New Bill

The effect of U.S. radio propaganda on Axis citizens has apparently not been all to the good. Underground agents last week reported on a survey they had taken among Italian antiFascists who listen to U.S. and British broadcasts in Italian. Some of their observations:

> The broadcasts' tone is usually oratorical and demagogic, vulgar, presumptuous, and therefore offensive to reasonably intelligent Italians.

> Conspicuously missing is any large-scale political perspective which would give weight to words like Freedom and Justice.

> Threats of the destruction about to be visited on Italy are duds. The reaction of the civil population to bombing is much like that of Britain to the Luftwaffe.

> The absence of concrete facts demonstrating Democracy's superiority over Dictatorship is deplorable. Instead of protestations of eternal friendship followed by threats of total annihilation, Italians would like, for instance, to hear: 1) that Fascist printing presses in Tunis and Tripoli are now printing democratic Italian newspapers; 2) that the property of Fascists who fled from these cities has been confiscated, their mansions turned into rest homes for tired workmen.

> Italians would appreciate more detailed news of resistance to the Nazis inside conquered Poland, Yugoslavia, Holland, Norway, etc.--not only assassination news, but information on how clandestine newspapers are written, distributed, etc.

> Allusions to the Italian ancestry of many U.S. soldiers leave Italians cold. "Italians are used to killing one another."

> It would be just as well for United Nations propaganda if New York's Mayor LaGuardia were removed from the air. Italians find his Italian comical, his phrasing in such poor taste that not even Italian department-store ads can top it.

> The only time that clandestine listeners suspect that U.S. and British broadcasts could be worse is when they tune in the Italian broadcasts from Moscow.

This indictment got a partial reply last week when Allied Headquarters in North Africa revealed that broadcasting had begun with a new U.S. propaganda line over the first powerful U.S. transmitter (50 kilowatt, medium wave) in North Africa. Unlike past broadcasts from the U.S., the programs are not called the Voice of America but speak for all the United Nations from North Africa. They are dedicated to telling the news about the war, calmly, matter-of-factly, even when it is unfavorable to the United Nations.

In its first three weeks on the air, the station (location a military secret) has described United Nations' victories with considerable understatement. It has given Europe all the news of the U.S. coal strike, carefully avoided bombast, name-calling.

Although this does not furnish Italians with some things they might like to hear, the OWI now has a powerful voice to talk directly to Europe about foreign policy--whenever the United Nations can make up their minds about it.

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