Word: owis
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Looking around for U.S. reaction, OWI grabbed a column by the New York Post's Samuel Grafton, who wrote: "The moronic Fttle king who has stood behind Mussolini's shoulder for 21 years has moved forward one pace." OWI added an epithet of its own: "Marshal Badoglio, a high-ranking Fascist, has been named successor." It also quoted one John Durfee, described as "the American political commentator," as saying that Mussolini's fall was not regarded in the U.S. as an event of much importance...
This was beamed to England in English five times on Sunday and Monday. It was not heard again. Franklin Roosevelt saw to that. Neither he nor the State Department, nor OWI's overseas chief, Robert Sherwood, had authorized such statements, which were hereby repudiated. Said Sherwood: "Regrettable slip." John Durfee, who turned out to be an imaginary character dreamed up by OWI, promptly disappeared from the airways. (Left were at least four other ghosts, including "Military Expert Walter Herrick," which OWI has found convenient for expressing semiofficial opinion...
Almost without exception, the U.S. press hammered at the misbegotten OWI epithets and propaganda line. New Deal-hating Roy Howard's New York World-Telegram ran five stories and an editorial in one issue. To most critics the main point was that OWI had muffed its best chance to do an effective propaganda job. Whatever the fall of Mussolini meant to John Durfee, it meant plenty to Axis, neutral and captive citizens.* The symbol of Fascism was through. OWI might have pounded that home to them in their own languages-as BBC did from Britain...
...OWI's failure was not entirely OWI's fault. The propaganda agency has never had a clear explanation of U.S. foreign policy from either Franklin Roosevelt or his State Department. Until it gets one, OWI is likely to muff it again...
...came out best in last week's controversy was Columnist Grafton. When the Hearst papers tried to brand OWI as Communist by citing him as a horrible example, Grafton wrote: "The Hearst press has even dug up out of Mr. Dies's files the fact that I was once a member of a 'front' organization, the League of American Writers. So I was. And I led the non-Communist members out of it. ... If [Mr. Dies] checks further, he will find that the League's official attitude toward the war, at that time, was Isolationist...