The Scotsman's Revenge

During the 1930s a funny little story was current here and in England. It gave considerable pleasure both to those who read it or heard it and to those who had set it afloat. The story, as usually done, opened with the statement that it was well known that the Japanese could not design any mechanical device, but could only copy. The Japanese, everyone knew, were short, myopic, backward folk, addicted to the kimono, the tea ceremony and flower arrangements, people living in the past. After all, they had fought a battle with the bow and arrow in the 19th Century!

But, wishing to build Western-style warships, the Japanese had taken to ordering blueprints from British and American builders, copying them, returning them--"So solly!"--and then making the ships. A Scots shipyard, the story ran, tiring of the gambit, had submitted a destroyer designed with the center of gravity set six feet to starboard. Naturally, when the ship was launched in Tokyo Bay, with the Emperor himself watching, she turned turtle and sank like a stone.

This amusing little tale was a foundation piece under what I consider one of the two most brilliant and crushingly effective propaganda coups of our time: the Japanese effort to convince the West, and particularly the United States, that Japan was quite incapable of making war on equal terms. A genuine propaganda success is one that can be stated in terms of divisions of troops, in capital ships and aircraft and such hardware, and the Japanese tour de force culminated (continued on page 150) Scotsman's Revenge (continued from page 75) logically in Pearl Harbor and the dazed surprise of Curtiss P-40 pilots on their first encounters with the Mitsubishi Zero.

In the 1940s and 1950s we were treated to a variation on the same theme, equally successful, if not, or at least not yet, so pointedly demonstrated, this time by the Russians. The thesis was similar: "The Russians are a nation of ham-handed peasants, quite incapable of operating, much less designing anything more complicated than a harness buckle. They fought World War II with U.S. lend-lease equipment, all of which was ruined because they didn't know enough to lubricate it. Their hopeless sense of inferiority in scientific matters causes them to issue, every 30 days, another absurd claim to the invention of the wheel, or fire by friction, or the revolving door, or whatever. But they have never invented anything and they have never left the 19th Century."

The most prominent victim of this simple but stunningly successful campaign was probably Mr. Charles E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower, who greeted a subordinate's report on the progress of Soviet rocketry with explosive skepticism: "The Russians can't make a two-and-a-half-ton truck or a working flush toilet--and you're trying to tell me they've got an intercontinental ballistic missile!"

It was noticeable that while they were busily throwing up for U.S. editorial-page sharpshooters such clay pigeons as a claim to the invention of the Linotype machine, the Russians said little about K. E. Tsiolkovsky, the primary world authority on liquid-fueled rockets, whose work preceded by 28 years Robert H. Goddard's launching of the first one in Massachusetts in 1926. (It can thus be argued that the missile gap between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. began in 1898.)

It has been some time since the Soviets threw us a hush puppy. No claim that electric lighting was invented by an Astrakhan muzhik has lately been advanced. The Soviets have gone on to a secondary phase of the operation: "U.S.S.R. rockets are bigger, more powerful, longer-ranged, longer-lived, safer, better in every way, better, better, better ..." (This is reminiscent of Joseph Goebbels' brilliant minor operation with German racing automobiles just before World War II. He took effective advantage of the popularity of auto racing in Europe, and the German skill in it, by heavily subsidizing the two biggest German producers, Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. Adding the sheer weight of money to talented designers, skilled builders and the best drivers available, the two firms soon put competing British, French and Italian companies to the wall, and race spectators in the hundreds of thousands came to concede that if Mercedes didn't win, Auto Union would, because the Germans were, as near as no matter, unconquerable. Incidentally, both cars produced unusually loud exhaust notes, the Auspuff of the 16-cylinder Auto Union being almost frightening. Although race cars are expected to be loud, the ripping screech of the Auto Union was constantly remarked. To serve the same purpose, a high noise factor was said to have been designed into the Stuka dive bomber. Road-traveling refugees who underwent low-level Stuka attacks never forgot the hellish racket the thing made.)

It is noticeable that the Japanese and the Russian operations had much in common. (1) Each was based on some truthful substance. (The Japanese are small, some of them do wear kimonos; the Russian peasant, until recent years, had little experience with mechanical devices.) (2) Each told the intended victim what he wanted to hear, thus insuring that he would believe and repeat. (3) Each was derogatory of the originating country. This is a defense against the suspicion of propaganda. (4) Each attracted and pleased the most devoted enemies of the originating country. For example, the reactionary press in the United States was hopelessly gulled: "The Russians could never have built The Bomb without German scientists." "The Russians could never have built The Bomb without stolen U.S. secrets." In the minority were editorialists who said, "The hell with how they got it. The trouble is, they have it, and how are we going to catch up to them and pass them?"

