TALKING TO EUROPE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 13 September 1941, Page 8

TALKING TO EUROPE

‘'Many people want to know how much people in Europe listen to British broadcasts, particularly in enemy countries and countries which lie for tin* moment under Hitler's heel, from the Arctic Circle down to the Pyrenees, t" Italy and to the Balkans. And they want to know about the elTecls of lis toning;." said the director-general of the 8.8. C.. Mr !•’. W. Ogilvii*. in a recent j talk. “A proper answer cannot bo given j i now, for obvious reasons. But this can I j bo said: In Germany and Italy, apart | | from other evidence, it is remarkable how increasingly the enemy find it ' necessary, in addressing their own lisj toners, to attack British broadcasts! ! closely, and they attack them day by | I day, although their own listeners have i i nominally been prohibited all along. ! and with heavy penalties, from listening to foreign broadcasts at nil, a crime I which In Germany is called ‘spiritual | self-mutilation ’ And in occupied counj tries- Poland, Czechoslovakia. Norway. Holland, Belgium, France and Balkans there is evidence not merely that j people listen, and listen intently, but j that their courage is upheld by their listening, and their minds kept alert for action in due course. Even now, at the ! present moment, the countryside and ! ! towns in certain places are being covered, in response to our broadcasts, with the letter V, initial letter and proud symbol in many languages of the words Victory or Freedom. To see those V's carved on tree trunks, stencilled on vails, scrawled on the dusty mudguards of German army lorries, brings hope and comfort to the oppressed. And the oppressor, seeing them, knows and is afraid.”