BROADCASTING MENACE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21617, 9 October 1933, Page 8

BROADCASTING MENACE

"Broadcasting is so now and its applications for political purposes have been so little foreseen that we arc as ret without any code of law or manners for its application. But we clearly need one," writes Mr. J. A. Spender, in the News Chronicle, in reference to Nazi broadcasting from Germany' to Austria, which is causing wide concern to people in all European countries. "Secret diplomacy may be bad, but the prospect of Governments appealing night after niiiht to mobs in other countries is infinitely worse, and, if it is permitted, will vastly complicate international relations. The effect is entirely different from that- of the occasional and measured criticisms passed by Governments on one another in the ordinary forums of press and Parliament. But this again is a question which concerns not merely Austria and Germany, but us all; and if the appeal is to the League of Nations it should be for a rule to which all should conform. On all issues I beliet'c the safest and wisest plan is to deal with the Austrian question comprehensively, and get to the roots of the trouble which will otherwise bo chronic. But there is clearly not much time to lose." THE WORLD WORN OUT Have we reached the "end of our time"? Nicholas Bcrdyaev, the Bussian director of the Academy of the Philosophy of BeJigion in Paris, answers "Yes" to this question of his own posing; and in this good book, "The End of Our Time," with an extraordinary but gloomy persuasiveness, ho analyses the sad situation in which we find ourselves, says the Morning Post in a review. We have reached, he thinks, the end of the period of spiritual man, and in the last centuries man has attempted to live by his own light, has inevitably failed, emptied himself, and left himself dry and easily plagued by every evil of his own making. Individualism springing from Nietzsche and collectivism springing from Marx are the twin manifestations of our final decay. "The imposing'humanist enterprise has failed, and the remains ought to be,scrapped. But, first of all, perhaps technical civilisation will try the experiment of developing itself to its uttermost limits, till it becomes a diabolical sorcery just as Communism has done." M. Berdyaev believes that, "without fear or discouragement," we must faco the prospect of.entering a new medieval night, from which we shall emerge eventually, strengthened by a rebaptism into Christian faith, with a new future of wonderful potentiality. THE NAZI CREED. Beferring in an economic survey of Germany to the effects of the Nazi revolution, Mr. J. W. F. Thelwall, the British Commercial Counsellor in Berlin, observes: "In considering the new regime iu Germany it is necessary to bear in mind that it is primarily a movement based on racial and party ideals, and that its followers are prepared in certain respects to forgo economic and political advantages for the sake of their principles. The standards of a democratic, individualistic, capitalistic State, like the United Kingdom, cannot, therefore, be applied to it. Tho aim of the party is to assist the small farmer rather than the great land-owner, the small shopkeeper rather than the large store, the craftsman rather than tho industrialist. On the other hand, it is also desirous of welding together all classes, and, as will havo been seen, of paying particular attention to the working man. It is opposed to all forms of class warfare, and its ultimate objective is undoubtedly the Corporative State, in which there will be only a few great corporations, embracing in each case all the individuals belonging to a particular occupation or profession, irrespective of whether they are employees or employed. This organisation of the State will be dominated by the national and racial creed as professed by the National Socialist Party. The point that it is probably hardest for the outsider to understand is that if the teliets of this creed and economic necessities come into conflict, the former take precedence over the latter."