Broadcasting and the Peace of Nations

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 4, 9 August 1929, Page 8

Broadcasting and the Peace of

Nations

N this article Vernon Bartlett, writing to the "Radio Times," throws a new light on the value of broadcasting. His views are those fe ae) of one. who has had experiGree} ence of war -and national animosity, and for. that reagon are worth careful consideration. IN my opinion, it could stop it. ‘The reasons for this belief are simple and straightforward. You can understand a war breaking out in a moment emanated

of international bad temper, but it cannot continue without deliberate efforts to keep the war feeling alive by letting your own people know one set of facts and your enemy another. You depend upon ignorance, because ignorance breeds fear of the unknown, and fear is the mainstay of war. Dea

. & liberately you exaggerate your own gentler characteristics,.and the inhumanity of your enemy. Eavesdropping on the Enemy. UT, as I see it, broadcasting would change ‘all thig. The suppression of the other man’s point of view would surely become impossible. Those -of us who, during the last: war, had’ the opportunity of reading neutral -or enemy newspapers, will remember how frequently versions of the same incident varied, and how subtle the explanations of a setback could be when the blunt and unpalatable truth could be suppressed. . This ar of deception was carried to extraordinary lengths. In a_ certain hotel in Berne which housed British and German diplomatic. missions, it used to be quite the thing for the British or the Germans, as the case might be, at critical moments of the war, to drink champagne and to putiup a great show of rejoicing, in the hope of persuading their enemies at the other end of the restaurant that all was going well, and according to plan. Bor if every possessor of a valve set. could listen day by day to the enemy’s version of the progress of the war, censorship would become futile, and I do not believe that any war could last. Some little sentimental -song broadcast from a music hall in the enemy’s eapital would so easily undo efforts of weeks to prove that one’s opponents must be brought to their, knees because they and their wives and children had no decent human feelings, but were

bloodthirsty brutes who were dangefous to minkind, And it. would be more difficult to’ abolish all valve sets in another war than it would have been to suppress every newspaper in the last war. oe Jf . And now; what.can broadcasting do for. world peace? "I think this is a question that needs to be,answered in two different ways, just a8 the work of the League of Nations is divided into two categories. ‘There is the general development of -international co-opera-tion, which, by helping. ‘countries to ‘understand each other, quite definitely makes war less probable}. and there A the perfectirig of. the machinery whici the League Council can use to prevent a sudden quarrel from developing into a war... "THE best example of this machinery at work is the Greco-Bulgarian dispute of October, 1925, when rumour so much exaggerated a chance quarrel between a Greek and a Bulgarian sentry on the mountain frontier between the two countries that the report which reached Athens asserted the Bulgarians were attacking in force, and the Greek army promptly marched .its troops several miles into Bulgaria. The Bulgarian ‘appeal for aid was received by the League of Nations on October 23, and a special meeting of the Council was summoned immediate--ly... Such decisive .ction was taken that by October 29 all troops had been withdrawn behind their own frontiers and Greece paid a handsome indemnity to Bulgaria for the damage done by her soldiers. A Radio Station for the ) League? AUREADY broadcasting has so developed that, were a similar incident to arise to-morrow, people _ would he much less likely to believe (Concluded on page 10.)

"8 World Peace (Continued from page 8.) alarmist rumours of invasion than they were in 1925, and an official summary of the situation sent out by the League of Nations and broadcast from different national stations would do a lot to allay’ general uneasiness such as the. Greco-Bulgarian dispute caused in neighbouring countries. There is some talk of constructing for the League of Nations not only au ordinary wireless station to ensure rapid communication with all governments, but also a broadeasting station which would be used in cases such as this. ' But even Should this scheme never be fulfilled, I am convinced that broadcasting will be one of the most valuable factors in preserving the peace if and when Hurope is again faced by a crisis such as that which followed the murder: of an Austrian Archduke: at we a little over fourteen years a UT, of course, the greatest value of broadeasting-and probably the greatest value of the League of Nations-lies in steady work of international education. A year or two ago a surgeon had been having a dig at me and I went to stay in the Alps to recover. The place was very quiet, for it was at that period when all the hotels are shuttered up and the local shopkeeper has gone away on his holiday. But

there was a good wireless set. And for hour after hour I switched myself round Hurope until I knew the | voice of the announcer in Vienna, or Barcelona, or Stuttgart as well as I knew that of my host. I still had my enemies, but it was their bad singing, or, still worse, the © great slabs of advertisements they inserted between cach musical itemand not their nationality-which made me ‘dislike them. We may not all be able to si. exactly where Brunn, Huizen. and Lahti are-I should hate to have to draw a map of Finland, let alone to put Lahti on it-but our wireless programmes show us such places exist; we learn, with the help of the wavelength, to distinguish between one odd idiom and another, and we can polish up any languages we know, or like to think we know. , Understanding Other Nations. HIS, of course, applies only to the owners of the more expensive sets, but the international programme is still in its infancy. I look forward to the time when the B.B.C and my simple crystal set will make it difficult for me to believe that I am sitting at home in London, ..nd am not in some foreign country. There will be a few typical jokes, a representative comedian, folk music, the noises of the streets, the flute or song of the shepherd, and a short talk that will give me less an idea vf the country’s art and archaeology than of its "atmosphere." — This is an impossible subject. to write about, because you cannot set limits to the influence of broadcasting. Clearly, if we could travel, and travel enough to get over that first feeling of strangeness we experience when we go abroad, there would be no more wars, because it would no longer be possible to look upon "foreigners" as beings very unlike ourselves, and civil war is out of date. But we caniot all travel, and the next best thing

— ee -_ is to hear the life of other countries. A foreign newspaper must always look ‘a little strange and unusual, but a programme broadcast from Berlin is not necessarily very different from one broadcast from "Paris or London. Nothing in our complex civilization can do.so much as the microphone to abolish that ignorance which makes for international distrust.