What is to be learned from all this? That in two important instances the American people were led up the garden path like children. More important, how are we to prevent its happening again? I don't know. Not having an answer is no barrier to writing an article about a problem, as we all know. For decades writers have resolved the matter in this fashion: "True, the situation is black, and there is little ground for optimism. However, surely if everyone concerned will put his shoulder firmly to the wheel, a solution can be found, and carried to a successful termination. It must be done, and, I am convinced, it will be done."

This is the upbeat ending sacred to three generations of editors. I don't think I shall use it in this case. I do not for a moment believe that we are all going to put our shoulders to the wheel in this matter. I don't think anything at all is going to be done about it.

Action, or at least financial support of action, must originate in the Congress of the United States. The Congress is bitterly opposed to propaganda of whatever stripe or purpose. During World War II the Office of War Information had constantly to fight off Congressmen and Senators who were convinced that the organization was intent, not on foreign propaganda, its assigned task, but on a domestic effort to perpetuate the Democrats in office. (The Office of War Information could not maintain even key personnel. One example: The Tagalog language, basic tongue in the Philippine Islands, then under Japanese occupation, was very important in U.S. propaganda. The Office of War Information had one Tagalog translator. He was inducted into the Army and sent to Cooks' and Bakers' School. The OWI didn't dare attempt to get him a deferment.) The average Congressman, I think, does not understand why any foreigner needs to be told about the United States. In this attitude, I believe, the Congress faithfully reflects the attitude of the people. I see no hope of soon reversing this view.

International propaganda as the Soviets practice it is a subtle and sophisticated endeavor. A State Department official assigned to petition the House Appropriations Committee for funds with which to support a global tour by American chess players might well be advised to drown himself in the Potomac the night before his scheduled appearance--but the governing chiefs of the U.S.S.R., whose view of Weltpolitik is brutally pragmatic and straightforward, consider Soviet domination of the chess world to be imperative. Indeed, as the American master Bobby Fischer has repeatedly said, they not only countenance but insist upon the collusion, chicanery and cheating necessary to this end. Without understanding why it is genuinely important to Soviet policy that Tigran Petrosian, or some other suitable Soviet citizen be champion of the world at chess, it is impossible to understand what international propaganda is about, and what it can accomplish.

In the light of the principles laid down in the thorough lickings the Japanese and the Russians have given us, what propaganda line should we direct today to the inhabitants of the Soviet Union and Communist China? Should we continue to tell them that the Americans are strong, determined, intelligent, hard-working and intent upon being first in the race to the moon, no matter what the cost? Yes, we should--if we want to rouse in them a fierce determination to outdo us, if we want to make them willingly accept their governments' exhortations to rise and arm and defend themselves from the monstrous capitalists, who wish to rape their wives and eat their babies.

If, however, our purpose varies from this, if, for example, we would like to bring Chinese and Soviet workers to drag their feet, and even to dispute with their governments the necessity of day-and-night forced-draft labor, to disenchant them with endless military service and the chronic shortages of consumer goods, then we should take another line. We should tell them that the Americans are tired, decadent, luxury-loving, soft, lazy and going nowhere, just as the Japanese told us they were too nearsighted to fly airplanes, as the Russians told us they were too inept to drive tractors and keep a truck greased. Anybody can lick an American, they should be told, there's no point in going into training for so easy a task. Don't be suckers. Somebody's making chumps of you. Relax. Take it easy, comrades; tomorrow is another day. The fact that this line is sometimes used by the Communists themselves is an argument for, not against it: If they wish to help in the good work, splendid.

The world outside the Communist orbit should have a separate projection. It should be the orthodox one: The American is kind, intelligent, clean-living, gentle but terribly strong, patient but fearsome in his wrath once aroused. The isolation of the Communist world makes the use of contradictory campaigns feasible and uncomplicated.

Properly orchestrated, these two themes, particularly the first one, would be worth many divisions to us, many rockets. Bitter-minded little Joe Goebbels would have known how to make use of them; so would the Japanese who created the story of the Scots Shipbuilder's Revenge, or the Russian who laid it down that Kulibin and Artabasky invented the automobile.

Will we do it? Don't be silly. Of course not.