The World to the World

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 11

The World to the World

ce ATE him? How could I vhate him? Why, I know him!" Thus Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia. And how often we all hear similar remarks in our everyday meetings with our fellow-NeW Zealanders: "Oh, no, I don’t find him abrupt; but then I know him, of course." "Well, her queer ways don’t worry me; I’m used to her and understand her." It is different in the great wide world; suspicion, un-knowledge, fear, misunderstandings are the common coin. With all our quick and even instantaneous communications we seem to know less, even to seek to know less, of other peoples than our great-great-grandfathers knew and sought to know in slower times.

4his well of depression was sunk by a hearing of last week’s UNESCO World Review (National stations, 9.15 p.m., Mondays), a session arranged in New Zealand from. material sent from UNESCO, Paris, From time to time, I have heard in this session items that would add to vivid and permanent knowledge, bits of the world made known to the rest. But last Monday was not one of the good times. The main sub. ject was Haiti and the Haitiens-"one of the three self-governing black peoples of the world." (The other two were not mentioned; perhaps I am not alone in not knowing what they are.) I have no doubt that deep thought was put into this programme on the development of Haiti’s health, education and agriculture] schemes with UNESCO’s help-for jinstance, there would be the problem of teferring to the Haitiens as a black people; would they themselves prefer to be called negroes, or a coloured race, or a dark-skinned people?

Yes, care enough was taken at the Paris end, no, doubt. But here in New Zealand, there in Cape Town, somewhere in Pakistan, somewhere else in Cuba, the programme must be made to live for its particular listeners. Here in Wellington details must be added, comparisons must be made until the programme is in a form to tell a live story. Figures in particular are the dull, drugged, undramatic death of all such programmes; let us avoid figures as a novice driver avoids right-hand turns in traffic; at least let us have good practical comparisons if we have figures at all. (Is a day’s wage-a figure? No, it is a bucket of coal, a meal of meat twice, a bed with a blanket. Is a population a figure in thousands? No, it is nm or x times the number of race-goers at Trentham.) I don’t know any more about the Haitiens now than I knew a week ago; but I do know a little more about the Swiss than I knew say, a year ago. Last week I heard the Swiss National Day Programme and a month or two ago I heard a delightful BBC Newsreel clip about a Swiss yodelling festival. Why were both programmes alive and lasting? Chiefly, I think, because live, hardworking, sweet-singing people tcok part and the effect was warm, nostalgic and clinging. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't hate the Swiss. : The newsreel camera may claim to be the eyes and ears of the world; but radio should go along, lingering with a

more loving eye, a more attentive ear, to record the half-hidden and the very significant insignificant as well as the clear writing on the walls. Attempts are being made, some more successfully | than others-J. H. E. Schroder’s contri- , butions in the Lookout series on Saturday evenings are particularly helpfulto interpret the affairs of the world to New Zealand radio listeners; the urgency now is for better and warmer interpretations of people, human beings, these to those, those to these, eveywhere.

M.

M.