BBC Answers

Fortnight ago British Broadcasting Corp. began to short-wave to the U.S. the most effective bit of hands-across-the-sea propaganda it has produced since outbreak of the war. Answering You is a kind of international Information Please, with questions supplied by U.S. citizens, answers by a British board of experts. Garbled by sunspots its first time out, Answering You finally hit its stride this week. Formidable was the job of British wizards who undertook to outline Britain's war aims, answer, with appropriate deletion of profanity, such queries as: "Why the hell doesn't England bomb Berlin?"

Answering You makes no pretense at giving extempore answers. BBC has gathered some of the best brains of Britain to serve on the show's permanent panel, and plenty of careful research goes into the program. Among the experts: Sir William Beveridge, Master of Oxford's University College; Historian Charles Kingsley Webster; Laborite Francis Williams; Birmingham University Economist Philip Sargant Florence. Also on tap are Government bigwigs such as Alfred Duff Cooper, who supplied for the first Answering You show an explanation for Britain's failure to bomb the Rumanian oil fields.

Said he: "You must remember that while targets for bombing are almost limitless, bombers are limited and precious. ... Oil fields are scattered and the harm likely to be done by bombing is problematical. . . . The idea that any British capital invested abroad would have the slightest effect upon the decisions taken by the air force is utterly fantastic.

Questions for Answering You are winnowed by BBC's U.S. headquarters in Manhattan. Typical queries: "Has Britain a plan for the restoration of European countries when Hitler and his satellites have been conquered?" "Does Great Britain require a portion or the whole of the American Fleet to win the Battle of the Atlantic?" "Is British aid effectively reaching Russia now?"

Posers for BBC are such rigged questions as "Doesn't Mr. Cooper, by soft-pedaling British war achievements, create the impression that England is fighting to the last Australian?"

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