7 NOVEMBER 1941, Page 4

I said to a friend whose children went to America

early in the war that I wondered whether they had picked up a transatlantic accent. " No," he said confidently, " they haven't. I've had a record of their voices sent home to me." He has also, of course, had a film of them. When science is inflicting permanent separa- tion on so colossal a scale, it is something that it should do a little to mitigate temporary separations. But does it mitigate—or tantalise?