World Affairs

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 396, 24 January 1947, Page 18

World Affairs

\VICKHAM STEED is, as Somerset Maugham once said’ of himself, quite an old party now. Newspaper editors usually don’t live long in South America because of firearms and the Latin temperament, nor in Britain and the U.S, because the life hardens their arteries quickly, but Steed, for some years editor of The Times, seems to be an exception. If Steed says on Sunday that Byrnes acted with patience and’ moderation in, the latest crisis with the Russians, Mr. Brown, walking through the park to his Hereford Stréet Office on Monday morning, tells Mr. Fothergill that Byrnes has really been very Patient with the Russians over ‘this business, One can agree with Mr. Brown, and all the others who take their gospel according to Steed, that he marshals his material well, has an authoritative microphone manner, and commands the sonorous prose rhythms of his generation, yet he cannot give a complete picture. No man could, He and all other men are limited by their environment and _ their prejudices, their tastes and inhibitions, too limited to broadcast every week to an audience which as a whole is neither well-in-formed, nor highly critical. The only way to give listeners more points of view, more light on more facets of the problems of world affairs, would be to have a panel of broadcasters working in rotation: Steed or A. J. P. Taylor from England, Raymond Gram Swing from America, perhaps a Russian, introduced from Moscow by our Minister, and possibly (let us whisper it) even a New Zea-, lander. ~