Radio and Asia

The dangers of Japanese and Axis radio propaganda from the Far East were brought home to the U.S. last week in dispatches from Chungking and in the deep radio voice of a worn, heavy man named Carroll Alcott. The dispatches indicated that Jap broadcasts from scores of stations in Japan and occupied China were glutting the Asiatic air with "news" in Chinese, Burmese, Malayan and other tongues; that in default of good Allied counter-propaganda the "news" was taking effect. Carroll Alcott, who surely ought to know, had been warning about this for a long time.

Until he left Shanghai last September, Alcott's daily newscasts over Station XMHA were for four years the sharpest thorn in the side of Axis propagandists. Early marked by Axis gunmen and terrorists, he packed his tough 220 Ib. in a bullet-proof vest, bought a .45 and carried on. During the last two years he observed the handiwork of Tokyo's German advisers in coordinating stations in Manchukuo, Nanking and Shanghai with Tokyo's Government-operated Station JOAK and its Domei News Agency line of talk. Latest and ugliest trend in that talk: that the Japanese are fighting the yellow man's battles against the white man.

Soon after Carroll Alcott got back to the U.S. two months ago, the Coordinator of Information consulted him on Far Eastern matters; soon after that FCC authorized a new U.S. short-wave transmitter in California (TIME, Nov. 3). Just as the war broke out, Alcott arrived in Cincinnati to take a job as newscaster over Station WLW. Last week he also appeared on CBS's We, the People program "to express the hope that America may have powerful short-wave stations, not only in this country but in Asia itself. . . ."

What prospect there might be of that, only the U.S. Government knew. But last week the Government took a big stride toward getting Allied news heard in Asia. Not waiting for the lately authorized shortwave station to be built in California, the Coordinator of Information bought General Electric's newest, finest, 100-kilo-watt transmitter (which has been operating under the call letters WGEO in Schenectady since September) for shipment to San Francisco.* There it will become a powerful partner of G.E.'s present 50-kilowatter, KGEI, in short-wave broadcasting across the Pacific.

* WGEO short-wave programs, including THE MARCH OF TIME, will go out on a smaller G.E. transmitter while another 100-kilowatter is abuilding.

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