HISTORY AND THE BBC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 517, 20 May 1949, Page 5

HISTORY AND THE BBC

Sir,-Those of your readers who have listened to the BBC programme "Four Centuries of British Parliaments" from Station 2YC on recent Wednesday evenings will no doubt be as dismayed as I

was to learn that the speeches of leading British statesmen are feproduced with scant regard for truth. One example of wilful tampering is enough to throw a shadow over the authenticity of the whole series of broadcasts, In the episode dealing with the pre1914 Parliament, broadcast recently, the extract presented from Lloyd George’s speech at the time of the 1911 Morocco crisis was: : If a situation wete to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by surrender, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. Now, what Lloyd George did’say was: If a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of * heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated, when her interests were vitally affected, as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of Nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure, The excision, without comment, of the middle of this sentence is inexcusable. By omitting what has long been regarded as a classic example of the transition from national "honour" to

national "interest," the broadcast misleads listeners about Lloyd George’s motives. The omission is the more culpable as the programme has been prepared by D. C. Somervell, a leading British historian.

J. D.

O'SHEA

(Wellington).