EUGENE YOUNG, cable editor of the New York Times, has been described by a former head of the press division of the British Foreign Office as one of the powerful men of America. For thirty years he has edited the news of the world for American consumption. In the process he has acquired a thoroughgoing knowledge of how nations set to work to influence public opinion on specific issues. And now, viewing the spread of ’the black plague’ of censorship over most of the world, he has felt constrained to indicate some of the appalling difficulties under which foreign news is gathered.

The author’s analysis of the means by which the dictatorships, particularly Italy, have employed the ‘build-up’ technique to further the interests of their popular heroes is informative and well documented. And he has performed a service of real consequence — may American readers appreciate it! — in revealing the care taken by the democracies to control news sources so that only favorable facts will reach the public. ‘Even in London and Paris,’ he says, ‘the governmental systems operate to choke and divert the channels of truth.’ Of the censorship exercised by our own State Department, the author writes: ‘There is no more rigid system of silence anywhere in the world. There have been important occasions when I thought the American people should know what was going on and I have learned through London or Paris what the Washington authorities were doing.’
Despite censorship and propaganda, the author feels that there are simple formulas which govern foreign policies, and he lists their essentials for Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan. There is no formula for America, he shows — and who will dispute him?

The Atlantic July 1938 Issue