WAY TO END WAR

Evening Star, Issue 19775, 27 January 1928, Page 13

WAY TO END WAR

BROADCAST ITS HORRORS. “At 9 p.m. on Sunday evening the British Army in the field will attack on a wide front. The sights and sounds of the battle will be relayed by television and wireless through all stations of the 8.8. C.” This is the sort of startling announcement one may expect in the war of the future, according to Professor A. M. Low, the famous scientist, in an interview with a ‘ Sunday Chronicle ’ representative. Battle scenes broadcast by automatic television cameras in No Man’s Land, hand-to-hand bayonet fights, and the slaughter inflicted by gas and tanks are some of the ghastly scenes he suggests will be watched by non-combat-ants at their own fireside. “There is nothing to stop the broadcasting of war,” Professor Low said. “It could be done now, and there is not the slightest doubt that in a very few years’ time almost every phase of it could be followed by people at home sitting before a tiny television screen. “Before long we shall be able to listen to a battle in all its horrible details. We who heard the poignant wail of the pipes at Ypres will be able fo see those whom we love as they are brutally done to death on the battlefield. , , . , . “ If a, battle were to be broadcast in this way it would be the most terrible indictment of war that had ever been made It. would dispel once and for all the idea that war is a glorious business of flag waving and bands. “ Nobody would be likely then to sit down in au nrmciiair and exclaim; ‘This is a splendid war. We’re winning. The enemy are swine! ’ They would «o tho ghastly suffering on both sides, and realise the senselessness of it all.” Automatic television cameras placed at intervals along the battle front are the means Professor Low suggests will be employed to broadcast the war of the future. When a trench raid is contemplated two or three cameras will be placed in No Man’s Land and set working. They will show the troops leaving their own trench and moving to the attack. They will screen _ the assault, the deadly effect of machine gun fire, the desperate hand-to-hand tussles. In a battle of substantial proportions more cameras will be needed. Tanks could even carry them with them as the attack advanced, and so screen every phase of the operation. “The broadcasting of battles in this way opens up ghastly possibilities,” Professor Low said. “A mother watching a battle on her television set might even see her own son die in agony. A wife might see her husband blown to pieces before her eyes. “ No war could possibly continue if it were broadcasted. Public outcry on both sides would demand an instant end to the butchery. War would become impossible. .Shorn of its glamor it would become the ghastliest nightmare. “Let us not shrink from tho possibility, for it cannot be that men and women will allow war to continue when they know the grim truth instead of what they are allowed to read in censored messages. “ If the British and German people had seen for themselves the dreadful reality of the last war they would not have stood it another day.”