Communist International Front Organizations: Their Nature and Function

Abstract

IT was once suggested that the basic trait of psychological warfare—and, incidentally, the greatest asset to those that practice it—is its lack of known positive results.1 No satisfactory method has yet been developed to measure the effects of a propaganda campaign on its chosen audience. This characteristic is at once the greatest weakness of propaganda and psychological warfare (how does the operator know whether his effort was well spent or not?) and their greatest strength (if there is no reliable evaluation of the effort, it had better be continued, or even intensified, lest ground be lost).