1945. Bill Downs and James McGlincy in Vietnam

Tragedy in Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh in 1945 with the OSS Deer Team; "Left to right (standing): Phần Đinh Hủy (Hồng Việt), René Defourneaux, Hồ Chí Minh, Allison K. Thomas, Võ Nguyên Giáp, Henry Prunier, Đàm Quang Trung, Nguyễn Quý, and Paul Hoagland. Front row (kneeling): Lawrence Vogt, Aaron Squires, Thái Bạch (Thái Bá Chi)" (source)

In 1945, Tex McCrary led a group of war correspondents across Europe and Asia as they covered the world in the final months of World War II.

 

One of those correspondents, Clark Lee of the International News Service, wrote in 1947 about their time in Saigon. He described the events leading up to the death of Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey, an American operative for the Office of Strategic Services, and the resulting firefight that broke out in September 1945. James McGlincy (of United Press) and Bill Downs had been scheduled to meet with Dewey for lunch at the OSS headquarters on the day he was killed. McGlincy wrote a report for United Press soon after the incident. Downs also recounted the experience twenty years later in an article in 1965. Both accounts are featured below.

From the Kansas City Kansan, September 28, 1945:

Bill Downs and McGlincy Thru Saigon Mob Lines Singing to Summon Aid

By JAMES McGLINCY

Editor's note—

James McGlincy, United Press staff correspondent, covered the war in Europe and was the first Allied correspondent to send a dispatch out of liberated Paris. Assigned to the Pacific after the surrender of Germany, he was among the first newsmen to enter Tokyo and atomic-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it was in Indochina nearly six weeks after the end of the Pacific war that he had what he called his narrowest escape. He tells about it in the following dispatch.

William Randall "Bill" Downs is the son of Mr. and Mrs. W.R. Downs, [address], this city. Before the entry of the United States into the war, he was with United Press in London. Following the entry of the United States he spend a year in Russia as a correspondent for CBS. From Russia, Downs returned to the United States, returning to England in time to land with Allied troops on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, where he made the first radio broadcast, representing CBS. He covered the war until the German surrender was completed. Downs was one of eight top radio and newsmen chosen to make a special plane tour leaving the United States in mid-summer of this year, making stop-overs at London, Paris, Berlin, Cairo, Baghdad, Ceylon and China. Downs reached Manchuria in time for the entry of Russia into the Japanese war. He then went on to Guam and Okinawa, and was present at the time the Japanese signed the surrender terms in Tokyo bay.

Saigon, French Indochina—(UP) Two American newsmen helped fight off besieging Annamites with carbines and revolvers for two and a half hours yesterday, then walked thru the lines for help lustily singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

"I don't think anybody would shoot at a man who's singing," said CBS Correspondent William Downs in suggesting the songfest.

I agreed it was worth trying, and it worked. We reached a British-held airfield and sent reinforcements to the four other Americans still holding out in the besieged American headquarters.

We had gone to the headquarters for lunch, only to wind up in a tighter spot than we ever had been in reporting the war in Europe.

It had been eerily quiet as we drove our jeep to the headquarters, and we had to detour around several road blocks made from trees. Japanese sentries at the gate saluted as we entered.

Shooting Breaks Out

The table was laid, but we decided to wait a few minutes for Lt. Col. Peter Dewey of Washington, D.C. and Maj. Herbert Bluechel. Suddenly yelling and shooting broke out along the road 100 yards away.

From a field in front of the house appeared the bedraggled figure of Bluechel. He had a .45 automatic in his hand and was pumping shots toward the road as he half staggered into the front garden.

His head, neck and left side were covered with blood.

"They've killed the colonel!" he shouted as tho in a daze. "They've killed the colonel."

By this time a yelling crowd of perhaps 100 or more Annamites were nearing the house.

"They're after us," gasped Bluechel. "They're trying to get us."

Shots Answer Overtures

He reached the house and collapsed into a chair. He said he and Dewey had run into a road barricade and had told Annamites they wished to drive thru.

"Americans, Americans," they shouted, he said.

But the Annamites opened up with machine guns and blew off Dewey's head. Bluechel made his way afoot to the headquarters, shooting as he came.

Bluechel miraculously escaped unhurt. The blood on him was from Dewey.

By this time bullets were spattering against the house. We quickly took stock. There were six of us altogether, augmented, but not much—by Japanese sentries.

We ran into the garden. I flopped behind the stone wall and looked up to see Downs standing a few feet away firing with a carbine into shrubs beyond.

Somebody in the garden yelled: "There goes one!"

The reply came from a second floor window: "I can get him."

There was a shot, then: "I got him!"

"Nice shooting!" came a shout from the garden.

We all took stations along the garden wall. I felt pretty helpless with my .45, but there were no more carbines left.

For about a half hour we shot at Annamites on the road, in the field before headquarters, and in shrubbery along the side.

Decide to Go for Help

Then during a break, we dashed for the house. I went to the roof with two others. We shared a carbine. Occasionally an Annamite would run across the field or a clearing in the shrubs and we'd shoot.

It became pretty obvious that help would have to be summoned. We went into a huddle and Downs and I volunteered to walk to a British-held airfield a mile and a half away to get a message out.

We struck out across the field giving a wonderful imitation of two scared guys trying to act nonchalant. Then Downs had his inspiration and we burst into song—not good, but apparently effective.

We met three Gurkhas near the airfield and addressed them in pidgin English. They answered in perfect Oxford accents and promised to go to the headquarters

Report to Headquarters

At the airfield, we found Air Transport Command Frank Rhoads of Wilkes Barre, Pa. He telephoned British headquarters.

Then Rhoads, another major, a GI and I jeeped back to American headquarters. We waved our hates and yelled "Chiw"—"Americans." It worked this time, and we passed thru eight road blocks without incident.

When we reached the American house, we told them relief was on the way, then set out to find Dewey's body. We had to call off the search, however, when a force of Gurkhas advanced toward us firing automatic weapons in all directions as they advanced.

We finally drove back into Saigon.

From This Week magazine, in the July-August 1965 issue "This We Remember...":

SAIGON IN 1945

By BILL DOWNS

Some day I hope a good historian chronicles the deep-seated disappointment of the people of Southeast Asia that followed the Allied victory over Japan. In China, Burma, Thailand, the Malay archipelago, Indo-China—and even native Hong Kong—Tokyo's surrender was supposed to produce a world that never was, nor ever could be.

In the propaganda-cluttered minds of millions of Asiatics V-J Day was supposed to be followed by waves of rich and smiling Americans bringing food and medicines. More importantly, the U.S. soldiers were supposed to arrive with a form of instant democracy which would promptly bring justice to the people's oppressors and establish a functioning government of, by, and for the people. A new brotherhood of man would bring prosperity and independence and all would live happily ever after.

