WIRELESS INDISCRETIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 20 August 1929, Page 5

WIRELESS INDISCRETIONS

Our age, which is cursed with inhuman savagery and want, also allows us superhuman pleasures. The most terrific of tall our compensations for living in these days is this unnatural powqr -of “"listening-in.” - Its enjoyment is as ■ general-as flaxes; like so significant a number of our modern inventions, its benefits, go as far as the linitis of the race, and have no partiality for a class. • The- workman, the clerk, whose means sq seldom extend to a first-class-cinema, still no less to those rare and expensive occasions when, a' real singer *is singing real music, are the very favourites of the

marvel. ", .. . ■ ..... { ■, ■ , t .... to . The great inventors': itnd scientists, to like the greatest • business man, are " often universal . benefactors- beside whom tiie most renowned saints of religion cut a poor figurq.| The glorious per teeter of radio has clone more in a year If or drab millions the world over than all the amiable missionaries of the nineteenth century together. ,His mark is the antennae wire, which for countless miles of hopeless backdoors, is hung out to mark that there lives one who. has broken through loneliness, conquered poverty and forgotten misery in possession of a .pragmatical secret that was out of reach even of the dreams of'ancient magicians. This wire that slants or sags'; from«.mil)ions of chimney pots io forlorn'trees, oi* the biscuit-tin roofs of chicken"’.sheds, tor'f.; simply to tlie 'copings of soot-rotted' walls, ties its owner to the life of the whole world, frpm which he seemed endlessly . separated.; arid by the most immediate and living of senses, not cold sight but human and familiar hear- , in "- ; v:-,--- : • : ;ivto-/' So night- after', night fiddle with knobs and hear with ravish- ; uient, as if they were behind a .thin door, the voices of the supreme culture of their time. And over backs of couptless houses are strung like metallic spiderwebs these ennobling" wires; a new and graceful ornament to the sbmewhat infernal architecture of our.times!

With a twirl of. a vulcanite wheel, as delicately engraved , as a leaf under a microscope; one hears every nation in turn. At- a neatly-ruled • distancetof : millimetres from the scratching, droning call rif Paris is -Frankfurt,- Barcelona, Rome.- . Instantaneously across an , infinite , waste of waves is ; Sometimes, tumbling./upon reach otherivy in the whole gftmbit,are a^lptori^great/ 1 /; /nations.to be.overheard, in full practice; to ' qf .their.' cultures,-to’/decidb: I whose relative values yvq,,:fought" four . / yens., (1 • , - 1. \to, ’^"V I T’erhans all these States' sqon" will V[' realise I ;that ’ strangers,: are"/patching; them ip , them intimate amusements, and wj]T .begin to show off. Perhaps,until directional' wireless .qpines,: they w ill have to continue in-their, ffiaivibte; for. all " propaganda, must have, two/ versions, andithe homQrfblkiviuilzhifcteibt care to' sbcrTfice .their. impression to be made, .abrpad;pbjTq/day,! then, the wireless is iridiecreet;to;Berlm can hear, almost blushing,.,the.'toliifnsy. and unpoetin fare of Lqhdpn'stoV children’s. hour.” ' Rome cqh ; heaf : ; the chant, which laste .for hours,' df 'Paris." Bourse prices, for which thetoFg-ench-men like the fabulous . bathroom, meanly usestoa.n/toe£qriisite "luxury. The squalls of the'itehors who never leave Rome c-l’sh and tfijiferfere’,

with the maudlin waltzes that Hamburg really hums. . , The radio unites Europe in more than one respect. Most of all in the even- , ing, when each nation sends through limpid ether the flower of art which gives' '\ civilisation meaning, and by which each would agree to\be judged in the light of " eternity. And then-from one tJfter the , ,-. other" spins , the little superheterodyne "ver all its" half-circles of selectivity; from England, Sapiii, Italy, i,Germany, and France, comes with gracelessly cheerful monotony the syncopated: • chirping of an-American jazz.. Each nation doubtless has contributed some-; thing to the immense suni of ingenuity ;.., and knowledge which led to this ;mach-.'h,j iue, but when the doors are shut and. .'.; they are in family in their shirt sleeves they have found nothing of their own,;';b! they play the same tunes, c TJiere seems, something almost dishonourable; '•£ in the wireless when you, >

discovery, spmething- of prying,- into;intimacy that should be but; along jrith , this. 'feeling you may he inclined (if only the trumpet worked backwards) 'to shout jovially, with.-a distant chuckle to old and ripe-cultured Europe, whose propagandists Jiftve almost come to deceive themselves, “So this is Europe when you nrepby yourself.” ' : ‘at. - —W.B. in. Auckland “Star.”p.‘-