eight, will be given in the coming winter by the most eminent authorities in science, literature, art and economics; indeed, practically every branch of human activity will be included. The subjects chosen have an almost universal appeal; they are selected because of their general interest, and their value is enhanced by the distinction of the lecturers. It has been arranged that the best of these, from whatever station delivered, shall be simultaneously broadcast. Times are left free for talks of local and topical interest. Official information compiled by such Government Departments as the Ministries of Health and Agriculture will be transmitted at stated intervals, together with addresses by recognised experts in the several fields. There is a distinct national value in this service, as also in such details as the regular dissemination of standard time from Greenwich Observatory and Big Ben. Lectures, for reception in schools throughout the country have proved eminently successful, and these are being increased in number. School children are thus enabled to listen to men of international repute whom otherwise they would never hear. In this, as in all the educational or informative work undertaken, we have the valued approval and active co-operation of the Universities and other educational institutions, and of the local Education Authorities. Further and more definite opportunities of assisting those interested in adult education will be found later, and for the better supervision of this entire branch of our work we were able to secure from the Board of Education the services of one of their most capable officials. With all that broadcasting may do to increase the standard of national intelligence it must be remembered that broadcasting should not be regarded as an end in itself. I have heard of a fear expressed that a contentment with superficiality might result, and time given to serious reading and study be diminished. I indicated earlier that broadcasting may, and actually does, serve as a first introduction to many things which for one reason or another have been neglected before. It is our object that it should not only introduce, but supplement and encourage.

I wish to submit that broadcasting is a potential influence, national and international, of the highest importance. Sooner or later it will cross all paths, and

the full extent of the influence, beneficent, elevating, and consolidating, which it is destined to exercise, be realised. It is neither the particular distraction of the poor nor the exclusive perquisite of the rich, for its benefits are available for all alike and its applications are universal; there is no home however favoured but to it some new interest may be carried. An essential of friendship is service, and the broadcasting service is essentially friendly. To invalids and aged folk, to those whose lot is cast in loneliness, through either insularity in space or isolation of spirit, there comes with special significance the friendly tones of the speaker, the cheering strains of music. To those shut off from the valued privileges of the sanctuary there come, Sunday by Sunday, the music and the message of the peace which is not of this world, for the Christian religion finds an appropriate place in the work of the week, and is appreciated in a remarkable degree, not only by those who would attend church and cannot but by those who could and do not.

The activities of the town may be shared by the country; the news of the world is at the ear of the rustic wherever he lives. Some of the myriad voices of nature may be borne to the dweller in the city street; the song of the nightingale has been heard over all the land. I believe that broadcasting will assist in the solution of the problem of rural depopulation, as it has already done in that of domestic service. Pronouncements fraught with grave portent may be heard not alone by the insignificant fraction who constitute the visible audience, but by millions of men and women in all parts of the British Isles. The voice of the leader in any sphere of thought or action is brought to the fireside. Information unavailable before or only submitted later in the form which is agreeable to a partisan interpretation, is now received from the mouth of the exponent. Men and women will be encouraged and enabled to make up their minds on matters which vitally concern them, and a more intelligent interest will be taken in the great questions of the day on which they now are called to exercise their franchise. An ignorant or semi-enlightened electorate is the source of disaster. The stories of high adventure in the realms of scientific investigation and physical discovery will be told to the

country in terms which can be understood and their significance be realised. From his room in Downing Street the Prime Minister, through his ordinary telephone and with but a few minutes' warning, can address his fellow-countrymen to the number of many millions in any time of special need. The voice of the King has been heard in the humblest and most remote cottages of the land. That which has actually been achieved within these islands will in due time be possible throughout the Empire and the world. One might venture to say that nothing is too fantastic for realisation sooner or later. Voices from the ends of the earth will cease to be a marvel; wireless disregards the barriers of nature and man's device; it is supra-natural, and when upon it is superimposed the burden of music, when it is the carrier for the interchange of achievements in all the arts and sciences, it may well become the vehicle of an understanding that will embrace all men and nations.

