THE COURSE OF EMPIRE

The modern use of propaganda may be said to date from wartime days, when it was the practice of all the combatant nations to send their airplanes over the enemy lines laden with explosives calculated for detonation in the mind of the infantryman. Since that time it is safe to say that no country, including even Britain, has become so expert in the use of this weapon as the United States of Soviet Russia.

The latest of the long list of nations that have resented the new idea in Schrecklichkeit is Turkey. The progress of the Turkish Communist Party, financed by Russian funds, is claimed by the Soviet Foreign Minister Tchitcherin to be more remarkable than that of Russia itself. The Soviet hand has shown itself in the big commercial centers of South America, and France has one of the largest proportions of Communist-minded people in the world. Germany has a similar problem and China has already seen her coolies read and run--amuck. The newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst are running a series of disclosures of Soviet workings in the Calles government of Mexico, and it is not long since the Dedham Courthouse was strewn with literature.

It becomes gradually clearer that the fact that her attentions are unwelcome will not check the course of social proselytizing upon which Russia has embarked. There is rather every indication that her propaganda plans are expanding. She has learned, without needing Chicago in the office of tutor, that the pen is still the mightier. And her executives have determined that when better propaganda is made, Russia will make it.