Americans were big in those hopeful, post-victory days. Never was U.S. prestige so high among the peoples of Asia, including the citizens of what now is called Vietnam, North and South.

Col. Tex McCrary's airborne correspondents corps, of which I was one, made a diversionary flight into Saigon about a month after the the Japanese surrender. The overlay of French provincial charm, seemingly the only positive heritage from French colonial rule, could not conceal the confusion and chaos seething through the city. The Japanese surrender had left French Indo-China like a battered, misused orphan asylum. The orphans, both the French and the natives, were fighting for possession of the ruins.

Saigon was in the death throes of outdated colonialism. The final stages had begun back in 1940 when the Japanese moved into the country. The Nipponese colonials were surprised when, instead of fighting, the resident French colons merely moved over to make room. Using the excuse of Vichy, these Frenchmen continued to exploit their rubber and rice holdings for the Axis war machine. Not even the shame of Paris nor the disaster of Pearl Harbor deterred their pursuit of the lush life as they deposited their war profits in the Banque de l'Indo-Chine.

The Japanese were more cooperative, and at the same time played the other side of the coin by wooing the Indo-Chinese with their "Asia for Asiatics" program.

But as Allied counter-strategy pushed the Japs back, Tokyo's proconsul in Saigon became distrustful of the resident Frenchmen. Six months before V-J Day he ordered the colons into internment camps.

Meanwhile, the Japs allowed the wispy, intellectual Ho Chi Minh to marshal the nucleus of a coalition government made up of various Annamite factions from all sections of the country. And on August 17, 1945, the occupation authorities recognized Ho's new Republic of Vietnam, the first all-native government in the country's modern history.

The Vietnamese fully expected that since Americans immediately occupied Tokyo after the surrender, U.S. troops would also move in to cleanse the defeated Japanese from their land.

But instead of smiling GI's, there arrived a stiff, pukkasahib corps of red-tabbed British officers leading a glowering force of Gurkha troops. Gen. D.D. Gracey, Blimp-born and -educated, immediately made it clear that His Majesty's soldiers were not there to preside over the dissolution of the French colony. He summoned the closest Frenchmen at hand—the resident Vichy collaborators who now touted their brief Japanese internment as patriotic credentials—threw the new Vietnam government out of Saigon's municipal building and set up his headquarters there.

The Annamite patriots—Christians, and Buddhists, democrats and Communists—took to the hills. Using liberated Japanese weapons, they formed small guerrilla bands and struck back, burning rice stores and warehouses claimed by the resurgent colons. They floated through Saigon's canals and burned huge stockpiles of rubber collected by the Japanese.

So threatening and irritating were these rag-tag raids that General Gracey took political reverse action. He ordered the defeated Japanese troops to retain their rifles and guard vital Saigon buildings from the native peoples in whose name the victory had been won!

The British commander refused to talk with the Sorbonne-educated Ho Chi Minh, a fellow-traveling friend of Josef Stalin (who was a U.S. ally at the time also, remember). But he got little help in his pacifying mission from the French colons. With regressive arrogance, these gentlemen appeared on the streets of Saigon to search out and beat their former Annamite employees and servants who refused to return to work. The low point of the comic tragedy was the sight of a fully armed Japanese soldier standing at solemn, bow-legged attention, carefully guiding a warehouse burning like a haystack behind him.

The one calm and detached personality in Saigon's post-victory chaos was a youthful American officer, Col. Peter Dewey. Dewey was the commander of an OSS team which had parachuted into Indo-China to aid the release of some 130 Americans interned there. The OSS group had stayed on to be joined by a small group of U.S. Army Military Air Transport personnel who set up a headquarters at the Saigon airport.

The British made no secret of their resentment of those few Americans with shortwave radio communications to Allied headquarters in Singapore. Besides, MI-5 was reporting that Colonel Dewey was making friends with the natives—even trying to contact that trouble-maker, Ho Chi Minh.

The Vietnamese could not distinguish Americans from British, and this led to a tragedy that is particularly memorable in light of what is happening in Vietnam today. One afternoon UP correspondent Jim McGlincy and I were invited to lunch at the OSS headquarters in a luxurious villa on the Saigon outskirts. Colonel Dewey was to join us after checking at the airport. On the shortcut road back to the villa, a Vietnamese guerrilla force ambushed his jeep. One of their leaders later told us they thought the vehicle was British.

Peter Dewey was killed. Ironically, the colonel believed in Vietnam's struggle for independence against the returning colonialism.

Instead of eating lunch that day, McGlincy and I, both out-of-trade correspondents from a war that supposedly was over, joined the OSS men fighting off the guerrillas. Later we failed in an attempt to recover Peter Dewey's body.

So did the French colons, who quit the search long before Dien Bien Phu.

1949. The Future of the Two Germanies

Germany Divided

"Meeting of the first People's Council, March 1949" (source)

Bill Downs

Report from Berlin to CBS management in New York

January 26, 1949

I thought you might be interested in what I found in the week's trip through the Ruhr. I talked with British and German officials as well as Communists, Democrats, and Nationalists. The rest of what is happening gets mixed into this report as well.

The story can be told in statistics and government reports which are available to everyone. These figures make it complicated and of great interest to economists, bureaucrats, and civil servants.

But in the twenty months since I was last in places like Essen, Düsseldorf, and Bochum, the changes have been more basic. And no column of figures ever displayed a soul.

The one thing that strikes you upon leaving Berlin is the apparent well-being of the Zone economy. The shops, where plaster is hardly dry, are jammed with everything from pot scrapers to furs. Jewelers are back in business with gems and gold and silver. In Berlin the major shopping places are antique stores—and junk heaps where desperate families trade the last of their valuables for marks. In the Zone, there are few "antique shops." Everything is new.

Düsseldorf is rapidly reviving its chamber of commerce slogan, "The Paris of Germany." Prices are high and, for the luxury article, far out of reach of the ordinary laborer or wage earner. But there are plenty of people who can and do buy. This is the carpetbagger era of postwar Western Germany, and the carpetbaggers are plentiful.

The traditional Pot Belly—that which caricaturists put on every German businessman—is definitely in the forefront of this specialized era. You do not find the carpetbagger in the working areas where men dig coal or make steel. But in the sleek cafes of Düsseldorf—and there was one which outdid anything you could find in New York—they jam the place. It is interesting to note that there were no Jews among this class that I met. There is still anti-Semitic feeling among Germans on this count, but the carpetbaggers I met were Aryan-plus. I mention it only because I want the refrain to be Wagnerian pure.

