NBC Tells France

Last week, when the U.S. again had something big to tell the world, NBC went on 24-hour short-wave schedule, broadcasting in six languages President Roosevelt's warning to the French people against Nazi collaboration, and the news of the Coast Guard boarding 13 French ships in U.S. ports.

That was the second time it had happened. Two weeks before, at a hint from the State Department, which called in several radio chains and requested widest possible dissemination of President Roosevelt's Staunton address, NBC went on a 24-hour schedule for a day to put the message across. Then the broadcasters hired ex-Associated Pressman Stanley Richardson, assistant to ex-Ambassador Joseph Edward Davies, to act as short-wave liaison man between themselves and the Administration. To such leading U.S. enemies of Fascism as Dorothy Thompson and Edmond Taylor, who have long felt the U.S. should do something official about countering Nazi propaganda radioed to the U.S., all this looked at last like business.

Feature of last week's babelingual broadcast was a French-language interrogation of Fernand de Brinon, Vichy's delegate to Paris. First of the nine questions: "Is it true, M. de Brinon, that you have devoted the greater part of your life to working for Franco-German rapprochement, the more so since Hitler came to power?" NBC's De Brinon replied with a weak "Yes." By the time the ninth question was reached--"Who are you fooling now, M. de Brinon, the French, their American friends, or even your own chief, Marshal Petain?"--the studio De Brinon was too confounded even to answer.

Besides NBC's regular evening commercial transmissions to Latin America, and news resumes broadcast to Europe from midnight to 4 p.m., CBS sends daily sustaining programs to Latin America. But last week's was only the second such special blast of propa-news and views. If it bears results, Europe will hear many more.

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