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‘Showing the world what it owed to Britain’: foreign policy and ‘cultural propaganda’, 1935–45

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Abstract

In his latest volume of memoirs, called ‘Wartime’, the Yugoslav writer and former revolutionary leader Milovan Djilas, gives us a tantalising glimpse of a most unusual occasion, a meeting in 1951 between himself and his country’s former ally and then adversary, Winston Churchill, now a useful friend again. Only a few lines of their conversation are recorded. They run as follows:

Djilas: Now you too regard Yugoslavia as useful?

Churchill: I have always done so.

Djilas: But you made the 50–50 agreement with Stalin.

Churchill: Yes, but that agreement had to do not with territory but with influence.1

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Notes

  1. Milovan Djilas, Wartime (London, 1977) p. 422.

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  2. E. H. Carr, The Moral Foundations for World Order, Foundations for World Order (Denver, 1949) p. 65

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  3. T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (London, 1948) pp. 89, 93–4.

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  4. Cited in Philip M. Taylor, ‘Cultural Diplomacy and the British Council: 1934–39’, British Journal of International Studies, IV (1978) 256.

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  5. Cited in Ruth Emily McMurry and Muna Lee, The Cultural Approach. Another Way in International Relations (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1947) p. 145.

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  6. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930–39 (London, 1969) p. 328.

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  7. On the work of the committees see, British Council pamphlets, ‘The Work of the British Council’ (1937) and ‘Outline of Activities’ (1939).

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  8. Eustace Percy, Some Memories (London, 1958) pp. 160–1.

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  9. Colin Forbes-Adam, The Life of Lord Lloyd (London, 1948) p. 283.

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  10. Forbes-Adam, op. cit., pp. 284–5; Lord Lloyd, The British Case (London, 1939) pp. 13, 17, 37–8.

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  11. Sir Walford Selby, Diplomatic Twilight, 1930–40 (London, 1953) p. 103.

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  12. Harold Nicolson, The Rede Lecture: ‘The Meaning of Prestige’ (Cambridge, 1937) pp. 20, 25, 30–4.

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  13. Cf. Michael Howard, ‘Strategy and Politics in World War II: The British Case’, paper presented to the XIV International Congress of Historical Sciences, San Francisco, Aug. 1975.

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  14. War Cabinet Joint Planning Staff, ‘Propaganda Policy’, 23 Oct. 1940, F0371/25174, W3839/49.

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  15. Memorandum by Director of Appointments Department, see note 26; on relations with the Ministry of Information cf. A. J. S. White, ‘The British Council: The First Twenty Five Years, 1934–59: a Personal Account’ (a British Council internal document 1965) pp. 30–1, 34. I am grateful to Philip Taylor for the opportunity to see this document.

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  16. D. W. Ellwood, ‘Allied Occupation Policy in Italy, 1943–46’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1977, pp. 207–8.

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  17. William Reitzel, The Mediterranean. Its Role in American Foreign Policy (New York, 1948) pp. 160–1.

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  18. J. O. Iatrides, Revolt in Athens (Princeton, 1972) pp. 124–5.

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  19. Cited in Elisabeth Barker, Churchill and Eden at War (London, 1978) p. 294.

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© 1982 Nicholas Pronay and D.W. Spring

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Ellwood, D.W. (1982). ‘Showing the world what it owed to Britain’: foreign policy and ‘cultural propaganda’, 1935–45. In: Pronay, N., Spring, D.W. (eds) Propaganda, Politics and Film, 1918–45. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05893-8_3

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