The people, even the Communists who capitalize on their own misery, are well-shod, well-fed in basic food stuffs, and appear more confident than any people I have seen outside of the United States.

This does not mean that there is not hardship. There is plenty. In housing there is an acute shortage, although it must be pointed out that the Germans themselves have made their greatest progress in commercial construction and not in housing. The food is good. One British official maintains that the food situation and calorie consumption is much better in the Ruhr than it is in England. I believe him.

The men who are making the quick money are those who deal in contracts—the middle men who take orders, perform the service of locating the goods, then sell or buy at their own price. Lax policing of industry by the British or Americans or French make this a big business in Germany. The current scandal in illegal export of steel, ball bearings, and other finished steel products show tremendous German initiative in beating the occupation.

The "beat the occupation" refrain has only in the past few months become a national, unofficial, and ever-present reality. It is not that Western occupation is so wrong or so bad that we have manufactured opposition in our own right, but the chain of circumstances bear it out.

The East-West struggle has automatically settled, or so they think, great power on the Germans. The Pawn in this international chess game has assumed the powers of the Queen, or maybe the Knight, when you see the way the situation changes. The Soviet East has succeeded in alienating virtually every German on either side of the Elbe. But the Democratic West tries to rule and at the same time persuade.

The persuadees see their position, and the rules become bargaining points. It displays a profound lack of unity and confidence by the harbingers of democracy. In this sense, the German uses the Russo-American struggle for his own ends.

This is the surface impression. The basic struggles in Western Germany can be broken down into sociological, political, and economic detail. There is a healthy core of Germans who want political honesty and sociological democracy achieved by free and decent means. These people have the morality of a syphilitic—that this is the time their contaminations stop and they appreciate the help toward that end. They are the moralists. They do not recommend surgery. Sociological surgery is war. But they do respond to treatment of the right kind. The withered limb of democracy in Germany needs to exercise to restore itself and grow. It needs the fresh air of political freedom. Whether this is being provided by military governments is questionable.

There has been a lot of talk about "nationalism" in Germany, about its resurgence and reestablishment. The first thing to admit is that there has never been anything but nationalism in Germany in the past two hundred years. It is no stronger in Germany now than it has become in America in the last two wars. In many ways, German nationalism in this post-Hitler era is much less than the same unreasonableness that passed for "Americanism" in the Thomas committee.

But the unity of language and culture and geography cannot be overcome by an occupying power more than can the current of the Rhine flowing to the [illegible] Zoo. The Western military occupation condemnations of resurgent nationalism in Germany, as evidenced in the abortive Strasser movement and certain other political groups in Bavaria, are foolish.

Again the Western powers find themselves in paradoxical positions. The greatest argument we present to the German is that communism will make Germany a Russian state and destroy Germany. At the same time we attack "nationalism" where we find it.

The German is sensitive to this and uses his position with dexterity.

A case in point is the recent hearings against the communists and the swath of recalcitrant German workers in the Ruhr.

The British made a "you-can't-do-this-to-the-Empire" mistake. They arrested the three leading Ruhr communists—Max Reimann on charges he had threatened other Germans working with the occupation—the two others for holding a political meeting without permission of the military government.

The Communists loved it. They got a million dollars in publicity, plus the label of being "good Germans," for fines that at this reading have totaled eight hundred marks.

In the case of the dismantling of the Bochum Verein, the British found themselves up against a stone wall. The Bochum workers refused to dismantle. Deciding to bring in outside labor, the British military government collected some twenty-five men from nearby Essen and gave them an order for which they had to sign in receipt. Then, when seven walked off the job, they were thrown in court. The mistake was that if the British wanted to strong-arm Germans to work for them—which as conquerors they presumably could do under the occupation—they should have ordered Bochum laborers to do it. Not inveigle outsiders to risk their necks.

What happened in the Ruhr is that the British have succeeded too well in bringing about a popular united front against their occupation. Curiously, this united front consists of communists, industrialists, the center political parties, the labor unions, and every other German in the region.

There is no middle class in the Ruhr as we know it in America. The white collar class as yet has no shirt. The bureaucrats, as set up by the military governments, have no solid self-identification.

But the biggest chameleon of any group in the Ruhr are the industrialists. I talked with two top flight industrialists and almost found myself backing out of their offices. My back felt that vulnerable.

Hermann Bausch, general manager of the Gutehoffnungshütte steel plant (formerly and probably still a cartel), outlined a gigantic plan of Ruhr power which, according to him, was to have the financial backing of the Belgian financial organization known as Sofina. Bausch didn't talk in terms of Germany or of political goals or world peace. He talked of producing coal and steel and making money. My impression was that it made no difference whether the money was marks, francs, dollars, pesetas, or rubles.

In Frankfurt we also dug up another questionable character who looks like becoming one of the biggest financial wheels in Germany. His name is Dr. Hermann Bücher, former president of the Bewag (power monopoly) in Berlin, member of the board of directors of Sofina, and friend of many American financiers in America, he says. Bücher by his own admission has not been cleared politically by the British in whose zone he first tried to operate. He says he was not a Nazi and is classified by the British as a "dangerous character."

So Bücher moved to the American zone. He is the author of the Ruhr power plan and showed us the details which include the number of feet of copper wire, bricks, and nuts and bolts needed. There is no doubt that the good doctor is a talented and ambitious man.

His plan, briefly, would be to set up a series of some twenty-five new power plants throughout the Ruhr valley, establish its own grid system, raise the power up to prewar capacity—with the possibility of expansion. It is unique in that each power plant would be near a producing coal mine, and that the new plants would use low-grade, high ballast hard coal usually unshippable. This grid would provide any surplus of power not needed by Germany be sold to Switzerland, France, and the lowlands. It has the additional advantage of replacing depleting water power in the south of Germany. Bücher also points out that the present brown-coal fields on the left bank of the Ruhr will be depleted in fifteen years, and this will fill the gap.

In other words, the Ruhr industrialists are already thinking in terms of ten to fifteen years ahead—in terms of international finance and, if you like, cartel and monopoly. Because the new grid would be nothing but that.

But unlike the British who would have nothing to do with Bücher, the American military government is in close contact with him, and at this writing has authorized him to go ahead with his project—even to raising the billion and a half marks needed. Bücher admits that he needs foreign capital. He scoffed at the idea that Sofina would have the required amount. "The only export capital available exists in one country: the United States," he asserts. Bücher says that even this capital right now is unobtainable.

Bücher said that to get the required foreign capital there is but one requirement: "The prospect of ten years of peace." The present world situation does not offer enough favorable prospects to make the risk worth taking. His other argument is that this power system will operate outside the Marshall Plan. "I offer amortization and interest. The American taxpayer pays nothing."

