B.B.C. BROADCASTS
SIR,—As one who served abroad for the whole of the last war, and was on two of the most active fronts for much of it, I can most heartily endorse Mr. Peter Matthews' letter of May 28th. The present-day Press war correspondents seem to be better ; and what could be more admirable thin (say) the reports of The Times special correspondents in Tunisia? Much of the B.B.C.'s broadcast, whether from corre- spondents or merely as news presentation, seems to suffer either from too much pomp, or from bad taste, e.g., " The Coastal Command have had a bumper month," &c. It is very like football reporting, not suitable for the grim harvest of death.
In the last war, one of our comic papers, with the best of motives, seemed to treat war as a joke, doubtless to cheer people up. Perhaps the B.B.C. glorifications, the dramatised " Into Battle " scenes, with supposedly appropriate music ; the accounts by brave men of their indi- vidual successes ; the " Salute to —! " and jingoistic music to follow ; the everlasting war themes on the home front ; and the accounts of the technical processes of the whole grim business ; are all meant to improve the morale of those at home, but it must be wrong, both for that purpose and for the future generation. When one remembers what the apparently harmless words " our patrols were active probing the enemy's front " mean: the stealthy creeping into no-man's-land, the horrors of the dark and hidden mines, sudden machine-gun bursts or bayonettings, the constant fear of a bloody and unknown death—it is terrible that there should be any preventable lapses from good taste.—Yours, &c.,
ALBAN F. L. BACON.
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