Excerpt from Propaganda in Its Military and Legal Aspects
The person who cries "Fire!" in a crowded auditorium, or who starts a false alarm resulting in a panic is spreading a form of propaganda. The results of his act may be such as to lay him liable to a trial for murder.
The person who by gossip, innuendo or other means destroys the credit of a bank and starts a run upon it, is a propagandist and amenable to punishment.
The person who by insinuation or backbiting wrecks the good name of a man or a woman is wielding the same powerful and dangerous weapon.
The collector of bad debts who sends his duns on postal cards or on envelopes of conspicuous nature is carrying out a form of offensive and illegal propaganda. Equally the person who, by false representations, distortions, exaggerations, or suppressions of the truth, booms a worthless stock with intent to defraud, is a propagandist against public and private welfare and comes within reach of the law.
All of these are engaged in activities to which the word "propaganda" has not been applied; yet they illustrate it perfectly. There has been no question of legal authority for the punishment of these acts. Propaganda has therefore a legal status, though under other names.
If propaganda against an individual"s reputation, the safety of a crowd of people in a theatre, the prosperity of a local bank, is dangerous to the public welfare, by so much the more is it dangerous when it attacks the honor of a nation, the lives of its soldiers, the fate of its armies and the liberty of the whole people. While few persons would underestimate the viciousness of hostile propaganda, its direct military importance is apt to be overlooked.
In the recent trial of a German-American newspaper editor under the provisions of the Espionage Act, the judge ruled that while the articles cited were offensive in their tone, they did not constitute a violation under the act because they did not give information of military value to the enemy - as if the only way to help the enemy were to inform him!
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