A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE question whether the B.B.C.'s foreign broadcasts are to be continued appears to be still undecided. The decision rests not with the B.B.C. itself but with higher authorities. It will be deplorable if they decide for discontinu- ance. If the peoples of the world are ever to reach an understanding it must be on the basis of a knowledge of facts. There will be no desire and no temptation to radiate from London anything in the nature of propaganda, but there is everything to be said for making available to as large a foreign public as possible the same unvarnished news services (not necessarily in precisely the same form) as are available to Brit- ish listeners. No foreign Government could reasonably take exception to that—but not all foreign Governments, it has to be recognised, can be called reasonable. It is, of course, essential that the translators and announcers should be beyond reproach. So far they have been, with the one exception of the Prime Minister's broadcast, and in that case the B.B.C. was not to blame. The Prime Minister spoke at eight, and could not finish his manuscript till a minute or two before that hour. The speech could not therefore be translated beforehand, and there were good reasons why the foreign versions of it should immediately follow the English version. That explains, and fully condones, the procedure by which the German translation was given paragraph by paragraph, with intervals between.
* * * * The announcement in The World's Press News by Mr. E. W. White, Managing Director of the Star Advertising Company, that " I have been appointed by a group of members of the House of Commons to undertake a campaign on behalf of certain members of the House of Commons to establish Neville Chamberlain in the position he has taken up regarding his foreign policy and also to back him up against his detractors," deserves a little further publicity. This is not a project but an accomplished fact : " I have been appointed." The good work, therefore, is presumably already in progress. Mr. Chamberlain is being scientifically established. The mechanism no doubt is secret ; it would never do to let the works be visible. But one disadvantage does suggest itself. Mr. White (whom I do not know) is engaged in the publicity business, and it must be assumed that he has accepted this latest commission in his professional capacity on the usual business terms. And why not ? But the result will be that whenever next we find a reference in the Daily This or Daily That to the greatest Prime Minister in history we shall exclaim in admiration (perhaps quite unjustly) " What a man Mr. White is." However he sets about his task, I have great faith in Mr. White's effective and pervasive influence. But I rather wonder what the Prime Minister himself thinks of his zealous supporters' action—if he has time to think of it at all. There may, at any rate, be more business for publicity men in this. British politics depend on the party system, and while Mr. White is briefed to back the Prime Minister against his detractors it would be quite in order for the detractors to retain Mr. Black to stimulate, with due regard to the laws of libel, the noble practice of discreet detraction, to the extent of his professional ability. The International Commission appointed under the Munich Agreement to supervise the transfer of Sudeten- deutschland from Czechoslovak to German sovereignty will have to justify itself by its results, but it does not deserve the criticisms that have been directed against it in advance. Of its five members two are the British and French Ambas- sadors in Berlin ; they are certainly not likely to be lacking in sympathy for the Czechs, particularly after what has lately happened. The Italian Ambassador in Berlin, Signor Attolico, is a former Under-Secretary General of the League of Nations, and temperamentally, I should say, no more a Fascist than Baron von Weiszacker, Head of the German Foreign Office and the German member of the International Commission, is temperamentally a Nazi. When Germany was a member of the League of Nations Baron von Weiszacker was the head of the League Section in her Foreign Office. If I were asked to find a German qualified by fairmindedness and general competence for such work as that of the Inter- national Commissioner I would as soon choose von Weiszacker as anyone I know. The Czech member of the Commission, Dr. Mastny, who was Minister in London before he went to Berlin, is as efficient a representative as his Government— which did not, of course, nominate him ; that was done by the Munich Four—could have selected. So far as it has scope the commission can, I believe, be looked to with reason- able confidence to get justice done.
The plans for the evacuation of London school-children went far enough towards execution to make them a very valuable dress-rehearsal—far enough for the children to be marshalled in mass at their schools on the Thursday morning, the infants with their labels duly tied round their necks. The lesson learned was that assembly and transport presented few difficulties—for though the transport arrangements were in the end not tested, they were all ready for the test—but that there would in many cases have been chaos at the arrival end. Towns and villages in the fifty-mile radius were warned suddenly of the descent of hundreds or thousands of children the next day, and the frantic efforts to arrange for their reception would not have met half the need. That, of course, was not so everywhere, but it was so in many places ; if skeleton plans for future emergencies are to be kept in being, as they must be, organisation in " the safety zone " needs immediate attention. It is satisfactory that the report of Sir John Anderson's Committee on Evacuation from great cities is to be published at last.
Parliamentary Reporting " Mr. Mander (Wolverhampton E., L.) after some abuse of The Times, said that . . . "—The Times.
" Mr. Mander (Lib. Wolverhampton E.) said the rot started in the reference made in The Times suggesting territorial changes in Czechoslovakia."—The Daily Telegraph.
JANUS.
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