WITH SOUND EFFECTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 20

WITH SOUND EFFECTS

Corwin Dramatization of UN

HEN the second session of the United Nations General Assembly opened on September 16 last, its agenda, according to the cable messages from New York, was one of the most formidable ever faced by an international organisation. It included such problems as Palestine, the Balkan borders, the Big Power veto, Spain, disarmament, and _ international atomic control. The opening of the session was dramatised by the United Nations Radio Division and the CBS, and the recordings have now been received by the NZBS for broadcasting.

This radio programme, written by Allan Sloan and produced and directed by Norman Corwin, opens with the rap of the Chairman’s gavel. It describes the hunger, homelessness and poverty in many parts of the world and then flashes back to Geneva, the home of the former League of Nations. A guide takes listeners on a tour of the League’s buildings, showing where the various delegates sat arid from where some of them walked out. Then, in the form of an interview with a reporter at UN headquarters, some of the problems facing the world to-day are described, together with projected means of solving them. The radio voices point out that the newspaper headlines of to-day are concerned with trouble in India, in Indonesia, with fighting in China, and Arab talk of a Holy War, and suggest that they could far better be given up to some of the bulletins from UN which is studying the world housing crisis and health measures. "The time will come," says one, "when the rap of the chairman's gavel will be echoed by the hammers of the workmen andthe rip of the cross-cut saws as homes are built." On the second side of the recording is a dramatic representation of the distribution of narcotics to young people and. the measures taken by UN to destroy the work of the drug traffickers. Fiftyfive nations are busy. discussing all the

unsolved problems ... "yet there are the people who say, ‘how on earth can I help?’ It is easy to sneer but much harder to have faith. The ordinary man can help UN by himself working for peace and understanding. Bloodshed is no longer in the vocabulary of family relations; therefore, it should not be in the vocabulary of international relations." A musical setting and sound effects, in the Corwin style, help to give force to spoken words in this programme, which will be broadcast by the Commercial stations on Sunday, November 9, at the following times: 1ZB, 9.30 p.m.; 2ZB, 8.0 p.m.; 3ZB, 7.0 p.m.; 4ZB, 8.0 p.m.; and 2ZA, 8.0 p.m.