Radio's Influence for World Peace

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 16, 1 November 1929, Page 4

Radio's Influence for World Peace

AN important benefit that the invention apd subsequent adaption of radio broadeasting has conferred on mankind is its great influence in establishing a firmer understanding among the many and varied nations that compose the world of to-day. A mutually wider conception of the greatly differing outlooks of the cosmopolitan peoples of the earth would establish! among them a friendship, or at least a tolerance, which would accomplish more in the direction of a world-wide peace than anything else. The accompanying article by Brigadier-General Crozier (published by "Modern Wireless") discusses fully the question of the important influence radio has in, establishing universal peace. A growing desire is apparent. in this country for radio to be used for dissemination of political addresses of outstanding} ealibre for instructional purposes.

.LWALS it is the unknown which men fear-the distant place which is unchartered and legendary, the noise in the silence of the night which may be anything or nothing, and, on a wider plane, the man in another country whose language, customs and ideas are strange. Ignorance is invariably at the root of fear and distrust, Behind most of the suspicion with which foreigners were formerly regarded lay a lack of the realisation that they are ordinary human beings like ourselves; their remoteness, owing to crudity of communications between one country and another, sometimes. gave them an unreal quality which for some people heid a terror which would readily vent itself in war. To the Englishman, a Frenchman was not just another human being like himself, but almost a mythical sort of caricature of a human .being-a name, not a reality; someone of whom every ‘Hnglishman was just a little suspicious. ‘The same was true of the German and the Italian, the Dane and the Spaniard, ‘and so on. Until wireless came on‘the ‘seene. | The one great element which was necessary to break down the barrier of mistrust which existed, through ignorance, between the ordiniry people of one country and the ordinary people of another was some daily means of communication with each other. Wireless, as if by a miracle, provided that daily communication, that mutual interchange of entertainment and opinion, and that free eontact of one national mind on another which may do more to assure the future peace of the world ‘than all the schemings of the politicians and diplomats. For wireless make the whole world kin because it brings to every man an intense realisation, perhaps for the ‘first time, of the essential humanity of other. men the world over in spite of a hundred and one superficial differences. A very striking statement was once made by Mr. Stanley Baldwin, when Prime Minister, at an Albert Hall gathering of the League of Nations’ Union. Dealing with wireless and world peace, he deseribed very realistically how, coming down to breakfast

one morning, and having to wait, he tuned in his wireless set to Berlin! Now this is really immensely significant.

Breaking down Boundaries. "THERE was a time not long since when, except to the _ travelled minority, Berlin was but a name learned by heart at school during a somewhat dull geography lesson, or casually mentioned now and again in the Press. People knew that men called Germans existed, but their reality and their humanity ha never been forced on to the con usness of the majority. Probably they had never heard a German voice. To-day there must be thousands upon thousands of listéners who tune-in Berlin day after day--for whom Berlin has become, not a name, but a reality. It is the same with Paris, Rome, and any great capital you care to mention. People are dancing to music made by men and women in these places. which before they may hardly have realised as having a concrete existence. They will go on dancing to this music for twenty, fifty, a hundred years-who can tell how long ? Is it remotely likely that after a century or so of such listening they will ever want to fight the people of Paris, or Rome, or any other distant place? Educational Broadcasting. OBVIOUSLY not. ‘And wireless is doing more than entertaining people and making them conscious of foreign people as living realities. It is educating them. There is sometimes an outery in certain quarters against the edueational side of broadcasting. People gay they do not want to be educated by

wireless ; they want entertainment, and -there is much justice in this point of view. But in any broadcast programme there is ‘almost always some Shred of wisdom to be picked up, perhaps almost unconsciously.

Many a war comes about because the science of life, of which we are now dimly perceiving the rules, is not acted upon, or is misunderstood. The educational element. in wireless cannot help but give men and. Women a wider and more , sympathetic understanding of this science, and incidentally help to avoid those things which lead to breaches of the peace between nations. Even from the severely practical point of view the introduction of wireless into the machinery of war has made war itself more futile than ever. The growing efficiency of methods of destruction is bad enough in itself. The danger of every civilian in every country in any war being as liable to sudden death as the soldier at the front is sufficiently appalling, But because both sides in a conflict use wireless, their wireless power is cancelled out. This is all to the good, for as men realise the utter futility of war they will become more and more ardent in the cause of peace, It may be said that ships and aeroplanes can be guided by wireless in their voyages of. destruction and death. The same ships and aeroplanes may be located by wireless before they reach their destination. Even with the faintest possibility of cities being blotted out in a few hours by wireless by both sides within a short time of the declaration of war, the whole thing becomes so absurd that surely no nation with any instinct for self-preservation would venture such a step. Quiet but Steady Influence. WHBELESS has, in fact, already proved its worth in the cause of peace, for it has been found very useful to the Secretariat of the League ‘of Nations at Geneva, in cases of emergency if the Council has to be assem-

bled at a moment’s notice when war between two States appears to be inevitable, There was the conflict a few years ago between Greece: and Bulgaria, which was settled amicably owing to the intervention of the League. In this instance wireless played a very important part in assembling the delegates quickly. But it is in its role of unofficial propagandist for peace that wireless will do its most useful work. Into the remotest hamlets in the loneliest places, into the homes of men and women who never during a lifetime move more than a few miles away, it is bringing a néw conception of the worlds as a pla¢e where men may differ externally, but where they are moved by similar needs, hopes and desires. Only time can show the quiet but steady influence which it will have ow the hearts of men in setting their feet in the paths of peace.