Propaganda Front

The U.S. Embassy in Vichy last week sent French authorities a prim reminder: that under international agreement French stations are allocated the initial call letter "F," U.S. stations "W" and "K." The occasion of the reminder was the discovery by FCC that a pseudo-American station, WFAC, picked up occasionally in the U.S., is actually broadcasting its Axis propaganda from somewhere in Unoccupied France.

Radio Vichy in mid-May launched a campaign to woo French-Americans in New England back "to ancient tradition." For Fernand Auberjonois, Swiss-born brains of NBC's French section, this was a lulu. Said Auberjonois one night in his short-wave news broadcast to France:

"We must communicate to you [Vichy Radio] a dispatch of the greatest importance. M. Pierre Laval has just arrived by parachute in a small village in Massachusetts. M. Laval apparently bears interesting proposals which he will not discuss with anyone except authorized representatives of the Separatist French Movement in America. . . . According to the very latest news, M. Laval is not able to find the representative of the suppressed French minorities because he is in Ireland with the American Expeditionary Force." Other developments:

> Martinique systematically jams Free French recruiting broadcasts beamed at that island.

> COI men are helping to construct a 50-kilowatt short-wave station at Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. Another powerful transmitter is to be erected five miles away at Leopoldville, Belgian Congo. Neither will be in operation until next year.

> The Svenska Gallup Institutet (Sweden's Gallup Poll) quizzed Swedish radio listeners, found that: 34% believed what they heard in British news broadcasts; 4%, German; 1%, Russian. A cautious 18% believed none. The rest expressed no opinion.

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