Bücher told us on January 22 that he already knows that American capital is interested in his project.

The plan does most certainly have appeal to the Americans because of its self-liquidating goals. The questions that arose in my mind, however, were these: At a time when the American government is attempting to establish a cooperative and unified European Recovery Plan based on American taxes, it is wise to authorize an independent power venture at the same time, which would involve American private capital taking investment profits out of the Europe which America is trying to rebuild by outright gift—a power venture whose profits incidentally depends upon the success of the American taxes now being "risked."

Secondly, the British and most certainly the French view this project with extreme suspicion. Whatever their motives, is the risk of political estrangement over this matter worth the income promised by the Ruhr industrialists?

Thirdly, the Europeans still regard over-development of the Ruhr as the first step to recreating the German menace. According to a responsible British economist with whom I talked, this plan follows the pattern of post-World War I. "Rehabilitate them economically first and political rehabilitation in the same old pattern will follow." It is something to think about.

I dwell on the Bücher plan only because I think we will hear more about it. And because it worries me.

However, right now there are serious problems facing every occupation power in Germany and this nation's relationship with the European Recovery Plan. There is a thing here known as a "level of industry." Generally speaking, it is based on the steel production which now, I believe, is set at 10.7 million tons a year. The top German production during the war was about 19.5 million tons. The German production right now has only been able to achieve about 8.8 million tons. (I quote these figures from memory—may be a few million tons off. What the hell.)

From everyone I have talked with I understand that the level of industry will be raised to something like 14 million tons of steel yearly. This is deemed necessary to guarantee German participation in the European Recovery Plan. Incidentally, my industrialists say that Germany's requirements alone call for this figure.

I think that the level of industry increase will go through.

I spoke earlier of British and French suspicion. The French have the toughest attitude of all. They disapprove of the Ruhr as the Ruhr. Call it "Le Ruhr," okay. You don't have any of this trouble in the Saar. That's the French.

The British find themselves in the same position to which we have elevated Western Germany. In Britain, it is export or die. In Germany, from the American point of view, it is export or the American taxpayer pays. That is basically the difficulty between John and Sam here.

It is not unreasonable that the British and the French look with question on American proposals to raise the level of industry and take other action to stimulate Ruhr production. Both fear Germany as an enemy. But right now they fear her more as a competitor, particularly if American capital is going to enter the arena.

With Britain, too, it is export or die. "If anyone is going to die in such a struggle," say the British, "It will not be the United Kingdom."

It is an interesting fact that, when the victorious Allied armies entered Germany, it was the British who gained the reputation of being "soft." They often called us crude and hard. Now the position appears to be reversed.

But it is the British government policy that "one of the fruits of war is foreign trade." The British are already bitter over the high standard of groceries that the Germans are getting is better than in England. They admit that the British housing standard is better. They are about even on clothing. But if Germany emerges with a better standard of living that Britain, say our English cousins, who won?

The American military government is not being much help these days in answering these questions. Neither is Mr. Hoffmann or anyone else from the United States. The British, the French, and Benelux countries are in the position of poor relations. The postwar world is not so brave as it is dollarless.

It is oversimplification to say it, but I would compare postwar Europe with a situation where a half-dozen artists try to paint a picture at the same time. None at this moment agree upon color, perspective, or form. In the case of one, there is even disagreement on whether it should be tempera, oil, or perhaps a sculpted frieze.

This is the American viewpoint. The European Recovery Plan was originally based on the revival of Western European economy. A vital part of that economy is the Ruhr with its concentration of coal, foundries, and finishing plants. From the American point of view, disregarding the larger political implications, the economic thing is to go ahead with revival of the Ruhr. In the long run this will put the European economy on its feet the fastest and the cheapest, so the argument goes.

Also on our side is the Ruhr Statute which internationalizes the control of the area—although it has no effect on ownership. The subsidiary Military Security Board is to take care of the security angle, although it is never clear to me whether steel for, say, locomotives is "war steel" or "peace steel."

The French particularly have been critical of what they call precipitous action in promulgating Law No. 75. This law returns German industry to German ownership and control. It is a smart law in that trustees will be set up to take over properties seized from convicted Nazis. It is also smart in that, in the event of labor trouble, the military governments can turn negotiation over to Germans. The theory is that Germans will produce more and better working for Germans than for an occupier.

Despite having gone along with it, the British are unhappy about the law because the matter of socialization was postponed. The American argument is that it is up to the German government of the future to decide that question. The British reply that this policy will encourage the reestablishment of the old order of Ruhr financial barons, and once they reestablish their hold it will never be relaxed.

As it looks now, the mapmakers are going to have a job on their hands. Unless there is a radical change of policy in Moscow or Washington, it would be my guess that there will be two Germanys in Europe for quite some time to come. The proposed capitals may be Frankfurt and Leipzig. There are also some reports that the Russians will utilize East Berlin, which would be smart of them. What becomes of the blockade and our position here can be found out better in Washington than here. I don't know.

At any rate, the Communists seem to be timing the creation of their East German state to come at approximately the time that the Western Powers announce the organization of a West German government. The creation of the East Berlin city government came only five days before the elections, and so may an East German government be established a few days before or after the Bonn decision.

Dr. Konrad Adenauer, president of the Bonn constitutional convention, told me that the completion of the constitution and other government details may come in June, or more likely in July. It is expected that, sometime in these months, the Socialist Unity Party—the Communist instrument of the East—will summon its much-postponed "People's Council for All Germany" and agree upon a government. They already have a constitution which has been drafted awaiting adoption. The newly appointed "politburo," as the Communist SED Party calls it, will form the government. In this respect, the German communists have outdone even the Russians. The Soviet government cut the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to thirteen men. The German politburo is only seven men.

I am collecting biographies and other material on these men and suggest that they would make a good "Newsmakers" program.

This has been a long and rambling report but I hope you find it useful. The coming spring is going to be of extreme importance. If we can get through the coming year and not have a war—and at least reach a stalemate settlement with the East—then we may have ten years of peace in which to work for world settlement. That is the feeling here, although the ten year figure is controversial.

Sitting inside the Soviet circle, the psychological effect on reporters is one of claustrophobia and an increasing "who gives a damn" attitude.

It is depressing, because you get the feeling that nothing has really changed. That the old forces which precipitated the last two wars are still at work, and that there is nothing much that can be done about it, and that the light of the UN is running out of the fuel of popular support.

In other words, "Weltschmerz."

1945. "First-Hand Report on the German Soldier"

German Army Prisoners Speak to Allied Interrogators

A Canadian soldier guards a captured German officer at Caen station, July 18, 1944 (Photo by Ken Bell – source)

In February 1945, New York Times correspondent Harold Denny wrote about what German prisoners of war were saying to interrogators after being taken into custody by Allied forces on the Western Front.

