Casualties, Replacements

One of radio's best-laid plans for this war was to keep the radio audience hep to devious military movements and tactics. NBC had cornered General Hugh Johnson's spare time. CBS had Major R. Ernest Dupuy, old New York Herald man, World War veteran, author (If War Comes, with Major George Fielding Eliot), and West Point's public relations officer. MBS got Major Kent C. Lambert from Fort Jay, onetime exchange officer with the Polish Army. But last week, almost as soon as war began, all three went out of action.

> First casualty was Isolationist Johnson, against whom bellicose Dorothy Thompson, a fellow NBC broadcaster, launched a Blitzkrieg in her newspaper column (see p. 59). Hugh Johnson, letting go a Parthian shot at Miss Thompson* in his own column, made it clear that he was quitting the field because he could not handle both his column and his air assignment.

> Major Dupuy got on the air four times for CBS mostly as a military conversationalist with News Analysts Elmer Davis and H. V. Kaltenborn (see p. 46). Major Lambert, in his single turn at the microphone, told MBS audiences that the Polish strategy would be to withdraw before the Germans to the Vistula and stall until the autumn rains, which were expected to bog down Germany's mechanized army.

But last week both officers withdrew, obedient to War Department advices that the official attitude was "to discourage speeches, broadcasts and articles on the military situation by members of the Army, active or retired."

> Saving the day for CBS, however, was Brooklyn-born Major George Fielding Eliot (The Ramparts We Watch, Bombs Bursting in Air), who served through the World War with the Australians, spent eight years in the U. S. Army, resigned in 1932 so he could write & talk about war without being interrupted. From London Major Eliot broadcast six times last week for CBS. Night before war was declared he predicted: 1) "It is impossible for Germany to defeat Poland plus France plus Britain," 2) there would be no immediate bombing of French or British cities, at least until Hitler had had a chance to try for peace after taking what he wants of Poland. At week's end Major Eliot, fearing inevitable censorship of his tactical notions, was seeking Clipper passage to carry on in the U. S.

> One worry of all broadcasters is how to make strategists, commentators, etc. earn their keep. One way (already registered at the U. S. copyright office) was suggested last week by Manhattan Press-agent Joseph P. Annin, a Wartime aerial reconnaissance officer. Annin's idea, which he got while traveling cross-country in an airliner, is to sell radio advertisers on the idea of distributing war maps and sets of colored pins to the audience, hiring military experts to digest the news of the day, analyze the tactics, then devoting five sponsored minutes each evening on the air telling map-in-lap listeners where and why to shift their pins.

*Last week Miss Thompson, having been cut off the air by one station and shushed by others than General Johnson for her war talk, withdrew from the air herself.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.