts. These do no harm, and may achieve something.
