Best broadcasts of 1938-39 (1939)

BEST NEWS COMMENTARY (AD LIB) Czech Crisis by H. V. Kaltenborn iLSLSiXSLSLSLSiSiSLSljLSLSLSLSLSLSLSLkSLSLlSLSLS^^ Harvest time in war-torn Spain. The year is 1936. Rebels are attacking the Loyalist city of Irun. A fierce battle is being fought on farm land just outside the city. Shells and bursting bombs dropped by planes wheeling overhead turn the once calm countryside into a holocaust. Suddenly a tall man dashes out from behind an abandoned farmhouse and sprints for a haystack a hundred feet away. It is H. V. Kaltenborn, equipped with earphones and microphone, dragging a cable attached to the transmitter in near-by Hendaye. He makes the haystack in safety and from its vantage point gives Columbia Network listeners an on-the-scene account of Spain’s civil war. The incident is typical of Kaltenborn’s entire life. Wanderlust has sent him all over the world. Resourcefulness and courage have given him many such scoops, both as newspaperman and radio reporter. He has interviewed Mussolini and Hitler and was often in Soviet Russia in the 1920’s, where he broadcast over Moscow’s powerful Comintern station. Mahatma Gandhi personally told him about conditions in India. Kaltenborn was one of the few Americans able to get into General Chiang Kai-shek’s headquarters for an interview. While in China, Kaltenborn was captured by bandits and held for ransom. They were on the point of thrusting him in front of a firing squad when the money arrived. The Columbia news analyst’s wanderings started when he was only nineteen, when he ran off and secretly enlisted to serve in the Spanish-American war. A cattle-boat trip to Europe followed, then a job with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on his return. At twenty-four, he decided that a college education was desirable and enrolled as a special student at Harvard. He 123