Sargent's Bulletins

Till last week, white-haired, pink-cheeked Porter Sargent was widely and amiably known as a rich, eccentric Bostonian who publishes the Handbook of Private Schools, whose salty annual prefaces on world affairs amuse many. Last week Mr. Sargent jumped right out of his scholastic skin. Reverting to Revolutionary New England form, Mr. Sargent attempted to flay the hide off British propaganda. If the U. S. people get into World War II, nobody can say that Porter Sargent did not warn them.

It all started mildly last Memorial Day. Mr. Sargent had discovered a book by a Briton, Sidney Rogerson, called Propaganda in the Next War, telling how Britain might seduce the U. S. into the coming war against Germany. When U. S. Senator Gerald P. Nye read a chapter from this book (which he said Britain had tried to suppress) into the Congressional Record, Porter Sargent had 10,000 reprints made, sent them, with a one-page mimeograph of his own observations, to his mailing list of educators. They immediately called for more.

By last week, when Mr. Sargent sent out his 22nd hot bulletin, his audience had become impressive. Egging him on were H. L. Mencken, Boake Carter, John Dewey, Charles Beard, Stuart Chase, Robert Maynard Hutchins, many another bigwig. Johns Hopkins' President Isaiah Bowman wrote: "If you cut the bulletins off, I shall cut you off in my will."

Burden of Mr. Sargent's anti-war song: It is plain that Britain is systematically and subtly poisoning U. S. minds, hopes to get the U. S. into this war in jig-time. Director of this campaign, says he, is Sir Robert Vansittart, chief diplomatic adviser of the Foreign Office; among its chief agents are Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Lothian, British Ambassador to Washington. Their U. S. victims to date: President Roosevelt, Ambassadors Joseph Kennedy and William Bullitt, Paul McNutt, the U. S. press, the House of Morgan, the Foreign Policy Association, such educators as Harvard's James Conant and Yale's Charles Seymour. For censorship and propaganda, says Mr. Sargent, Britain last year spent at least $3,000,000.

But in spite of all, asserts Porter Sargent, Britain's campaign had failed to shake U. S. pacifism until Russia last month attacked Finland. Says he: "What an opportunity for propagandists to inflame idealistic emotions! The last straw to bring us in?"

Porter Sargent seasons his argument with pungent puns. Sample: "It is rumored that, irked by British demands,

[President Roosevelt] is beginning to loathe Lothian." Of Clarence Streit's plan for "Union Now," which Sargent charges is a British scheme for ruling the world, he says: "The unification of the British Empire goes on, led by the great band of deluded peace-loving Americans, prayerfully chanting: 'Lead Kindly Streit Amid Encircling Gloom.' "

Mr. Sargent keeps himself informed by prodigious reading: 300 books a year, 150 periodicals, twelve confidential news letters. The attic of his ancient white farmhouse in Brookline, Mass, is packed with ten tons of reading matter, his garage with 20 tons more. He goes to his Boston office only three afternoons a week, works constantly at home. He seldom answers the telephone, sometimes lets it ring for hours. He keeps two secretaries busy clipping, summarizing and filing everything suspected of being propaganda.

A descendant of Norman pirates, Porter Sargent is no Anglophobe, believes that "an Englishman, at his best, is the finest creature nature so far has produced, with the exception of a Chinaman at his best." But much as he loves Englishmen, he loves debunking more. Says he: "I don't expect ever to discover Truth, but I do believe that I can uncover un-Truth."

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