28 FEBRUARY 1941, Page 5

Mussolini's speech of last Sunday gave opportunity for the B.B.C.

news service to display its worst characteristics. It is intolerable that a speech which listeners expect to hear in the form of a fair and competent summary should be interlarded with gratuitous comments and cheap gibes, duly accentuated by sarcastic inflexions of the announcers' voices. The diversion of " Killing Kruger with your mouth " was contemptuously characterised by Rudyard Kipling in 190o. It is deplorable to find the news department of the publicly controlled B.B.C. indulging in the same puerilities in 1941.