Indiana daily times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1914-1922, 1920-02-06
ISSUE
CONFUSED BY
LIEFACTORIES'
Manchester Guardian Declares
British Press Has Been
Gravely Misled.
ARE BECLOUDED
BY EARLE G. REEVES,
International News Service Staff
Carwasnoudauf

Correspondent.
LONDON, Feb 6-Under the caption
The Propaganda Morass,' the Man
chester Guardian delivers a pointed ser
mon on lie factories which have be-
clouded the Russian issue.
The Guardian recounts boldly the
evarious lilies" that have come out OF
Russia, from one side or the other, and
is particularly ironic regarding reports
(which the British government has
eeFessed, through the foreign office or
eeAer channels The Guardian names no
sources, however, contenting itself with
"a clear Indictment of the practice of car
rying wartime propaganda methods for
ward into peacetime in vain hope OF
''saving Russia by deluding England
FThe recent war revealed in all the
rombatant countries an enormous ad-
dition to the munitions of mendacity,"
says the Guardian.
1T was the first great war since the
rise of the modern science of systematic
publicity. Everywhere in varying de-
grees, the conviction was evinced that
good lie may hit your enemy as hard as
at any rate, a poor bombardment.
HARD TO ESTABLISH
BRIGHT CONDITIONS.
almost every days paper shows how
hard 1t may be to get the genie of
war propaganda morality back into
the leaden pot from which war released
the unsavory being For months past
the press has been drenched, from some
unknown source with what is simply
war propaganda information about
Russia. Since the German propagandist
descriptions of the alleged pandemonium
of insurrection, mutiny and despair
reigning in England during the war,
Ehere has been published nothing more
obviously self-convicted of falsehood.
"First, for a period, we were asked to
believe that mere touch of the allied
finger was needed to topple the Russian
soviet government into destruction That
was found to be untrue. Then we were
told that the soviet government was, any
how, ON its last legs, as 90 per cent of
Russians detested it and would welcome
Denikin and KoIchak with open arms.
That was found to be untrue.
rS Sat one time we were told that it was
all an intrigue of the Germans. That was
found to euntrue and the German help
WAS found to be going to the anti soviet
Yudenitch. At another time we were
told that bolshevism was run by a lit
tie gang of Jews. That was found to be
ftuntrue.
%CONFLICTING FACTS"
FORCED UPON PUBLIC.
"At another time we were told that the
little gang of Germans. or of Jews, were
going to overrun Asia and take India
from US. Then We were asked to be
lieve that all the primitive cruelty of a
Russian civil war is to be found on the
side of the 8 per cent of Jews, Germans,
etc., and none of it on the side of the
e5 per cent of real Russians struggling
against them.
Az Meanwhile we see the alleged 5 per
cent Systematically routing everywhere
the armed supporters of the alleged %
per cent; Kolchak, Yudenitch and Dent
kin chased out of Russia--Denikin and
his armies across half Russia, almost
from Moscow to the Black sea. We find
the alleged cabal of crazy anarchists car
rying on year after year a government to
(which more and more of the moderate
elements are apparently rallying-or
(which, at any rate, they refuse to resist
with foreign aid. And where we can get
at first hand the report of some intelli-
gent and straightforward Englishman
who is not entangled in any propagan-
dist organizations We are given picture
of affairs in Russia which bears hardly
point OF resemblance to any of these
strange stories of the propagandists.
PROPAGANDA CALLED
LIE FACTORIES"
'It will not do.
'Both parties to the Russian civil war,
like both parties to any modern inter
national war, have their propaganda or
ganizations-what our troops in France
called with blunt honestly "lie factories"
IF either thinks it can save Russia
by deluding England it Is patriotic of it
to try. But for any part of the English
press to accept the propaganda tracts Of
either Russian faction at their face value
and to present them to English readers is
Ii they could be assumed to rest on seri-
GUS evidence is an offense against honesty.
There is no longer the excuse for an
Imperfect sense of evidence that there was
during the war, when a mans conscience
could give him an amnesty for circulat
ing anything, true or false, that might
help to defeat a formidable enemy.
For our part we feel that the whole
subject of soviet Russia has now been so
hopelessly obscured under accumulations
of obviously partisan falsehood that no
definite judgment about 1t can be con-
6dently framed"