THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 409, 24 April 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Bloodthirsty Britain T usually requires courage to tell the truth about anything and more courage to listen to it. So the whole truth is seldom told. But anyone who thinks that it is no longer necessary to tell the truth about the people of Britain, that we all know it and are all sacrificing ourselves cheerfully to help them, is deceiving himself, or trying to. Here is an extract from the first letter to the Editor in one of our leading metropolitan dailies: I don’t know what you hope to accom- « plish "by your constant lecturing of New Zealanders on their self-indulgent habits. The effect on at least one New Zealander is to alienate his sympathy and to remind him that the people of Britain and Europe in general must bear most of the blame for their present plight. We have our own life to live and cannot be thinking all the time about conditions in Europe. The crisis is not of our making. If Miss N. E. Coad read that letter, it is to be hoped that she will remember it when she speaks from 4YA on Monday morning, April 28, in the ten o’clock Home Session. Her subject is to be "The People of Britain To-day" (who of course goaded Hitler into war). Music for the Clarinet WO of the pieces which George Hopkins and Owen Jensen are to play from 1YA on Sunday afternoon, May 4, in their series of recitals of music for clarinet and piano, are local compositions. First they will play an "Italian Fantasy" by the contemporary French composer Marc Delmas, a piece based on lively folk tunes. Then they will play "Song from the Hills," by Owen Jensen. Mr. Jensen was away in the country when we wanted to find out something more about this piece of music, and anyway he hadn’t finished it then, so all we know is that its Content apparently has some relation to Life. The ink was dry, however, on the manuscript of the third item-Tracy Moresby’s "Suite in A." This composition has three movements: Moderato (with a middle section called Drone); Languid and Mysterious (in triple time); and Fast, with Humour, a lively movement which contrasts the three different registers of the clarinet, chalumeau, clarion, and altissimo. Mr. Moresby is a music teacher living in Auckland. Revitalised Rubber |F: as the dust-jackets of his novels used to proclaim, "it is impossible not to be thrilled by Edgar Wallace," that was because he left nothing to chance in the business of harrowing the soul, freezing the blood, and whatnot. In this respect, The India Rubber Man, the new radio adaptation of the Wallace thriller, which begins from 2YA on Monday, April 28, at 8.20 p.m., runs true to type. It is a story about a girl, Lyla Smith, who has been brought up from infancy by a band. of crooks. Of course (as you must have guessed already) she is not Lyla Smith at all, but Lady Delia Somebody-or-other, the heiress to a considerable’ stockpile of lucre. Through the story slips the shadowy ‘figure of Anna, the girl’s nurse, a sort of elusive female Kilroy who Knows Something (all nurses do, of course), and even the British Navy gets involved in the iftricacies of the plot before the enemies of Society (as represented by

Lady Delia, etc.) are finally overthrown and the heroine and her bank-balance fall into the arms of .... but we won’t say whose arms, Listen in and find out in due season. Discovery Thursday, May 1, at 8.15 p.m. from 1YA, E. A. Olssen is going to talk about "The Film and Society." One of the topics with which he will possibly deal will be the extent to which society now talks about the film--and there are, of course, some who think it talks a great deal too much. Yet the very volume of conversation about the movies is to some degree a measure of their social impact upon us. We talk about them because they are so much in our

. thoughts, and because they are so much in our thoughts they influence us probably more than we think. What is perhaps most noticeable, however, is that the people now "talking film" are by no means only the rank-and-file of the community who for years past have been almost as happy when discussing the movies as when discussing the weather: to an increasing extent they include the psychologists, the social scientists, the educationists, the artists, and the intellectuals_who, in general, once treated the cinema with either indifference or derision. The film, in fact, has been belatedly discovered as a social influence; more and more persons are writing serious books about it, conducting surveys, delivering lectures, andgiving talks (including 1YA’s new Winter Course series of four, of which Mr. Olssen’s on May 1 will be the first). Flying Visit , "TOURING New Zealand at the present time is Austin Ninnes, Australia’s champion Young Farmer. who, when he won his title at the recent Sydney Royal Show, won a trip to New Zealand along with it. Ninnes flew to New Zealand direct from Sydney, and whatever he is now seeing of agriculture in this country he isn’t seeing the grass grow under his feet. He has already made a high-speed tour of the North Island, visiting such centres as Auckland, Cambridge, Rotorua, Napier, Palmerston North, and Wellington, and next week he will be in the South Island. Canterbury Young Farmers, and others interested, will hear a talk by him broadcast by 3YA on May 2, at 7.15 p.m. Twenty years old, and 6ft. 4in. tall, Ninnes has just completed the second year of his Bachelor of Agriculture course at Roseworthy Agricultural College, South Australia, where he has

— specialised in soil conservation, crop rotation, and fat lamb breeding. On his present tour he is accompanied by A. L. Langsford, the ABC’s rural broadcast officer for South Australia. Farm Tools J. CROSBIE, who is to talk to " farmers from 3YA_ immediately after lunch on Monday, April 28-the exact time is 12.35--has’ an unusually rich sense of humour. If he hasn’t, he has had strange experiences. The subject of his talk, according to our programmes, is "The Elusive Farm Tool Kit," but to be elusive an object must be seen now and again. Who has seen the farmer who keeps his tools in a kit, or in a box or a bag or anywhere at all but where he used them last? The plough hammer ‘is lying where he adjusted the coulter the third time round the 30-acre paddock, if it was not buried the next time round; the wedges are where he split his last log; and so on, It is tickling him a little roughly in the ribs to ask him to listen while you tell him where those things ought to be, and are on farms that ate well conducted. But Mr. Cros- bie no doubt knows that he can take it. Diluvian E are sure that a psychiatrist could find some deep subconscious connection between the power crisis and the 2YA programme department’s decision to schedule Dr. Guy Harris’s Science at Your Service talk, "The Deluge" (April 27, 4.30 p.m.) just after Wellington’s Sunday afternoon er-cut. After a week-end in the garden we have ourselves no inclination to delve so deep, but if it’s possible to provoke a mild (and severely localised) deluge in the Taupo -Waikaremoana watershed by means of a little sympathetic magic, we're all for it. And anyway, Dr. Harris is bound to be interesting, so listeners have nothing to lose in tuning in.