LISTEN WHERE YOU LIKE, BUT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 11

LISTEN WHERE YOU LIKE, BUT

— Be Careful What You Say!

Ihe Inside Story of the Esmeralda Station

OU may listen, if you can and want to, to Deutchlandsender, to Rome, or Tokio, or Moscow, or San Francisco, or Cincinnati, or New York, or ‘Shanghai, or Manchukuo. You can hear this sort of thing any time you tune in to Germany (the quotation is an accurate transcription of a broadcast): We are fighting the Jewish plutocratic spirit of England. The Jews in England are the real war-inciters. We did not want this war. We did not want to go to war against Poland either. Churchill has admitted that his aim is to destroy Germany ... You can even believe it if you are fool enough. There is absolutely no restriction on receiving sets in New Zealand. But there is a restriction on stupidity. We cannot afford these days to be stupid. Stupidity is a crime. It is stupid, and criminal, to listen carelessly to overseas news broadcasts, and on the basis of what is heard, or more probably, half heard, to circulate rumour. Esmeralda Is a Menace Everyone has been saying that radio is a marvellous propaganda weapon. How much faster it is than the newspapers! How many more people it reaches at once! And all that. But for the Esmetaldas of this life the newspaper is safer, it must be admitted, because Esmeralda’s brain is not big enough to take in more than one small fact at a time. And even that must be in a very simple sentence. Esmeralda armed with a_ clacking tongue is bad enough; but when her tongue is reinforced with a powerful shortwave receiver, she is a menace to sanity. She Declares War At least a week before Italy entered the war Esmeralda, whom we regret to acknowledge is an acquaintance, heard the radio say "The time has come when all Italians must gird themselves to take part in the historical events of Europe." Now Esmeralda did not know at the time that the Italian nation’s traditions began (after Garibaldi) at the retreat of Caporetto and ended with the massacre of helpless Abyssinians; and it was not at the time possible, for diplomatic reasons, to tell her the true story of the castor-oil dictatorship. So all she heard of this particular broadcast was the words "the time has come," and very shortly she had the whole town convinced, a week in advance of the fact, that Italy had entered the war. Strong men shivered. Women wept. The telephone dial in Esmeralda’s apartment spun madly, The optimists blanched and the pessimists shrivelled. The Radio Does Not Repeat . Listening to the radio is very difficult for Esmeralda and her friends. Their powers of assimilation are limited to

cream puffs, asparagus rolls, tea, and the latest gossip from the croquet club. Beyond that they are lost, unless there is something safely immured in print — something they can look at for a moment, shrink from in hasty fear, return to, and digest more slowly until the truth finally sinks in. But the radio does not say it all over again, and Esmeralda and her friends have to be content with whatever first impression, strikes through the maze of scandal, recipes, dressmaking details, and cosmetic complications usually blanketing their ordinary powers of thought.

In these exciting days, unfortunately, the wildest rumours which Esmeralda and her friends, male as well as female, can manufacture may come true. Rumour Often Wears Pants Esmeralda is not always found in skirts. Rumour wears pants too. These days in all the city offices they still have to make some show of constant application to the task of the moment. Yet there is time during the day to slip out for a packet of cigarettes or a cup of tea and ask the outside world the latest news from Daventry. But these travelling receivers most usually pick up the latest broadcast from the Esmeralda station. Not long ago there was the terrific rumour about a Prominent Citizen having his head chopped off. This by the way is a true story. It so happened that the rumour could be traced. A friend of a friend’s friend had been on holiday and had visited Rotorua. Here, it appeared, the population had received the news that a Prominent Citizen had a sort of Permanent Arrangement with Hitler to broadcast to him regularly after meals

the whole story of New Zealand’s war effort. Nobody else (from the look of the newspapers at the time) knew anything about the war effort. But this person did, and he told Hitler, so they said, by the tablespoonful every day. At last, however, he had been found. It was not specified whether he had been found with his infernal machine down in a cellar among the cobwebs and old bottles or up the chimney among the soot. However, he had been found. The original story was that he had been executed. This became more pre-

cise as it progressed, and as it reached more southerly latitudes it was found that he had been first hung, then shot, and later electrocuted. But the gentleman was observed shortly afterwards having tea in the Capital City, and he seemed to have come through all these gruelling experiences quite unharmed. If Prominent Citizens will communicate with this office we shall be pleased to tell them whether they have been executed or not. How the Story Started Now this rumour was not suddenly made up and sent on its rounds, like an order from the fishmonger. It had a reason for its existence somewhere. After various investigations, which included half an hour with Esmeralda in the pantry, it was found that the radio had been talking about this person and had used the word "executed" in the sense in which all Government Departments use it when common English fails them for explaining the complicated idea that something has heen "done." The rest you can guess. Since it seems impossible to inject common sense into the Esmeraldas

of this life, it is suggested that radio announcers never use more than four short words at a time, that they repeat each sentence five times at five-minute intervals, and then go over it all again. After that, if Esmeralda still believes that what people mean is not what they say, and still talks about her beliefs to other people, she should be thrown incontinently to the Communists. These will be found, as Esmeralda will tell you herself, kept in a pit at our seats of learning, and displayed only for visiting churchmen.