Word: owis
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Fortnight ago the House, led by Republicans and prodded by the Scripps-Howard press, cut OWI's appropriation from $42,000,000 to $18,000,000 - a slash which would just about end OWI's activities in Europe and at home. But last week, as the Senate Appropriations Com mittee pondered this action,-a galaxy of stars swooped to OWI's rescue...
President Truman flatly said that to abolish some of OWI's major functions now would "be a mistake." It was operating, said he, "in the interest of a nation still fighting a war which is far from over." Generals Marshall and Eisenhower point ed out that the Army's plans for in formation and education in Germany had all been based on OWI functions...
...Just what had OWI done? Elmer Davis' sprawling agency had been struggling to tell the U.S. story abroad, to keep U.S. officials fully informed of doings at home, to help in psychological warfare by radio and by the preparation of leaflets to be dropped over enemy lines or into occupied territories. In the opinion of most observers, it had done a fairly effective job in a sphere which neither the Army nor the State Depart ment was set up to handle...
...OWI's European functions were to cease, there would be two immediate effects: i) U.S. influence in the liberated countries would be drastically weakened ; 2) the Army, through its Psychological Warfare Division, would have to shoulder the whole task of providing news and in formation to Germany...
...what America's peace aims are. Liberated Europeans would have to be shown that they are, in effect, still at war with Japan. In Germany, the essential need was to re-educate the people away from Naziism, through magazines, booklets, newsreels, radio programs, etc. How good a job OWI could do of selling the story of democracy to the blacked-out peoples of Europe, no one could tell. A cynical European statesman, appraising OWI's work, had cracked: "Ah, Americans ! Masters of publicity, babes in propaganda!" But General Eisenhower said: "We don't much care whether...