From The New York Times, February 18, 1945, pp. 5, 47-49:

First-Hand Report on the German Soldier

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Here are the observations of a correspondent who questioned prisoners fresh from the front

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

By HAROLD DENNY

WESTERN FRONT — The German Army is staggering toward a debacle which we now know is inevitable and which we hope may come quickly.

The Wehrmacht at last is being squeezed to death in the vise of that all-out two-front war which its generals always knew would be fatal. Its strategic reserves have been spent and it has had to draft boys, old men and the sick into its depleted divisions. Its air force is almost gone. Its transport is addled. Its gasoline supplies are running low.

It is tired—desperately tired—from five years of a war which it had expected to win in one year. And behind it is a country half wrecked, cold and hungry. Its roads choked with refugees.

Yet the German Army continues to fight—skillfully, obstinately and often bravely. We do not know how long it can keep it up. It may struggle on for months. It may give up tomorrow. For when the Germans collapse they collapse suddenly and completely—one day fighting tooth and nail, the next in abject disintegration. But as this is written we can see no signs of the break-up which some day must come.

Why is this? How can that army go on in the face of a defeat which even its most fanatical members must now see is inescapable, and with every added day of war increasing the devastation and suffering of the Reich?

The answer, I think, is in the character of the German soldier, which in turn is a distillation of the character of the German people.

The German people, for all their dark complexities and their mental and moral limitations, are tough and courageous—until affairs go too badly. So is the German soldier. But with their toughness the Germans are obedient to the point of docility and crave a master, even (or especially) one who beats them. I have seen much of Germans in peacetime in their own country and in the front lines of two wars, and it is my conviction that this docility is the key to the understanding of many of the strange things that they do.

•      •      •

It is perhaps the bitterest irony of history that this trait which in civilized eyes is a mark of inferiority is the very one which has let the Germans be led by cruel and unscrupulous leaders in an attempt to master the world on the ground that they are a superior race. In the German soldier that trait has been accentuated by military training and the discipline which is over him every moment.

But before theorizing any more let us look at the German soldier in the flesh. It is not hard to do this here. Just a few hours and a jeep ride.

You cannot well study the German soldier in the front line, though you do learn that sometimes he fights well and sometimes badly or not at all, and that usually he knows his job and can be very dangerous.

The only place where you can safely see the German soldier close up and talk with him is in prison cages and camps. It might be argued that prisoners are not a fair sampling—that they are the weaklings who gave up. This is true only within limits. In the kind of war we are fighting now, with ambushes, traps and encirclements, many brave men are captured willy-nilly along with others who are looking for a chance to give themselves up. At any rate, they are the only ones we can see, so let us go see them.

Here is a prison enclosure in a wrecked German village just behind the front lines. It is in the walled courtyard of what once was a pretentious mansion. There are guards at the gate and at strategic points inside. Up forward our attack is progressing well. Our troops have driven in behind the enemy positions and are mopping up isolated detachments hiding in foxholes, cellars and ruined buildings. They are coming back to this "cage" now in returning ammunition trucks.

•      •      •

These men are at the lowest point in any soldier's life—that bewildered, shocked hour or two just after capture—and are just beginning to grasp with relief the fact that they have got out alive. Most of them are still trembling from that awful artillery fire which broke their defenses. They are wet to the skin and trembling with cold, too. Their clothes are sodden and mudcaked. The men themselves are dirty and many of them have several days' beard.

As each truck arrives its cargo is lined up against the building wall and sometimes they look frightened at this, for they have been told that Americans shoot prisoners, especially SS men. They cheer up when they learn that this isn't so. Guards go over each man, having him empty his pockets, searching for weapons. Each German soldier piles his personal belongings on the ground in front of him. His toilet kit and other harmless articles are returned. Knives, razors and anything with which he might do harm are kept. Rations are distributed among the prisoners and, either before or after that, depending on convenience, interrogations begin.

•      •      •

Prisoners are taken off to one side singly or in small groups and questioned by American officers and soldiers who speak German. Military information is sought, of course. But these interrogations often produce much other interesting data, especially on the Germans' thinking processes. Each prisoner presents an individual case history and in the aggregate they are building into a museum of psychology—or psychopathology.

Here is no such thing, of course, as an average or typical German soldier. There are all types in the German Army, and especially now, when Hitler has scraped the bottom of his manpower barrel and dragged in even the most unlikely specimens for cannon fodder.

Here, facing one interrogator, stands a better-than-average soldier who was a high-school student before he was drafted into the SS as a panzer grenadier last fall. He has been morosely watching our troops and equipment rolling forward—truckloads of our strong, well-fed soldiers, trucks loaded with ammunition and with gasoline in five-gallon containers; tanks, bulldozers and field guns—and overhead our planes flying as serenely as in peacetime. He finally breaks down to an interrogator.

"All we can see is defeat—in the east, in the west, in the south, in the southeast; the front is everywhere. This material superiority of yours—we simply cannot believe it. We can see that there is too much opposing us. We cannot carry on any more. We cannot win now. What do we have to win with?"

•      •      •

Over there is another panzer grenadier, less reconciled to the situation. He was a young waiter who volunteered for the SS in 1941 one day when he was half drunk. He is pro-Nazi though not a party member. "The war must be won, now that everything is destroyed," he is insisting to his interrogator. "We can get what we need for reconstruction only from our own State, not from any foreign country. That is why people are sticking to their guns. Many bombed-out people think they will have their homes replaced only if Germany wins."

And here is a man whose mother never raised him to be a soldier, and he admits it. He is a middle-aged farmer with a wife and two children and is sour on the whole Hitler business. He got "lost from his unit" and was picked up by our troops as he had hoped. "Going on with this war is senseless," he exclaims. "The Nazi party just wants to make history. Hitler wants us to have more children and then send them to war. They tell us to fight so that our children can have a better life. But they should let us also have a good life, then our children's lives would be good too."

Yes, he had been pro-Nazi in the beginning, he said, and he voted for Hitler in 1933.

"We wanted to see what would happen," he explained. They are certainly finding out.

Sitting on the ground in a corner, his shoulders hunched, and breathing chagrin and hatred, is the cream of the crop. He is a 25-year-old SS sergeant who has been captured trying to evacuate five wounded men from a house which our troops had surrounded. He had got ten out earlier, but we caught him this time. He is a brave man. He is also a fanatical Nazi and proclaims it, whereas most Nazis try to deny it or explain that they had to join the party to get a good job.

This young man also had a few months at a university before he joined the army, and he prides himself on being a "philosopher."

"Only the independent thinkers in Germany are true Nazis," he is saying to the interrogator. "True idealists will save victory for Germany against all odds."

