=The Need for Timeliness.= Some white propaganda and all black propaganda needs to be written so as to fit in with what the enemy is reading, listening to, or talking about in his home country. The use of antiquated slang, an old old joke, reference to a famous man as living when he died some time ago, lack of understanding of the new wartime conditions under which the listener lives and worries--such things sour a radio program quickly. In radio, the propagandist must be living in the same time as his listeners. Since the propagandist cannot shuttle between the enemy country and his own radio office (unless he is a braver and more elusive man than governments ever call for); he must try to get the up-to-the-minute touch by other means. Without it he is lost. He will be talking about something that happened a long time ago, not the situation which he is trying to affect. This need may be called _timeliness_. It can be served by obtaining all the most recent enemy publications that may be available, by listening attentively to enemy prisoners and captured civilians, and by carefully analyzing the enemy's current broadcasts to his own people. The Nazis made the unnecessary mistake of assuming that isolationism used the same old language after Pearl Harbor. They were right in assuming that there was considerable anti-internationalist and anti-Roosevelt sentiment left in the United States, but they were hopelessly wrong in using the isolationist language of mid-1941 as late as mid-1942. Pearl Harbor had dated all that and the isolationist-interventionist argument had shifted to other ground. When the Nazis went on using the old language, they were as conspicuous as last year's hat at a women's club. Instead of making friends and influencing people, they made themselves sound ignorant and look silly. They lacked the element of timeliness. They could have gotten it by procuring representative American publications in Lisbon and studying them. Propaganda is like a newspaper; it has to be timeless or brand-new. In between, it has no value. [Illustration: _Figure 34: Obscene Black._ One of the wildest adventures of World War II concerns this now rare "Chinese Federal Reserve Bank" one-dollar bill. The bank was a Japanese puppet outfit in Peiping. The Japanese had banknotes engraved by Chinese artists, and only after the new pro-Japanese banknotes had been issued all over the city did they notice what the "ancient scholar" was doing with his hands. The engraver had disappeared and the Chinese enjoyed a rare, morale-stimulating laugh. Propaganda gestures such as this--spontaneous, saucy, silly--achieve effects which planned operations rarely attain.]