Radio: Battlefield

Sure as shooting, in a big league war, there would be an almighty jam around the dials of radios which might hear propaganda and news from the other side. Hedging Italy’s borders, for example, are reported about 100 small, telegraphic transmitters, some of which have lately been suspected of sending off streams of dashes to hedge off U. S. short-wave radio transmissions to Italy. Each such transmitter, radio engineers know, could be operated to transmit a “sawtooth” signal which could affect all broadcasting on a band 300 kilocycles wide (as much air space as 30 U. S. stations occupy).

This sort of large-scale jamming, however, would ruin domestic communication. So well is this recognized, and so indispensable is radio considered as a medium for domestic communication, maintaining morale, that some powers last week were making other arrangements for maintaining domestic radio communication under outside radio fire.

Great Britain, “at two hours after zero,” planned to run for cover with its entire domestic radio system, using “wired wireless” over telephone and electric power lines. This system would be proof against any sort of interference except a direct hit on a central transmitter. For that sort of emergency, BBC has already set up stand-by transmitting apparatus in secluded spots away from England’s easily bomb-sighted industrial centres. BBC’s war emergency plans also included shutting down its television transmitters, releasing the ultra-high frequencies for special military services.

Germany has 12,580,000 radio sets licensed at $9.87 a year. In the last year almost 3,000,000 new radios were sold, but fewer than 1,000,000 were the Reich-backed People’s Radios, geared to local reception. Of the rest, despite Nazi frowning on broadcasts from abroad, 1,500,000 were all-wave sets designed to receive foreign short-wave broadcasting, bringing the number of all-wave receivers in Germany up to 6,500,000.

But Germany, too, has a wired wireless system under way, and adaptation of all People’s Radios for wire transmission has already been made obligatory.

France plans no wired wireless, no commandeering of radio apparatus. France’s highly “atomized” radio system, a freestyle, non-network jumble of 27 Government and private stations, by its nature is proof against such hurts as the bombing of a central transmitter. Some standby Government transmitters have been built in remote country locations, and equipped with Diesel power units for use in case of bombed local power lines. One function of these new transmitters may be to outshout Germany’s mighty, new 500-kilowatt station, pulled out of the Nazi hat two months ago by Joseph Goebbels at Oldenburg, near the Dutch border, 30 miles from the North Sea.

U.S S.R. is luckily remote from the main radio battlefield. In 1920, Lenin foresaw “the newspaper without paper and without distance.” Now Tass, official Soviet news agency, radios its news daily to 3,254 newspapers. Some two-thirds of all Russia’s long-distance telegraphic communication is relayed by radio. Russia’s 75 stations (mightiest, 500-kilowatt Radio Moscow) speak 62 languages in reaching the 170,000,000 inhabitants. Listening is largely in groups, in workers’ clubs, factories, etc., over receivers which tune in the Government programs, nothing else. Russia is too far away from the rest of the crowded radio world to worry much about interference.

Poland for months has been lambasted daily by radio from Germany, but the broadcasts reach comparatively few Polish ears. Despite a money-making radio monopoly, Polskie Radio, in which the Government has a 40% share, Poland is not a radio-minded country. Of the estimated 1,000,000-odd-listeners to the eight-station network headed by Warsaw’s SPI, perhaps one-fourth still get what they can on ancient crystal sets. Last week Polskie Radio talked bravely on, reported border incidents and the repulsing of Nazi sorties by air, played stirring martial airs between bulletins.