He went into an encomium on the idealism of Hitler and Goebbels, and then revealed his belief in the Nazi principle that might makes right.

"Two worlds are locked in battle to decide whose idea is stronger," he said sententiously. "If you win, then yours is the better one. But our idea is stronger because we have withstood this war for five years."

Pressed a little further for his philosophical views, this "independent thinker" soared off on a recital of every one of Goebbels' clichés, word by word.

•      •      •

One more prisoner here deserves a close-up, for there are many like him in the German Army—foreigners who have been impressed into military service. This man, also an SS, was a young farmer of German stock on the Volga in the Ukraine when the German hordes swept over his region earlier in the war. His family were moved away, heaven knows where. When the Germans had to retreat they took this man and thousands of others with them, and last July they put him into the SS as they did others like him from conquered or satellite countries.

He is fed up but absolutely apathetic. He is a lone man being pushed around in a world in which he has no say-so, and he uncomplainingly obeys whoever happens to be his master at the moment. He appears to have no hatreds, no likes and little resentment. He shows no interest even in trying to trace his mother, father and sisters. He doesn't care where he is sent—any place where there's a job will do. To all questions he replies, "I cannot know anything about that. Everything's so mixed up."

He looks and acts like a man in a profound state of shock.

"We are all human beings," he finally says in his only expression of opinion. "If we had peace, if people would work together, they'd perhaps be comrades. But now——"

•      •      •

So it goes, as you walk from prisoner to prisoner with interrogators. Occasionally you meet a German who is positive, but mostly you feel you are in a congregation of intellectual zombies. To almost every question which might evoke an expression of opinion almost every man shrugs it off with:

"We could not know about that. Such things are for leaders to decide. They know much more than we do," or some equivalent utterance of futility.

Or there is this: "That was an order of the party." A man will tell you, "Orders must be obeyed or there will be chaos. It is not for us to question our leaders. They know best."

"The German soldier cannot throw away his gun," says a man when asked why he fought on after he knew that the war was lost. "The higher officers are driven on from above, and they in turn drive the soldier forward. 'From above.' That's always the way of the party." And when you ask another who concedes that he can see only further ruin in every additional day of battle, he answers: "Soldiers will not give up as long as the home front holds, and people at home will not revolt because of the old stab-in-the-back legend. Each is waiting for the other to make the first move."

After talking with many prisoners of varied types and making a liberal allowance for the probability that they are much lower in morale than the average of those who are still fighting, one reaches several conclusions. The most important of these is that a great proportion—the large majority—of German soldiers and civilians, too, want to quit, but are held in line by force, fear and that deadly German instinct of dumb obedience. Some especially among officers go on from a sense of soldierly honor, but their number is dwindling.

The decline in German morale in the past few months has been catastrophic. It had been low at the time of our march through France and Belgium, but had risen appreciably when we were unable to exploit our first nibbles into the Siegfried Line. It soared to the highest point since D-Day, however, at the opening of the German counter-offensive on Dec. 16.

•      •      •

That "battle of decision" was sold to German troops with every conceivably promise. They were to have an air strength equal to ours, and ten-to-one superiority in artillery. Actually they seldom got a plane into the air, and they were badly outgunned on the ground. After their drive opened promisingly, they were told that their forward elements had taken Liège or even Brussels and that a German army was at the gates of Paris. They thought then that it was true that they had knocked the Allies off the Continent, and, perhaps, out of the war. Then their drive gradually bogged down, whole divisions were dismembered, and finally our renewed offensive drove them back through the Siegfried Line.

The discrepancy between the promise and the actuality was so flagrant that even the Germans—the most gullible of people—saw that they had been lied to. This was at about the time also that German soldiers had come to disbelieve earlier promises that secret weapons would pull victory out of defeat. And Germans who had been told of imaginary American atrocities in occupied German towns found when they retook the towns at the beginning of their offensive that the Americans had treated German civilians better than had German soldiers.

So now a wave of disillusion and skepticism is sweeping the German Army, or so the prisoners tell us.

•      •      •

Authorities, alarmed at the number of German soldiers who desert to our lines, warned their troops that reprisals would be taken against families of deserters. This is still a powerful deterrent, but has lost some of its force, and more men are taking chances. The German people have been warned also that if their country is defeated the Wehrmacht will be scattered through Siberia as slaves, youths will be sterilized, women destroyed, children taken from their parents, Germany partitioned, the population forcibly reduced and industry destroyed. Fewer soldiers believe that now, but enough still to help keep them fighting. And some fight on because they have nothing more to lose. Their homes have been destroyed in bombings, their families are gone, the future is hopeless—why not go on and die?

Perhaps—probably—if their officers told them to revolt, they would down arms or turn on their higher leaders. But nobody has told them yet. So we have the spectacle of soldiers who believe the war is lost and many of whom no longer honor Hitler, moving like sleep-walkers to their own destruction.

"The German soldier hardly thinks any more," says one tired young patriot. "He is posted somewhere and does what he is ordered to do. He shoots as long as he can, or until he gets hit. After six years of war he doesn't know anything but to go on."

Edward R. Murrow's "Wires and Lights in a Box" Speech

"Wires and Lights in a Box"

Keynote Address to the Radio-Television News Directors Association

October 15, 1958

This just might do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts. But I am persuaded that the elaborate structure of networks, advertising agencies, and sponsors will not be shaken or altered. It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television in this generous and capacious land.

I have no technical advice or counsel to offer those of you who labor in this vineyard, the one that produces words and pictures. You will, I am sure, forgive me for not telling you that the instruments with which you work are miraculous, that your responsibility is unprecedented or that your aspirations are frequently frustrated. It is not necessary to remind you of the fact that your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other. All of these things you know.

You should also know at the outset that, in the manner of witnesses before Congressional committees, I appear here voluntarily—by invitation—that I am an employee of the Columbia Broadcasting System, that I am neither an officer nor any longer a director of that corporation and that these remarks are strictly of a "do-it-yourself" nature. If what I have to say is responsible, then I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Seeking neither approbation from my employers, nor news sponsors, nor acclaim from the critics of radio and television, I cannot very well be disappointed. Believing that potentially the commercial system of broadcasting as practiced in this country is the best and freest yet devised, I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. These instruments have been good to me beyond my due. There exists in my mind no reasonable grounds for any kind of personal complaint. I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture, and our heritage.

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or perhaps in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 PM., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: "Look now and pay later."

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must indeed be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive quite literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then perhaps some young and courageous soul with a small budget might do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done—and are still doing—to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained, and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is: an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.

