Formerly 2L0
In a more leisured age you had to wait 5o years for your Jubilee, but none will grudge the B.B.C. the 25th birthday celebrations which it has been sharing with us this week. The muling and puking, atmospherickety brat from the Savoy Hill nursery has grown into a fine upstanding young man with (among other things) a most creditable war record. A bit of a schizophrene, perhaps, for he leads a double—indeed, in the evenings, a treble—life ; but not as spoilt as he might be, considering he is an only child, nor as pompous and impeccable as would befit a part-time civil servant. He is, unavoidably, not quite like other boys. Though his accents are genteel, his intentions worthy and his manners strenuously good, he is not what we understand by a gentleman. It is easier, as a matter of fact,. to say what the B.B.C. is not than what it is, for it has had to create its own tradition, and the need to attempt universality while maintaining impartiality, to instruct some without boring others, to amuse others without offending some, has inevitably given it a rather nebulous and .synthetic personality. But it has done the State much service and it is doubtful if anyone could have done it very much better or in a markedly different way. Its finances are sound, its politics properly non-existent and it has a large number of friends in foreign parts. We all grumble at it at times, for various and inconse- quent reasons ; but few monopolists can have aroused less antipathy in a country which has always disliked monopolies.
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