Our object is to give the best of everything that is worth while, in whatsoever line we may, and to the greatest possible number of homes. Execution may, and does, fall far short of ambition. The circumstances and embarrassments of the broadcaster's occupation are unique, and he is well aware of his deficiencies. He does, however, realise the vastness of his opportunity; the gravity of his responsibility; he has the vision to appreciate and the enthusiasm to persevere. The progress of broadcasting is unaffected by opposition on the one hand or by professions of supercilious disregard on the other. Access to the master-microphone is reserved for those who have something to tell which it is worth while to hear. It is more and more becoming the focus of desire and the mouthpiece of achievement. In the simple little box is, as it were, an engine of revolutionary change, for not only does it supplement many of the established institutions of the world, but some it will surely supplant. By it the voice of a single man may command a nation, and through its agency the ideals of universal brotherhood be broadcast over the whole world. If culture, embracing religion, and in its broadest and noblest sense, be the paramount need of the world today, the master-microphone is at hand, and the service of broadcasting is at the service of culture.

J. C. W. REITH.

DISARMAMENT

OF GERMANY AND

Art. 12.-THE

AFTER.

-KÖNIGSBERG, the capital city of East Prussia, is, in the words of the Apostle, no mean city. She is a city to quicken the pulse of every German patriot. Long did she hold the East in fee, and always the outpost of German 'Kultur' against the Slav, she was the goal of that Russian objective which was shattered in 1914 on the same field of Tannenberg where, just five hundred years earlier, the chivalry of the Teutonic Knights had gone down before the hosts of Vladislav. Thus did the fortune of war re-invest her with her ancient prestige. And the misfortune of the Peace, with its cession of territory to an upstart vassal, severing the economic nerves connecting the great granary of East Prussia with the Fatherland, came to her like a re-consecration of her historic character-she is to-day a German island in a Polish sea. She was the 'feste Burg,' the safe stronghold, of the 'rough aristocracy' of Treitschke's adoration; in the choir of her medieval brick cathedral, as in a reliquary, you may see the faded pennons, the helms and gauntlets of the last Teutonic Knights, and outside the walls of this church militant, as though it were a chapel of dissent and excommunicate, is the chantry-like tomb of the great Pacifist philosopher, the publication of whose Project of Perpetual Peace' was followed by twenty years of almost perpetual war. Early in 1920, two British officers in mufti sat in one of the city's crowded and convivial cabarets over a bottle of bad wine. One variety turn' had succeeded another, each characterised by the usual lecherous humour and 'topical' satire, and had left the audience languid and unmoved over its beer-mugs. But when the 'Chairman' announced Number Five on the programme with the words Nur Papier,'* the audience visibly brightened as at a star turn. 'Nur Papier' more than justified expectation. It was a comic song of misadventure attuned to the ears of an audience whom the exigencies of war had made painfully familiar with paper substitutes for everything from string to underclothing, and the

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*Only Paper.'

Pr

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comedian, with much dramatic expression, told a forlorn tale of how he had been left a legacy in marks, and when he had sought to collect it, had found it was only paper'; he had bought a 'composition' bag, and when it caught in the carriage door it had ripped in two, for it was only paper'; he had purchased an umbrella, and when exposed to the rain it had drooped and wilted, for it was only paper'; he had bought a pair of ready-made G trousers, and but Prussian humour is not delicate. The audience followed the tale of comic disillusion with increasing merriment, but it was the last verse, unfolding the parable, which brought the house down. One morning, sang this political troubadour with a communicative wink, the Entente would wake up to find itself faced by a strong and united Germany, and to discover the Treaty of Versailles' only paper.' And in a tumult of guttural applause the singer subsided.

D

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There is an old saying that if a man be allowed to make a people's songs he cares not who may make its laws. But sometimes, as we shall see, the ballads and the laws go hand in hand, so that the former are merely a gloss upon the text of the latter and an C elucidation. The question to which I address myself is this: Was this incident typical of the German attitude to the Treaty? And if it was typical then, is it typical now? I will confine myself to that aspect of it of which I know most-disarmament. The moment seems opportune for some freedom of speech, some latitude of disclosure, and the necessity of it, in the public interest, imperative. The Prime Minister of Great Britain has unfolded at Geneva, amid the plaudits of the League of Nations, a scheme of arbitration which shall bring peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Since then ideas, which are not quite the same thing as events, have moved with the velocity of light without its illumination. A Committee of the League has been at work upon a Protocol to provide for arbitration, security, disarmament,' of which trinity the first alone has been as yet conceived. Every lover of peace-and who to-day is not such ?-will have followed these 'efforts used by good men,' in Burke's phrase, 'to discredit opulent oppression' with sympathy even where he cannot follow them with unqualified approval. He may think the