The B.B.C. in the Crisis The broadcast on Tuesday evening
of translations of the speech the Prime Minister had just delivered, and of President Roosevelt's appeal, and the British, French and Czechoslovak replies—especially those into German and Italian—was a wise, if belated, departure from precedent. Even though comparatively few might listen, it was well worth while attempting to bring home to the people of those countries essential facts which, particularly in Germany, are being kept from them by the Government which is leading them to war. That President Roosevelt's first message should not have been published in Germany, and the second in only a bowdlerised form, gave the measure of the blindness to which the German people is condemned. The broadcast was a prompt use of what would be a valuable arm of any ministry of propaganda. If the facts are in the air the world over, there is at least a hope that they may penetrate Germany to some extent. The broadcast in German was approved by Germans in England as a model of intonation and delivery and likely to commend itself to German ears. There must be many gifted exiles now in the country whose services should be enlisted by the Government for concerted and sustained endeavours to get the unvarnished truth about peace efforts and responsibility for the war into the average German's mind.
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