PROPAGANDA METHODS 219
Cardinal Innitzer's statements about the famine and its attend-
ant phenomena were "pure inventions." A few days earlier
Mr. Walter Duranty of the New York Times had hastened to
repeat the Moscow cry to the effect that most of the pessimistic
reports on the Russian position emanated from circles hostile
to the Soviet Union. Thus even in the summer of 1933 %&&
before M. Herriot's journey there were clear indications that
Moscow and its political friends were following the policy
of describing reports about the truth in the Russian famine
area as "the fabrications of political enemies."
In the course of the summer the German relief organization,
"Brethren in Distress/' and other bodies were redoubling their
efforts, by collections and other means, to assist Germans
suffering from famine in Russia. Moscow thereupon took steps
to counter this movement by wireless and other propaganda,
The German broadcasts from Moscow and the entire Soviet
press began to insinuate that the "Brethren in Distress,'* an
organization embracing all creeds, whose sole activity for years
had been to assist Germans in distress in various districts of
Russia by the despatch of Torgsin parcels, were working to
foment political unrest in the Ukraine and elsewhere. The
Moscow radio broadcast daily protesting statements from
German colonists, denying the existence of distress and begging
friends abroad to desist from sending Torgsin parcels; and
press and wireless even went so far as to send out invitations
from the German Volga colonists asking Germany to send a
number of proletarian children to recuperate on the banks of
the Volga. Simultaneously, the Government began to exploit
all available methods of propaganda to counter relief activities
in the West and with them the corresponding reports of famine.
Despite these activities, a growing pressure made itself
felt in various European centres in the direction of rendering
assistance, and this was possibly why a number of fortigct
correspondents followed Pierre Berland's example and deter-
mined to make excursions into the famine regions. Moscow