Divide and Rule

In the months when Germany was preparing for the all-out assault against France her most effective propaganda slogan was: "England will fight to the last Frenchman." By dinning it into French ears day after day, week after week, German propagandists of the radio and the press planted suspicions which helped poison France's power to resist. Last week the propaganda machine of the Berlin-Rome Axis altered two proper nouns, tried out the old slogan again against the U. S. and Britain.

No longer did the German press with hold comment on the deterioration of U. S.-German relations. While Adolf Hitler threatened to sink any U. S. ship coming into the war zone (see p. 21) the press told the people frankly that U. S. sympathy and aid to Great Britain were an actuality. With this news there was cunningly coupled the charge that U. S. aid was designed to lead Britain to her ruin, to the end that the U. S. might inherit the British Empire.

In Rome the lines were the same, though the voice that sang them was tenor. In his weekly broadcast to the Italian armed forces Editor Giovanni Ansaldo of the Leghorn Telegrafo cried: "Roosevelt is not fighting to save England. He is fighting for American imperialism, since he wants to replace England with the United States as a world power. Today the United States is doing what England did up to the present conflict--she is ready to fight to her ally's last man."

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