This is the first article in a series written by CRIMSON staff members who have made on-the-spot studies of American propaganda efforts on the continent.

The people who administer the Marshall Plan in Paris got a shock last week. They had hired a French public opinion expert in July to poll his country on what it thought of American aid, and last week he made his report. According to this poll, most of the French hadn't heard of the Marshall Plan, and those who had didn't particularly like it.

Since the end of the war, U. S. agencies in Western Europe have put on a concentrated campaign to convince Europeans that America is a very friendly and generous country. Most of this convincing has emanated from the various information missions of the Economic Cooperation Administration which pays out Marshall Plan Funds. ECA in France publishes a slick-paper monthly magazine, makes little instructive cartoon movies about the Marshall Plan aid, and runs a traveling agricultural exhibit supposed to convince French farmers that they could use a bright new ECA tractor. Other missions largely duplicate this pattern; all rely heavily on hand-outs to the local press for much of their publicity. Completing the propaganda facilities on our side are the various embassies, the United States Information Service, and the Voice of America.

Communist Opposition

Opposing these agencies are well-organized and financed Communist parties in almost every one of the Western countries. These parties, especially strong in France and Italy, are tightly organized on a ward-boss level; their newspapers have huge circulations. And so far, as the ECA poll shows, they have been winning the propaganda war with very little trouble.

There are three main reasons:

1.) Economic conditions in Western Europe are still bad, and until they get better the U. S. will have a lot of trouble convincing Europeans that its aid is doing much good.

2.) The American propaganda agencies have been bungling badly. U. S. propaganda is aimed at the "more intelligent clements" in the various countries, although ECA in Italy has been making a genuine try to reach "the Italian in the street"; the Communists are steadily plugging away at farmers and factory workers.

3.) Western European governments, many of which contain strong Communist representation, have been afraid to let the U. S. propagandize as much as it wishes. The French government has appointed a special officer to make sure ECA's propaganda is carefully limited.

4.) Strongly nationalist Western European countries have built up immunity to what they consider foreign propaganda. The Communists are accepted as politically legitimate within these countries, and do not have to meet this resistance.

From here on out, the propaganda situation in Europe looks poor. After a fine economic recovery, France is bogging down with strikes and shortages. So is Italy. There is an increasing feeling among ECA men that the only thing which can prop up fading Western European appreciation of the U. S. is more economic aid. Right now, the chances for this increased aid are bad.