Several years ago, when we undertook to do a program on Egypt and Israel, well-meaning, experienced and intelligent friends in the business said, "This you cannot do. This time you will be handed your head." It is an emotion-packed controversy, and there is no room for reason in it." We did the program. Zionists, anti-Zionists, the friends of the Middle East, Egyptian and Israeli officials said, with I must confess a faint tone of surprise, "It was a fair account. The information was there. We have no complaints."

Our experience was similar with two half hour programs dealing with cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Both the medical profession and the tobacco industry cooperated, but in a rather wary fashion. But at the end of the day they were both reasonably content. The subject of radioactive fallout and the banning of nuclear tests was, and is, highly controversial. But according to what little evidence there is, viewers were prepared to listen to both sides with reason and restraint. This is not said to claim any special or unusual competence in the presentation of controversial subjects, but rather to indicate that timidity in these areas is not warranted by the evidence.

Recently, network spokesmen have been disposed to complain that the professional critics of television in print have been "rather beastly." There have been ill-disguised hints that somehow competition for the advertising dollar has caused the critics of print to gang up on television and radio. This reporter has no desire to defend the critics. They have space in which to do that on their own behalf. But it remains a fact that the newspapers and magazines are the only instruments of mass communication which remain free from sustained and regular critical comment. I would suggest that if the network spokesmen are so anguished about what appears in print, then let them come forth and engage in a little sustained and regular comment regarding newspapers and magazines. It is an ancient and sad fact that most people in network television and radio have an exaggerated regard for what appears in print. And there have been cases where executives have refused to make even private comment on a program for which they were responsible until they had read the reviews in print. This is hardly an exhibition of confidence.

The oldest excuse of the networks for their timidity is their youth. Their spokesmen say, "We are young; we have not developed the traditions nor acquired the experience of the older media." If they but knew it, they are building those traditions and creating those precedents every day. Each time they yield to a voice from Washington or any political pressure, each time they eliminate something that might offend some section of the community, they are creating their own body of precedent and tradition, and it will continue to pursue them. They are, in fact, not content to be "half safe."

Nowhere is this better illustrated than by the fact that the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission publicly prods broadcasters to engage in their legal right to editorialize. Of course, to undertake an editorial policy, overt, clearly labeled, and obviously unsponsored, requires a station or a network to be responsible. Most stations today probably do not have the manpower to assume this responsibility, but the manpower could be recruited. Editorials of course would not be profitable. If they had a cutting edge, they might even offend. It is much easier, much less troublesome, to use this money-making machine of television and radio merely as a conduit through which to channel anything that will be paid for that is not libelous, obscene, or defamatory. In that way one has the illusion of power without responsibility.

So far as radio—that most satisfying, ancient but rewarding instrument—is concerned, the diagnosis of the difficulties is not too difficult. And obviously I speak only of news and information. In order to progress it need only go backward. Back to the time when singing commercials were not allowed on news reports, when there was no middle commercial in a fifteen minute news report, when radio was rather proud, alert, and fast. I recently asked a network official, "Why this great rash of five-minute news reports (including three commercials) on weekends?" And he replied, "Because that seems to be the only thing we can sell."

In this kind of complex and confusing world, you can't tell very much about the why of the news in broadcasts where only three minutes is available for news. The only man who could do that was Elmer Davis, and his kind aren't about anymore. If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, and only when packaged to fit the advertising appropriation of a sponsor, then I don't care what you call it—I say it isn't news.

My memory—and I have not yet reached the point where my memories fascinate me—but my memory also goes back to the time when the fear of a slight reduction in business did not result in an immediate cutback in bodies in the news and public affairs department at a time when network profits had just reached an all-time high. We would all agree, I think, that whether on a station or a network, the stapling machine is a very poor substitute for a newsroom typewriter and somebody to beat it properly.

One of the minor tragedies of television news and information is that the networks will not even defend their vital interests. When my employer, CBS, through a combination of enterprise and good luck, did an interview with Nikita Khrushchev, the President uttered a few ill-chosen, uninformed words on the subject, and the network thereupon practically apologized. This produced a rarity. Many newspapers defended the CBS right to produce the program and commended it for initiative. The other networks remained silent.

Likewise, when John Foster Dulles, by personal decree, banned American journalists from going to Communist China and subsequently offered seven contradictory explanations for his fiat, the networks entered only a mild protest. Then they apparently forgot the unpleasantness. Can it be that this national industry is content to serve the public interest only with the trickle of news that comes out of Hong Kong, to leave its viewers in ignorance of the cataclysmic changes that are occurring in a nation of 600 million people? I have no illusions about the difficulties reporting from a dictatorship, but our British and French allies have been better served in their public interest with some very useful information from their reporters in Communist China.

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising, and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and, at times, demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks, with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales, or show business. But by the nature of the corporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this.

It is, after all, not easy for the same small group of men to decide whether to buy a new station for millions of dollars, build a new building, alter the rate card, buy a new Western, sell a soap opera, decide what defensive line to take in connection with the latest Congressional inquiry, how much money to spend on promoting a new program, what additions or deletions should be made in the existing covey or clutch of vice presidents, and at the same time—frequently on the long, same long day—to give mature, thoughtful consideration to the manifold problems that confront those who are charged with the responsibility for news and public affairs.

Sometimes there is a clash between the public interest and the corporate interest. A telephone call or a letter from the proper quarter in Washington is treated rather more seriously than a communication from an irate but not politically potent viewer. It is tempting enough to give away a little air time for frequently irresponsible and unwarranted utterances in an effort to temper the wind of political criticism. But this could well be the subject of a separate and even lengthier and drearier dissertation.

Upon occasion, economics and editorial judgment are in conflict. And there is no law which says that dollars will be defeated by duty. Not so long ago the President of the United States delivered a television address to the nation. He was discoursing on the possibility or the probability of war between this nation and the Soviet Union and Communist China. It would seem to have been a reasonably compelling subject with a degree of urgency—a test. Two networks, CBS and NBC, delayed that broadcast for an hour and fifteen minutes. If this decision was dictated by anything other than financial reasons, the networks didn't deign to explain those reasons. That hour and fifteen minute delay, by the way, is a little more than twice the time required for an ICBM to travel from the Soviet Union to major targets in the United States. It is difficult to believe that this decision was made by men who love, respect, and understand news.

I have been dealing largely with the deficit side of the ledger, and the items could be expanded. But I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse. I do not suggest that news and information should be subsidized by foundations or private subscriptions. I am aware that the networks have expended, and are expending, very considerable sums of money on public affairs programs from which they cannot receive any financial reward. I have had the privilege at CBS of presiding over a considerable number of such programs. And I am able to stand here and say, that I have never had a program turned down by my superiors just because of the money it would cost.

