“VOICE OF EUROPE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 April 1939, Page 5

“VOICE OF EUROPE”

TRANS-ATLANTIC BROADCASTS. In “Voice of Europe,” the author, Cecar Saerchinger, who lays claim to the title of “the world's first radio newsman,” presents the full story ’of trans-Atlantic broadcasting from the first experimental European radio programme transmitted to the United States early in 1924 up to the elaborate Coronation commentaries and the epoch-making broadcast of the Abbey service. King George, the author avers, in 'his last Christmas broadcast had arrived at complete freedom of communion with the great Unseen Family of which he felt himself a part —“an ’ordinary fellow’ among millions of his kind. That was the new kingdom he had built for himself.” Unstinted admiration is also expressed for King George VI as a royal broadcaster by the author, who declares that the Christmas Message of 1937, “though brief, was a flawI less performance.” The extraordinary story of Mr Saerchinger’s pursuit of Trotsky after he had learned of the exiled leader’s escape from the island of Prinkipo, until he had him safely seated and voluntarily coatless in the main telephone exchange at Copenhagen, reads like an episode from Anthony Hope brought completely up to date! “He started quietly, without gestures. But as he warmed up—and this was his first public speech in five years or more—-he was like a warhorse smelling powder. He raised his voice; he gesticulated; oblivious to me and the empty room, he thumped the table with his forefinger, clenched - his fist under the table, swung his arms as best he could. He was in a visionary’s world: a Savonearola, a Danton, talking to imagined multitudes, as ‘present’ in that tiny room as they would be in crowded hall.” Despite many attempts and promises, the author failed to get a broadcast from Herr Hiller. Signor Mussolini, during an arm-in-arm talk in Palazzo Venezia, offered to think over an address on Washington’s centenary, but was not, in fact, heard by American listeners-in until October, 1934, when he gave them “a real taste of highpowered demagogic oratory."