Ministry of Propaganda

Rift between anti-appeasers in the British Foreign Office and Prime Minister Chamberlain reached near-scandalous proportions during the Munich Crisis. Some Foreign Office officials, the Prime Minister was certain", were even leaking confidential information to the press. After Munich some officials who handled press relations were suddenly shifted to other jobs, but Neville Chamberlain was by no means sure he had plugged all the leaks.

Last week in setting up the new Publicity Department of the Foreign Office, he moved to finish the plugging job he began last November by plugging in the shrewd conservative Earl of Perth as "general supervisor" of the Department, naming him "director-general designate" of a Ministry of Information into which the Publicity Department would be converted if war came. Groundwork for this wartime Ministry, Mr. Chamberlain revealed, was being laid by Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare (Hoare-Laval Deal).

Scandalized Laborites, who consider Lord Perth (former Ambassador to Italy) an arch-appeaser, though others who know him claim he is not pro-Fascist, merely pro-British, demanded to know if there was going to be "censorship." Promised the Prime Minister: "There will be no interference with the British Press by that department." He announced that its peacetime function would be to spread British propaganda overseas.

Hazy idea floating through the Prime Ministerial mind seemed to be that the Publicity Department might succeed in convincing the German people there is no encirclement. Those who recalled how British propaganda sold the Germans Wood-row Wilson's 14 points and helped break down their resistance in 1918, guessed it might work. In fact, Lord Perth's principal assistant will be Sir Campbell Stuart, who was also chief aide to Lord Northcliffe in Britain's 1918 propagandizing.

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