The themes examined above are but a few of those which have been used in strategic leaflets in the past. It is clear that the theme of the strategic leaflet, under normal circumstances, reflects the nation's political and military situation.

NOTES

1. The New York Times, September 5, 1939, p. 1.

2. United Nations Command, Report of the... to the Security Council, August 16, 1950, in U.S. Senate, Military Situation in the Far East, Part 5, 82nd Cong., 1st Session (Washington: 1951), p. 3392.

3. Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., Europe, Argument to V-E Day, Vol. 3 of The Army Air Forces in World War II, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 494.

4. Federation of Malaya Annual Report, 1954 (Kuala Lumpur: G. A. Smith, 1955), p. 403. 5. The Psywar Society Bulletin, No. 4 (Dec. 1958), p. 9.

6. Dept. of the Army, FM 33–5, Psychological Warfare Operations, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 138.

7. George G. Bruntz, Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918 (Stanford University Press, 1938), p. 106.

8. Far East Command, First Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group, Leaflet No. 1229, "Third Winter of Death," 24 October 1952.

9. Psychological Warfare Branch, U.S. Army Forces Pacific Area, Leaflet No. 137-J-1, "Significance of Unconditional Surrender," n.d.

THE NLF LEAFLET*

BY DOUGLAS PIKE

The frequency in the use of the propaganda leaflet by a revolutionary movement may be realated to the development of the movement's organizational structure. The more highly developed the organizational structure, the more selective, less random, and less important does leaflet distribution become.

The traditional communicational tool of the revolutionary, the clandestine leaflet, was the major mass medium of the [National Liberation Front] (NLF) in its earliest days. Leaflets collected by the [Government of Vietnam] (GVN) in the 1958-1960 period were usually signed "Liberation Forces of the South" or Lao Dong Party. Typical titles were "Letters from Long An Lao Dong Provincial Committee to Rural Compatriots on the Thirty-Ninth Anniversary of the Founding of the Party" and "An Appeal by the Lao Dong Party South Vietnamese Executive Committee to Compatriots in the South." Many of these contained Ho Chi Minh's picture and at least one was issued to mark his birthday. Apparently they served chiefly to advertise the fact that the Lao Dong Party continued to exist in the South.

The NLF leaflet program reached its zenith of utility in mid-1963, after which it declined. The leaflets usually took the form of a two- or four-page

*Excerpts from Viet Cong: The Organization and Technique of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1966, Appendix B. Reprinted with the permission of M.I.T. Press, copyright holder.

tract containing several thousand words of text; a small leaflet (about 3 by 5 inches) containing a much shorter message; or a slogan slip, which was a strip of paper on which a single slogan was written. The leaflets were usually the work of cadres. The slogan slip was the work of the people themselves, usually as part of a struggle movement, and was a device highly prized by the leadership.

The tract and the miniature leaflet were usually written at the interzone agit-prop section and sent to the district or village where they were reproduced and distributed by local cadres. It is difficult to determine the scope of this leaflet activity; a quy chanh who had worked in the Kien Hoa provincial agit-prop section said that in September 1961, probably the high point of the NLF leaflet program, the provincial agit-prop section. issued 500,000 leaflets of ten different types. An NLF internal report said that the Central Nambo zonal central committee produced three million leaflets dealing with the GVN's April 1961 elections.

The cadre directive stated that leaflets were to be used in areas where we are not able to organize demonstrations. They have the purpose of causing the masses to stand up and struggle. They are used in areas where we have no organization or only a weak one, such as a provincial capital. Butterfly leaflets create a willingness among the people to struggle against the enemy and heighten the prestige of the Revolution. In the areas where we are organized but the enemy still is in control we can use leaflets to make propaganda for our organizations. This should be the main objective in the use of leaflets. But also they should arouse public opinion, create confusion among the people, and give the masses subjects to discuss. Leaflets disseminate only general policies. Detailed treatment of a subject should be done in face-to-face agit-prop work. Do not rely too much on leaflets.

Leaflets were scattered by hand at night by agit-prop teams. They were surreptitiously placed in women's shopping baskets in small-town markets or left in public places, on buses and trains, in schoolrooms, or sent through the mail. Kites and balloons were flown over towns and military posts, carrying leaflets that were scattered by the wind when a mechanism released them from their airborne conveyors. In cities and towns cadres at night would soak leaflets in water and secretly spread them on the roofs of the taller buildings, the morning sun would dry them; they would come loose from the roof tiles and flow over the town. The NLF also employed a special hand grenade that exploded without injuring anyone and scattered leaflets over a wide area.

NFL cadres estimated that in a random leaflet-scattering operation in a GVN-controlled area, not 10 percent got into the hands of the population. Leaflets became less important as the organizational structure developed. A 1964 memorandum noted,

When we started [the NLF] we had no firm foundation and therefore needed many tracts and leaflets. Now we do not need as many. We need not distribute them in all places, only in the towns and in areas where the enemy is in firm control, in army posts, in refugee villages, and among religious groups. We do not need them in the liberated area. . . except when enemy troops come through.

USIA's "LITTLE" MAGAZINE*

BY NATHAN GLICK

If educated groups from different cultures share particular interests or characteristics, printed matter such as the magazine representing these interests and characteristics will be better received by their cross-national audience and more likely to be effective in influencing opinion than communications directed at the larger public.

Government sponsorship of magazines for foreign readers is not a new idea. The Soviet Union has been conducting such a program for many decades, and its highly ideological style has been emulated by Communist China and several East European governments. Before Dialogue, [ a USIA publication launched in the spring of 1968], US publications for foreign audiences were mainly aimed at specific countries or areas. America Illustrated, a handsomely designed monthly which resembles Life in format, is distributed in the Soviet Union and Poland under a formal cultural exchange agreement. Topic is aimed at African readers, Horizons at Asians, and a number of USIS posts publish magazines for distribution within a single country. The only early exception to this area-targeted rule was Problems of Communism, a bi-monthly survey of developments in the Communist world, which started in 1952 as a product of the cold war but has since become widely regarded in academic circles as the most authoritative journal in its field.

