Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Side 64
58
LE NORD
information services too, and placed hitherto undreamt-of
means in the hands of those responsible for their work. But the
new technical devices did not lead to any improvement of inter-
national understanding, in the true sense of the word. The infor-
mation services were captured by narrow and one-sided interests,
while the fine ideals of peace and international friendship with
which they had set out were increasingly lost in abstract specula-
tions. Much time, intelligence, energy, and paper were wasted
on fine-sounding projects which had no chance whatever of being
carried into effect. Instead of information, the public was given
propaganda which substituted for facts a body of slogans and
exaggerated assertions, which were repeated till they became fixed
in the public mind.
On the background of these developments it may be confi-
dently said of the efforts made by Denmark — and by the other
Northern countries as well — to inform the rest of the world
about their own affairs, that this was a real work of informa-
tion, inspired by a wish to give the foreign public actual facts.
Indeed, in many respects it was perhaps easier for the Northern
communities than for many other States to allow the facts to
speak for themselves. Political motives were largely kept in the
background, and the object of the foreign information services
of Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries was principally
the provision of information of an economic and cultural nature.
It was with this object in view that Denmark began her
foreign information work in the years which followed the con-
clusion of peace. The changes which the war had produced in
the field of international politics had repercussions on the Danish
Foreign Service and resulted in a number of reforms of the latter.
One reform, which had an important bearing on the work of in-
ternational information, was the one which gave to the Press Bu-
reau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs an official standing, and
assigned to it a definite sphere of action, while at the same time
providing it with its own representatives abroad, viz. four press
attachés. The newly created Press Bureau began the publication
of a number of periodicals in foreign languages (The Danish
Foreign Office Journal, Danische Handels-Rundschau, Revue
Commerciale Danoise, and Revista Comercial Danesa), together
with a handbook entitled »Denmark«. In this way, the Press
Bureau gradually provided a mass of material for the dissemina-
tion of a knowledge of Danish affairs in foreign commercial
circles.