But we all know that you cannot reach the potential maximum audience in marginal time with a sustaining program. This is so because so many stations on the network—any network—will decline to carry it. Every licensee who applies for a grant to operate in the public interest, convenience, and necessity makes certain promises as to what he will do in terms of program content. Many recipients of licenses have, in blunt language, just plain welshed on those promises. The money-making machine somehow blunts their memories. The only remedy for this is closer inspection and punitive action by the FCC. But in the view of many this would come perilously close to supervision of program content by a federal agency.

So it seems that we cannot rely on philanthropic support or foundation subsidies. We cannot follow the "sustaining route"—the networks cannot pay all the freight—and the FCC cannot, will not, or should not discipline those who abuse the facilities that belong to the public. What, then, is the answer? Do we merely stay in our comfortable nests, concluding that the obligation of these instruments has been discharged when we work at the job of informing the public for a minimum of time? Or do we believe that the preservation of the Republic is a seven-day-a-week job, demanding more awareness, better skills, and more perseverance than we have yet contemplated?

I am frightened by the imbalance; the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation. Heywood Broun once wrote, "No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch." I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers. It can be done. Maybe it won't be, but it could. But let us not shoot the wrong piano player. Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their network. They all have better taste. All are responsible to stockholders, and in my experience all are honorable men. But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market.

And this brings us to the nub of the question. In one sense it rather revolves around the phrase heard frequently along Madison Avenue: "the corporate image." I am not precisely sure what this phrase means, but I would imagine that it reflects a desire on the part of the corporations who pay the advertising bills to have the public image, or believe that they are not merely bodies with no souls, panting in pursuit of elusive dollars. They would like us to believe that they can distinguish between the public good and the private or corporate gain.

So the question is this: Are the big corporations who pay the freight for radio and television programs wise to use that time exclusively for the sale of goods and services? Is it in their own interest and that of the stockholders so to do? The sponsor of an hour's television program is not buying merely the six minutes devoted to commercial message. He is determining, within broad limits, the sum total of the impact of the entire hour. If he always, invariably, reaches for the largest possible audience, then this process of insulation, of escape from reality, will continue to be massively financed, and its apologist will continue to make winsome speeches about giving the public what it wants, or "letting the public decide."

I refuse to believe that the presidents and chairmen of the boards of these big corporations want their corporate image to consist exclusively of a solemn voice in an echo chamber, or a pretty girl opening the door of a refrigerator, or a horse that talks. They want something better, and on occasion some of them have demonstrated it. But most of the men whose legal and moral responsibility it is to spend the stockholders' money for advertising are in fact removed from the realities of the mass media by five, six, or a dozen contraceptive layers of vice presidents, public relations counsel, and advertising agencies. Their business is to sell goods, and the competition is pretty tough.

But this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination, and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But in terms of information we are handicapping ourselves needlessly.

Let us have a little competition. Not only in selling soap, cigarettes, and automobiles, but in informing a troubled, apprehensive but receptive public. Why should not each of the twenty or thirty big corporations, and they dominate radio and television, decide that they will give up one or two of their regularly scheduled programs each year, turn the time over to the networks and say in effect: "This is a tiny tithe, just a little bit of our profits. On this particular night we aren't going to try to sell cigarettes or automobiles; this is merely a gesture to indicate our belief in the importance of ideas." The networks should, and I think they would, pay for the cost of producing the program. The advertiser, the sponsor, would get name credit but would have nothing to do with the content of the program. Would this blemish the corporate image? Would the stockholders rise up and object? I think not. For if the premise upon which our pluralistic society rests, which as I understand it is that if the people are given sufficient undiluted information, they will then somehow, even after long, sober second thoughts, reach the right decision. If that premise is wrong, then not only the corporate image but the corporations and the rest of us are done for.

There used to be an old phrase in this country, employed when someone talked too much. I am grateful to all of you for not having employed it earlier. It was: "Go hire a hall." Under this proposal the sponsor would have hired the hall. He has bought the time; the local station operator, no matter how indifferent, is going to carry the program—he has to. He's getting paid for it. Then it's up to the networks to fill the hall. I am not here talking about editorializing but about straightaway exposition as direct, unadorned, and impartial as fallible human beings can make it. Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information. Let us dream to the extent of saying that on a given Sunday night the time normally occupied by Ed Sullivan is given over to a clinical survey of the state of American education, and a week or two later the time normally used by Steve Allen is devoted to a thoroughgoing study of American policy in the Middle East. Would the corporate image of their respective sponsors be damaged? Would the stockholders rise up and complain? Would anything happen other than that a few million people would have received a little illumination on subjects that may well determine the future of this country, and therefore also the future of the corporations? This method would also provide real competition between the networks as to which could outdo the others in the palatable presentation of information. It would provide an outlet for the young men of skill, and there are many, even of dedication, who would like to do something other than devise methods of insulating while selling.

There may be other and simpler methods of utilizing these instruments of radio and television in the interests of a free society. But I know of none that could be so easily accomplished inside the framework of the existing commercial system. I don't know how you would measure the success or failure of a given program. And it would be very hard to prove the magnitude of the benefit accruing to the corporation which gave up one night of a variety or quiz show in order that the network might marshal its skills to do a thoroughgoing job on the present status of NATO, or plans for controlling nuclear tests. But I would reckon that the president, and indeed the stockholders of the corporation who sponsored such a venture, would feel just a little bit better about both the corporation and the country.

It may be that this present system, with no modifications and no experiments, can survive. Perhaps the money-making machine has some kind of built-in perpetual motion, but I do not think so. To a very considerable extent the media of mass communications in a given country reflects the political, economic, and social climate in which it grows and flourishes. That is the reason ours differ from the British and French, or the Russian and Chinese. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information, and our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live. I would like to see it done inside the existing framework, and I would like to see the doing of it redound to the credit of those who finance and program it. Measure the results by Nielsen, Trendex, or Silex—it doesn't matter. The main thing is to try. The responsibility can be easily placed, in spite of all the mouthings about giving the public what it wants. It rests on big business, and on big television, and it rests on the top. Responsibility is not something that can be assigned or delegated. And it promises its own reward: both good business and good television.

Perhaps no one will do anything about it. I have ventured to outline it against a background of criticism that may have been too harsh only because I could think of nothing better. Someone once said—and I think it was Max Eastman—that "that publisher serves his advertiser best who best serves his readers." I cannot believe that radio and television, or the corporations that finance the programs, are serving well or truly their viewers, or their listeners, or themselves.

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small fraction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure might well grow by contagion. The economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure—exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent, and insulated, I can only reply: there is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse, and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who is generally believed to have known something weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival. Thank you for your patience.