THESE THREE MEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 149, 1 May 1942, Page 9

THESE THREE MEN

similar title some years ago they might have called it The Three Just Men. As it is, the title is These Three Men, the men being three figures who, more than any others, hold the centre of the world stage to-day-Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. A series of three half-hour programmes, These Three Men, has already started from 1ZB with the Churchill episode, and starts from 2ZB on Sunday, May 3, and the other Commercial stations on successive Sundays at 9.0 p.m. The biography of Churchill introduces the great man himself in reminiscent mood, telling of his troubles at school (of how H. G. Wells described him as "an intractable little boy, a mischievous, dangerous little boy, a kneeworthy little boy"), of his early days at Sandhurst, his marriage, and his Army life, his Boer War experiences, and his entry into politics, But the biography is not all politics and trumpets of war. There are many revealing glimpses of Churchill the man, Churchill as he has become familiar to millions since he became Prime Minister, laying bricks and waited on by a delegation from the Bricklayers’ Union, selling all his securities when he took over the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. It ends with his Atlantic meeting with President Roosevelt. L' Edgar Wallace hadn’t thought of a

The biography of Roosevelt will have a familiar ring to*listeners who have followed his story in another ZB feature Man of Destiny. Here the story is succinctly told, with a minimum of diversions and many highlights. Joseph Djugashvilli, commonly known as Stalin, is a man about whom less is known by the man in the street, and his biography will be of particular interest.

It starts with a lad of 14, son of an impoverished Georgian cobbler, studying in a seminary to be a ‘priest. He is gathered into a band of young revolutionaries, becomes one of their most fearless organisers and is soon expelled from the seminary, from then on to follow the career of professional revolutionary. Years of poverty, prison, and exile follow, with Stalin, "man of steel"

as he is called now, waiting for the revolution which will bring him his big chance. Then the revolution, a post on Lenin’s Central Committee, and after Lenin’s death relentless extinction of Leon Trotsky, his chief political opponent, and a surge upward to supreme power in the U.S.S.R. These Three Men is a Commercial Broadcasting Service production,