Against this background, Dialogue was novel in avoiding any specialization of either audience or subject matter. Its outlook and ambitions were suggested in the editor's "note to the reader" in the first issue, which said in part:

Dialogue addresses itself to what one writer recently called the "intellectual public," those readers who have a compelling interest in ideas, social problems, literature and art. We hope to avoid facile popularization and irrelevant scholarship, and to publish articles that link special knowledge to wider cultural influences or pressing human needs. Our title refers primarily to the continuing discussion among Americans of matters ranging from education and culture to politics and economic development. But there is also a reciprocal character to intellectual discourse which leaps the barriers of geographical frontiers of political systems. One of the redeeming features of man's often melancholy history has been the international fraternity of intellectuals a common concern for humane values and a common responsiveness to imaginative art.... We hope that our magazine will contribute to this international dialogue of ideas and aspirations.

Having been involved in magazine work most of my adult life, and having some knowledge of the short and inglorious histories of many high-minded publications, I was acutely aware of the shadows that could fall between conception and creation. The first shadow requiring exorcism was the widespread suspicion in USIA that no single magazine could meet the interests of readers from very different backgrounds in five

*Excerpts from "USIA's Little Magazine,” Cultural Affairs 12, Associated Councils of the Arts, New York, 1970.

continents and more than a hundred countries. The response to the first issue provided a rather persuasive answer. Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, Europeans and Canadians-ranging from an avant-garde playwright in Brazil to an army general in Malaysia-seemed equally pleased with the magazine. Clearly, there existed a fairly homogeneous international audience at the university-educated level. None other than Professor Shils had remarked, in an article called "The Intellectual in Developing Nations" which Dialogue printed, that the educated classes in such countries have either been trained in the West or taught at home by Westerners or pupils of Westerners; and that their drive toward modernity is strongly influenced by Western standards. Beyond this ecumenical aspect of university education, there is the fact of almost instantaneous international communication which, at least superficially, provides the educated publics around the world with a common background of information and concerns.

Specifically, some of the most important ideas about modernization (economic, political or social) have been spawned in the technologically developed nations and perhaps most of all in the United States, which has the material affluence and political incentive to support a large corps of development specialists in the universities, AID, the World Bank, and elsewhere. Since by far the larger part of Dialogue's audience lives in the developing world, and since one of the main purposes of the magazine is to share useful and stimulating ideas, every issue so far has carried at least one article on problems of economic development. These articles have elicited more involved response than those on any other single theme as judged by letters to the editor, reprints in indigenous publications, and extended comment in newspapers and journals.

**

At Dialogue we are very much aware that those we refer to as intellectuals in our own country and abroad are no longer members of a leisure class, but often excessively busy professionals who have the taste and capacity for intellectual stimulation along with limited time and patience. We have therefore experimented with editorial, visual and typographical approaches intended to make the magazine more attractive and serviceable. Although I am suspicious of the current tendency to view "communications" as a separate and special discipline, the experience of editing Dialogue has made me acutely aware of the pitfalls that lie in wait for the international communicator. At the same time it has convinced me that there is a widespread hunger for dialogue (with a small "d"), for a sense of participation in the contemporary issues that cross national boundaries and touch on men's common concern for social justice and their common responsiveness to imaginative art.

U.S.-SOVIET MAGAZINE PROPAGANDA:

AMERICA ILLUSTRATED AND USSR*

BY ANITA MALLINCKRODT DASBACH

Covert propaganda containing messages that are not favorable to the predispoitions of the target audiences may gain the selective attention and interests of the target audiences when built into an overt framework.

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES

The messages propagandists use to convey themes aimed at inducing modifications of belief in audiences often are subtle and covert, frequently imbedded deeply in the body of an article. Significant, therefore, is the message's overt framework, built to capture the initial attention and interest of the reader, as well as to convey an impression of its own. SUBJECT MATTER

An important part of the message's framework is subject matter. For instance, by presenting articles about new developments in various fields of the arts, a propagandist conveys the impression of a cultured communicator. He also gains the attention of readers interested in the arts. Once their attention is won by an article which promises subject matter attractive to them, they begin to read and so are exposed to the theme the propagandist has woven into the article.

What subjects, then, are U.S. and Soviet propagandists presenting to win and hold their audiences and to convey desired impressions? In brief, the 1960 and 1963 samples used in this study show USSR decreasing its emphasis on Government and Foreign Relations subjects and increasing emphasis on such subject matter areas as People and Science. Meanwhile, in 1963 America Illustrated increased its already heavy emphasis on Arts and Culture while talking somewhat less about Education, Foreign Relations, Government and other areas.

REPRINTS

*****

In addition to subject matter, which can serve to gain reader attention, credibility, which gains reader acceptance, is another important aspect of the framework the propagandist constructs around his message. It has been felt, for instance, that if America Illustrated sed articles reprinted from national U.S. magazines, Soviet readers would feel they were reading what Americans themselves read, rather than pieces tailored for Soviet consumption and so more "propagandistic." With this philosophy in mind, America Illustrated, in the four-issue basic sample covering the

*Excerpts from "U.S.-Soviet Magazine Propaganda:" "America Illustrated" and "USSR,” Journalism Quarterly, XLIII, No. 1 (Spring 1966), pp. 73–84. Reprinted with the permission of Journalism Quarterly, copyright holder, and the courtesy of the author.