THAT "COSMOPOLITAN VOICE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 173, 16 October 1942, Page 7

THAT "COSMOPOLITAN

VOICE"

(Special to "The Listener" from the BBC) HEN, years ago, @ Hollywood film company Proudly coined the phrase "The Cosmopolitan Voice," they never dreamed that a war would make the British Broadcasting Corporation try to find such a voice in reality. =. weer sf a ,

eee wt gt on eS © The BBC, though, has succeeded pretty well in its quest; and the owner of the voice is one of the regular radio war commentators from London-Tahu Hole, who was born and educated in New Zealand, made most of his career as a journalist in Australia, and who has travelled through America and over the Continent of Europe, besides working in England for the past four years. Tahu Hole is so big that one’s chief impressipn on first meeting him is of the displacement of air as he enters the room, He also gives the impression of a mellow maturity that one would not normally expect in a man of only 34 Born and educated at Christchurch, the son of parents who are both New Zealanders, young Tahu’s first job was that

of reporter on The Press of that citythe paper for which Samuel Butler once wrote the editorials. There he stayed until 1929 and was the first New Zealander ever to fly to an assignment. He confesses that he was never more frightened in his life. Winning a yearly competition of the New Zealand Journalists’ Association, he was very soon offered a job on the Brisbane Mail, from which he went on to the Melbourne Herald Then, "wanting to see things," he went to England and travelled in Germany, France, and Italy, After two years he returned to New Zealand and before long went to Sydney as a reporter. The Melbourne Sun-Pictorial was the next to claim him, this time as leader writer, and after that the Star, for which he wrote a feature called "An Eye Over

Europe." Intending to go to America. he was, however, induced to join the Daily Telegraph of Sydney and then the Bulletin, for which he was likewise a leader writer. He ended by being the youngest news editor on the oldest newspaper in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald. His Views on Englishmen _ Hole’s restless interest in life, however, was too much to allow him to stay where he was, and in 1937 he left to be the Herald’s special correspondent in London-travelling via America and artiving in London shortly before Munich. There he has been ever since, immensely interested in the march of events as he has seen it from a front line seat andif an Englishman may quote him-much

impressed by the quality of the English people. He has been able to contrast them as they were as long ago as 1929 and as they are to-day. He summarises his experience in these words: "The Englishman had always been looked upon as a very gallant gentleman but, in the eyes of most people, a sort of legend from the past. The only people who believed it was still the truth were the English themselves, who knew the stuff of which they were made. But what has happened since 1940 has shown that the Englishman has lived up to his legendary reputation and, in this war effort of the United Nations, that he is the tempefed steel in the lance." What His Work Entails Hole has had a fair experience of the Englishman during the years he has been

here, having been London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald for five years now and having been on the job in London throughout the " phoney " phase of the war, the Battle of Britain, and the blitz on London. He has stood on the tower of his office in Fleet Street and felt the whole building leap to attention at every cannonade of ack-ack guns; he has twice been bombed out; he has been doing war commentaries in the BBC Overseas Service for a long time. Incidentally, in case people think that the brief period covered by a war commentary is all the time that is required by the one who gives it, Hole-who is no exception-finds that each one of his ‘demands six hours intensive work-sort-ing out his ideas, sorting out the relevant material, making a note of what he has to say, writing it, re-writing it as for the radio, and eventually appearing at the studio to deliver it at an unearthly hour of the morning. es