Radio mirror (Nov 1937-Apr 1938)

— — The author of this article explains why Mussolini thinks so ittle of broadcasting, and why Hitler, below, is seldom heard in America, while Stalin, right, seldom broadcasts even at home. Photos by Wide World Cesar Saerchinger, with seven exciting and tumultuous years as CBS's European representative behind him, returned to New York to write down in "Voice of Europe" his experiences abroad arranging broadcasts (for American audiences) of speeches by Europe's rulers and royalty. Herewith Radio Mirror presents one of the book's most revealing chapters, a study of the men who today are fast molding the fate of Europe and the world. "Voice of Europe" published by HoughtonMifflin will be released shortly after March first. PEOPLE'S curiosity about monarchs is in this age equalled, if not surpassed, by their interest in dictators — those Men of Destiny who are supposed to hold the fate of nations in their palm. It is not surprising that the eyes of the masses 28 everywhere should be centered on effulgent personalities like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, and that radio should be called upon to penetrate their defenses and expose their magnetic gifts to the world. But it was soon found that much of the hypnotic power by which these men swayed the emotions of their peoples evaporated when only their disembodied voices were electrically transmitted in a radio receiver. The fascination of the heroic persisted only in the minds of those whose emotions were sustained by a kind of hysterical faith, by the perfervid imaginations of people already under the spell of the superman legend, looking to the political Messiah, the Medicine Man of psychic power, to cure the nation's ills. To the dispassionate listener in his own four walls, to the sceptic and the political realist the magniloquence of these prophets was just so many words. Which