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The Propaganda
By PROF. JOHN WILLIAM BURGESS.
(Formerly Roosevelt exchange professor at the University of Berlin.)
Now we have a new term with which to terror-
ize the weak minded-the Propaganda. The term is
well chosen. It has a sinister ring. It sounds like
anaconda or boaconstrictor, or something of the rep-
tile world. But really, what is a propaganda? Ab-
stractly, it is any means for spreading the knowledge
of any truths or principles or doctrines and securing
their acceptance. The greatest example of a propa-
ganda which the world has ever known is the Chris-
tian religion and the Christian church. A university,
a college, a school, a scientific association, a literary
club, is a propaganda and any teacher is a propa-
gandist. A propaganda does not then appear, when
we approach nearer to it, to be such a monster after
all. It seems to be only a comprehensive term, in-
cluding in a general way all the means made use of
for spreading knowledge. It is, however, THE prop-
aganda that we are out for, not A propaganda. An
unsophisticated mind would be likely to define THE
propaganda as A propaganda in reference to a par-
ticular subject.
What then is the particular subject which renders
the propaganda, about which many newspapers are
now raising such an ado, a work of terror and abomi-
nation? If I understand it, it is the-attempt made
by certain men and women to influence the govern-
ment of the United States to lay an embargo on the
exportation of arms and munitions of war, and the
propaganda is any association or understanding for
combined effort to bring about this result. In the
representations made by some of the newspapers, it
goes even further than this and includes the inde-
pendent efforts of the individual for this purpose.
Some of the newspapers have already denounced
these efforts as approaching treason against the
country, and many of them are evidently making
daily advance upon that line--I will not say of
thought, but of reckless assumption. They are grad-
ually developing, however, their course of reasoning,
or rather, something which they seem to think a
course of reasoning, in arriving at this result.
Let us try to analyze this something, although in
doing it we may commit the logical offense of stating
the steps in the process a little more distinctly than
they have done themselves. They start from the
gostulate that, according to the declaration of our
fate Department at Washington, an embargo laid
by our government on the export of arms and muni-
tions of war would be an unnatural act towards the
belligerent, or belligerents, who might be disadvan-
tageously affected thereby.
' Second, that an embargo on the export of arms
and amunitions of war, being an unneutral act, ac-
cording to the declaration of our own government,
would give the belligerent suffering disadvantage
from the same a just cause of war upon us.
Third, that the effort of any person individually or
of any number of persons in combination to influence
the government to embargo the export of arms and
amunitions of war would, therefore, be, in effect, an
effort to involve this country in war with the disad-
vantaged belligerent or belligerents.
Fourth, that such an effort is, therefore, of the na-
ture of treason against the country.
And, fifth, that it should be suppressed and dealt
with as such. As I have said, they do not all state
this scheme of ratiocination quite as clearly as I
have done, but it is evident to a close reader of the
daily papers of the East that such is the doctrine
which they are gradually evoluting and it is the part
of wisdom to expose its purposes and sophistries be-
fore, by repetition simply, it gets its grip upon those
who have not the ability to resist the power of con-
tinuous assertion.
Let us, therefore, take the elements of this vicious
scheme apart and examine them one by one.
First, then, the declaration by our government
that an embargo of the export of arms and munitions
of war would be unneutral. In the official note of
the state department to Austria-Hungary of Aug. 12,
1915, it is said that neutrality is “opposed to the
prohibition by a neutral nation of the exportation of
arms, ammunition or other munitions of war to bel-
ligerent powers during the progress of the war.”
Two questions in regard to this declaration will
arise immediately in the mind of any publicist. The
first is whether this is a true statement of the public
law of the nations of the world in regard to this sub-
ject. I do not think it is. I have read all of the re-
ceived text books on public law, both international
and internal, and‘ I cannot remember any such doc- '
trine, or even any approximation to it, except in one
case, where it was barely suggested by a rather in-
significant author.
Quite on the contrary, the generally received doc-
trine of public law is that an embargo on the expor-
tations of arms and munitions, as upon anything
else, is a domestic question for each country to de-
termine for itself, quite independently of its effects
upon any other country at any time, and solely in