WORLD AFFAIRS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 6

WORLD AFFAIRS

THE MOST MODERN WAR WEAPON. AN OBSERVER’S COMMENT. The following most interesting comment is from the pen of Mr E. C. S. Marshall, foreign editor of the Sydney Sunday Sun-Guardian, in the curlent issue:— Most people, if you asked them to name the most modern war weapons, would certainly remember the bombing ’plane, but probably overlook a more subtle instrument the radio broadcasting machine. This threatens to play a big role in the next conflict. No doubt that is why (as the cables state) a certain 8.8. C. “mystery man” turns out to have been assigned the duty of “devising measures to be taken by the organisation in the event of war.” Every State that values its safety must consider the radio from both the offensive and defensive points of view. In war time it must try by all possible means to detect and suppress all enemy broadcasts, and to “put its own across.” There need be little doubt of the power of the radio to promote panic or stir up disaffection, if given a clear field.

War time censorship will be so strict that people will be hungry for news. The terror of the times, the constant exposm*e to bombing from the air, will throw the civilian mind off its balance; and the radio, worked cleverly, not crudely, may affect the fate of nations.

The air of a world “at peace” is already seething with the sort of propaganda that war will only sharpen and intensify.

A classical example of “radio bombardment” of a neighbouring nation is the campaign that was carried on from Munich in Germany against the Government of Dollfuss, in Austria.

Theodor Habicht, the Nazi radio spokesman, used broadcasting to promote the illegal Nazi movement throughout Austria. And when Austrian and German Nazis, at the appointed time, raided Vienna, murdered Dollfuss, and tried to capture power, one of their chief objectives was thd central radio station.

Their plan was to announce from a microphone there that they were supreme, and that resistance would be futile. Their bluff failed, but it might have come off: And a writer commenting on the episode concluded: “These political bandits were reaching toward the grim future. At certain stages of a general war, a false report put forth dramatically and artistically might so influence the civilian mind as to tip the balance between victory and defeat.” The German-Austrian radio war not only foretold the nature of future radio offensives, but disclosed methods of defence as well.

The Dollfuss Government initiated its own system of actuated interference signals in every Austrian city in which the Mhnich broadcasts might be heard.

It enlisted the services of radio amateurs throughout the country, and organised the so-called “Interference Brigade,” which at a signal from Vienna would send out interference signals on the wavelength of the Munich station.

The technique of “getting, on to” enemy broadcasts and obliterating them could conceivably be elaborated to the point where one nation would neutralise practically every effort by another nation to get through. There is another defence. It is to allow the use only of sets so weak that they can pick up none but local stations (Border areas would still be exposed under this system). The Hitler regime has done much to popularise a small and feeble set which is patriotically deaf to the arguments of distant Russian propagandists. It is possible, of course, that the Government of a country might ban not only private transmitting sets, but receiving sets, down to the last “crystal,” on the ground of their estimated liability to do more

harm than good. Within the Empire in war time, tha British radio (barring successful enemy intei’ference), might be most effectively used to reinforcei the spirit of unity. Those who heard the late King George speak like a father to his children, will know what influence his voicei would have exerted if broadcast in a period of conflict. Empire defence against enemy broadcasting- is something to be planned now. It is notorious that for months, in peace time, the Italian station at Bari did its utmost to foment trouble among the coloured subjects, or dependents, of Britain in the near East. It mixed false news with ingenious reasoning, and directed both at a spot where there was bother enough already. This is an omen and a warning.

One day, there may be elaborate and novel arrangements for concerted action by British stations in war time to “keep the other fellow off the air;” and the other fellow —never fear! — will do his best to keep us off it. To the endless debate on Spain, Italy has contributed this ingenious argument: that since she and Britain are agreed on the necessity of mainlining the “territorial integrity” of Spain, they agreed on preventing the establishment of a separate Red republic in Catalonia. In other words, Italy has license from Britain to back General Franco in any effort to present Catalonia from becoming a State outside his contemplated Fascist Spain. The hatching of this interventionist chicken from what seemed a non-inter-ventionist egg has greatly irritated official Britain. France, however, is the foreign country to which Catalonia’s fate is of most immediate concern, for the seaboad of that region flanks the lines of communication between her North African Empire.

Madrid might fall into the hands of the rebels, but if the Catalan capital, Barcelona successfully resisted, France would escape the dangers involved in Fascist (pro-Italian or proGerman) control of the strategically important Catalan area. For this reason, it is suggested that if the French Popular Front has Spain, Barcelona has had more of it than Madrid. Some observers suspect a French plan to make Catalonia a disguised dependency of Frances

In any case, Barcelona’s chance of holding out against Franco increases vnth every hour that he is forced to spend battering the gates of Madrid. A new Catalan Cabinet which came to power over three months ago, called up a.ll men between the ages of 13 and 40. While these are being trained, Barcelona’s big industrial plants are not idle; they are busy turning out tanks.

Reports of widespread (though fairly mild), influenza in both America and Europe, recall the pandemic that swept the world in 1918-19. It came in three waves, of which the second was by far the most deadly. Victims of the first wave got off comparatively lightly. Among the fight-

ing men ' infected on the Western Front, some did not even report sick, but merely took things quietly for a day or two, and got better. The Central Powers caught it after the Allies.

In the second wave, the death-rate rocketed; lung complications were the feature of it. The third wave was more like the first than thei second, though complications were rather common.

Characteristically, France thought the outbreak must have originated in Spain; Spain returned the compliment, and America pointed accusingly at Eastern Europe.

It is on record that the first wave coincided with the arrival of the first drafts of American troops in Europe. To an outsider, it seems queer that the German Nazis are so violent in their language towards Holland, so ready to take offence at little things which happen to swastika banners. The Press abuse over the anti-Nazi incidents of the Juliana celebrations was tactless, coming from a Germany which aspires to catch Holland in its net of racial doctrine, and make the Dutch conscious of kinship. Nazi propaganda in Holland concentrates chiefly, and significantly, on the two Dutch provinces of Limburg and Groningen, which are of the greatest economic and military importance for Germany.

Limburg (between Belgium and Germany), is the site of the Dutch coal basin; and anyone who dominates it in war time can control the economic life and so the politics of Holland. Groningen, in the north, is a railway junction and the point of intersection of various canals; from this point, Holland can be strategically cut in two. The Nazi racial idea, the insiste; cc on Germanic brotherhood, has not caught on sufficiently to prevent Holland from increasing her defences. Not long ago the Dutch were deeply impressed by the extraordinary multiplication of German flying centres r ear their border. They noted new garrison towns also, and these facts explained their larger Defence budget.