THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 115, 5 September 1941, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

HE Union of Soviet Socialist Republics covers an area of more than 8,000,000 square miles and governs 168,000,000 people. The land produces nearly every material needed by modern civilisation, and in vast quantities, although only one eighth of its arable area is under cultivation. In facts such as these Russia’s potential importance for the good of the world as a whole may be realised. More will be given by Dr. C. G. Billing when he talks from 4YA at 7.12 p.m. on Tuesday, September 9. Since Russia has been on our side, the NBS has taken the opportunity to tell listeners about Russian music and Russian art. But the Russians themselves are busy with other matters. these days, and Dr. Billing’s talk will serve to show what practical resources they can summon in support of their evident energy in defence of the freedom that makes art and music possible. Justice, We Will Have Justice We like Major Lampen and we like his talks-we have said all that before and we meant it. But we do think the honourable and gallant gentleman is going too far in his talk from 2YA on Thursday of next week. When he reminisces about old customs and coincidences we listen delightedly and we are prepared to follow him east of the Burrampooter and west of the Hydaspes (to borrow Macaulay’s phrase) but when he starts to handle "answers to cor-

respondents" then we feel that it is time we thought about journalistic solidaritee. Answering correspondents is the province of our old friend Ed and not even the Major can woo us from our allegiance. All the same, we are afraid Major Lampen may prove more interesting. War Babies Men may come, and men may go, but women go on forever, with the Plunket. System plunketing along whether guns boom’ or bells toll. In fact, war gives the work of the Plunket Society an added national importance, though, paradoxically, it also means that. the public are so busy supporting more

spectacular causes that this one is likely to be neglected. Not only must babies be brought safely into the world, they must be kept healthy when they arrive, and their mothers given the attention that is clearly their due, Mrs. Cecil Wood is going to talk about these matters from 3YA at 7.15 p.m. on Tuesday, September 9. Meanwhile, Russell Clark makes one of his usual bright suggestions. No doubt a Plunket training would Wary the routine of camp life for soldiers, but we can’t believe there are sO many women doing men’s jobs that they can’t still do better than their husbands’ in their own very special line of business. Advance Notice We hope this advance notice won’t mean that listeners will become too excited with deferred anticipation between now and September 17, but we suspect it may because Professor Sinclaire is to talk about "The Soul of England." His motto for a series of talks beginning on September 17 from 3YA: "A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit." And some of his headings for the series of six: " We must be free or die"? (Wordsworth); "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" (Shakespeare); "TI know not where any personal eccentricity is so fully allowed as in England" (Emerson); "England, with all thy faults, I love thee still" (Cowper). The Great American Game The hounds of spring, to put it poetically, are on winter’s traces, and soon, notwithstanding our’ preoccupation with, more serious matters, summer ball games will be "in" again. One that commands a bigger and bigger following every year is baseball, and those who play

baseball, intend playing baseball, or are merely interested in that great American game, should tune in to 3ZB on Sunday, September 7, for a special programme in honour of baseball. Baseball celebrated its centennial two years ago which makes it .a mere infant alongside cricket, tennis, polo, boxing, fencing, and wrestling, but its century has been one of such phenomenal progress that it has outstripped practically every other pastime in America, where to-day it is a 500,000,000 dollar industry. Baseball has given America many popular songs and poems and a selection of these have been gathered together by Les Strachan, who will compére this novel programme. After playing at 3ZB it will be heard at 2ZB on Sunday, September 14, and 1ZB on Sunday, September 21. What is Whitehall? That is the question asked in the title of a talk to be given from. 4YA on Monday of. next week by Charles Thomas. It is a question which we ourselves (well-informed as we usually are) are inclined to echo. Apart from’ the fact that it was the place Prince Rupert got his pages from (see Obadiah-bind-their kings in chains, etc), Whitehall seems to have more an apocryphal than an actual existence. True, everyone who is anyone in the Old Country ~ knows someone who is something in Whitehall but it never seems to get beyond that, and even the most successful detectivewriters are seldom more explicit. Perhaps the fact that the Ministry of Information is located there has something to do with it. At any rate, we hope Mr. Thomas will not simply be asking a rhetorical question. Soldiers Off Duty’ Somehow or other Russell Clark has an idea that the New Zealanders in Britain and Mr. Fraser spend all their spare time sawing wood. Readers will

know better. Mr. Fraser also receives freedom of cities, cancels his booking in an aeroplane which subsequently crashes, sends many cables back to New Zealand, and busies himself with more important and more secret occupations. When they hear the feature programme to be broadcast by 1YA at 4 p.m. on Sunday next, September 7, listeners will also have a clearer idea of what the troops are doing when off duty. The BBC has been down to see them, and sent this programme to New Zealand to prove that the country lads are singing as well as their saws. Not that we can promise a musical treat-the microphone tells the truth, and our soldiers in

Britain are making no attémpt to rival the Don’ Cossacks, musically at least. The records faithfully report their voices and also cover off-duty activities of other Empire troops in British camps. Without His Cloak It was once said of the great Dr. Johnson that he would be longer remembered by his careless table-talk (as recorded by the faithful Boswell) than by the Dictionary or any of the other monumental works of scholarship which he himself doubtless believed were. his surest passports to immortality. So it has been with other great men-they have been remembered more by some chance phrase or some isolated action than by achievements more worthy of remembrance. Who, for example, in the average run of humanity knows anything about H. M. Stanley, save that he is supposed to have said "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"’? In the same class we find Sir Walter Raleigh who, tradition says, spread his cloak on a puddle to keep Queen Elizabeth’s feet dry. Yet Raleigh was truly great as an explorer and coloniser, as a poet and as a master of English-a typical example of the versatile genius which characterised the spacious days of Elizabeth. We may be sure, in short, that the Magnificent Heritage session in which he figures (from 3ZB on September 9) will show that Raleigh, even without his cloak, would be remembered.