What a person thinks--his opinion--is workable in relation to what he does. In practical life his opinion takes effect only when it is part of the opinion of a group. Some groups are formed by the common opinion and have nothing else in common: at a spiritualist meeting you may see the banker sitting next to his own charwoman. Most groups are groups because of things which the people _are_ (Negroes, descendants of Francis Bacon, the hard-of-hearing); or things they _do_ (electrical workers, lawyers, farmer, stamp collectors), or things they _have_ (factory owners, nothing but wages, apartment houses) in common. The community of something practical makes the group have a community of opinion which arises from the problems they think they face with respect to their common interests. Such groups are not only opinion groups, they are interest groups. It is these groups that do things _as groups_. It is these groups that propaganda tries to stir up, move, set against each other, and use in any handy way. (Few individuals belong to just one group at a time; the groups are almost illimitable in number.) The propagandist should not get the idea that just because a group exists it is a potential source of weakness or cleavage. Workers are not always against employers, nor the aged against the young, nor women against men, nor shippers against railwaymen. In a well run society, groups have interest only for limited purposes. Railwaymen are not permanently hostile to truckers, shippers, fliers, canal operators. At the moment they may be maddest of all at the insurance companies because of some quarrel about insurance premiums and risks. The poor propagandist tries to butt in on every fight, even when there is none. Often his propaganda is received the way an intervenor is received in most family quarrels, with the bland question, "_What_ fight? We ain't mad." Sound propaganda picks only those group issues which are acute enough to stand a little help from outside. If outside help would be a kiss-of-death to the group that is helped, then black propaganda instead of white is indicated. In any case, sound operating intelligence is the first precondition to the attempted psychological manipulation of enemy groups. [Illustration: _Figure 36: Counterpropaganda Instructions._ The Wehrmacht in the West had a unit bearing the code designation Skorpion. This unit combined the functions of offensive and defensive propaganda, which remained separate throughout the war in the U.S. Army. The information service sheet shown provides clear, simple leads for counterpropaganda by selecting usable (usable for the Germans, that is) items from Allied sources. From this raw material, morale officers could make up their own leaflets, lectures, or broadcasts.]