EDUCATION
pagandists find it worth their while to associate the idea
of their cars, their cigarettes, their breakfast cereal or what
not with performances by comedians or concerts of vocal
or orchestral music. This last is the type of association
favoured by kings, soldiers aixl priests. From the begin-
ning of history, rulers have 'put themselves across' by
associating the idea of their government with magnificent
pageantry, with impressive architecture, with every kind
of rare, splendid and beautiful thing. It is the same with
the soldier. Military music intoxicates like wine, and a
military review is, in its own way, no less inebriating.
(The author of the Song of Songs goes so far as to establish
an emotional equivalence between a sexually desirable per-
son and an army with banners.) Priests make use of an
essentially similar type of propaganda. Systematically,
they have always associated the idea of their god and of
themselves as the god's representatives with intrinsically
delightful works of art of every kind, from music and
architecture to dressmaking, with symbols of wealth
and power, with organized joy and organized terror and
mystery even, in many religions, with organized cruelty
and lust.
Propaganda of this kind generally proves irresistible.
Cigarettes are bought in ever-increasing quantities; ever
vaster and more loyal crowds flock to military reviews, to
royal and dictatorial pageants, to the splendid ceremonials
of nationalistic idolatry. Once again resistance to sug-
gestion can be heightened only by sharpening the critical
faculty of those concerned. The art of dissociating ideas
should have a place in every curriculum. Young people
must be trained to consider the problems of government,
international politics, religion and the like in isolation from
the pleasant images, with which a particular solution of these
problems has been associated, more or less deliberately, by
those whose interest it is to make the public think, feel and
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