 It is my deep conviction that unless we guarantee freedom of the press throughout the world, in the next generation, we'll be fighting World War No. 3. That was the voice. Those are the words of Kent Cooper, author of the book We Dramatize Tonight. As the national broadcasting company, in cooperation with the Council on Books and Wartime, presents another of the most widely discussed programs in America, Words at War. Kent Cooper's book Barriers Down is the tragic story of monopoly of world news. You'll hear more from Kent Cooper himself later on in our program. But right now, let me tell you this. For the more than 30 years he's been with the AP, Mr. Cooper has been known to newsmen and editors as the fightingest American who ever tried to ensure world peace through the freeing of international news. He knows as well as any living man that one of the first steps on the long road toward war is the deliberate creation of prejudice between countries. His book Barriers Down reveals how international slander is spread. To begin with, not so long ago, this was the outside world's opinion of the USA. It is my belief, sir, that the people of America aspire only to the shallow dignity of the almighty dollar. You see, from Peru to China, from Greenland to South Africa, the world's press pictures this nation of ours. It's a sort of gigantic Wild West show, perpetually popping with machine gun fire, echoing with the clam-baked histrionics of politicians, or soothing its jazz-shattered nerves with copious quantities of bathtub gin and marijuana cigarettes. Get sore? Sure, you can if you want to. But here's the tragic joker. Not only were they being prejudiced against the USA, but the press was prejudicing them against one another. The English? They're a race of shocky bears. French? Why, they have the capacity of a vulture. All of them, my hair, are decayed. The branch are shrined, and the British are stupid. The Poles are cattle, and the Russians are the devil's disciples. Silly, you say? Sure. But it caused 12 million men to die on the field of battle. Hey, how'd all this get to happen? Quite simply, my friends, stick around and I'll give you the lowdown. Mine is a tale of fostered prejudice and ignorance, of public opinion shaped and molded, of distortions and unvarnished lies manufactured behind the heavy doors of government ministries, of hate for their neighbors deliberately stirred in the minds and hearts of men. Mine is a tale of the monopoly of world news, of the rigid control of its free flow and circulation, a tale of the suppression of truth and the perversion of news and public press. It begins many years ago with the world, our world, divided up like a birthday cake between the three leading news agencies of Europe. Agencies, front and center, report. Reuters of London. Avace of Paris. Word for Berlin. In the beginning, how did you divide the world for the control of the sale and gathering of news? This is one time truth will out. How did you divide the world between you? Here's how. To Reuters, exclusive control of sources and news dissemination in Great Britain, all the colonies and dominions. Egypt, Turkey, China, Japan. Sovereign rights to the sale of foreign news, to the press of Mexico, Central America and the West Indies and in all lands wherein England exerts influence. Thank you, Reuters. And you? To Avace of Paris, absolute control of news distributed throughout the French Empire. In Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Exclusive rights to the sole distributor of world news in South America. Thank you, Avace. And you? To Wolf of Berlin, the territory of the whole German nation. Sole agency for the transmission of foreign news to the subsidiary news agencies of Sweden, Norway, Scandinavia, the imperial Russian Empire, Austria, Hungary and the Balkans. Thank you. Now, just who gave you three permission to divide the world up between you? No one. We just arranged the thing between ourselves. How do you like that? The world, partitioned, shared according to the best business procedures by contract. Each agreeing solemnly not to invade the domain of the other, going by the impressive title Alliance that are understood and called Cartel. The world, cut up with no crumbs left over, wrapped up and delivered. Delivered to whom? To the newspapers these agencies served? Not on your life. But delivered to the imperial demands and maneuvers of their respective governments. To say it more boldly, these agencies functioned as privately owned propaganda agencies for cutthroat international politicians. Maud Mazelle, take this memo to the Avace News Agency. To Mr. the Director, it is to the best interests of France that the United States be represented as a crude and cultured nation to the people of South America. You see what I mean? And so for years, through the channels Avace controlled, went news that was slanted, twisted and colored towards their government's ends. Not only Avace, but each of these agencies poisoned the air between nations, created friction when friction was needed to attain national ends, allotting to themselves the power to decide what the people of each nation were to know of the people of any other nation, and in what shade that news was to be presented. And they did it by owning and controlling subsidiary news agencies throughout the world, financially controlled by Havers of Paris, the Dutch Agency, owned by Reuters, the Portuguese Agency, owned by Havers, the Belgian, half by Havers, half by Reuters, the Spanish Agency, owned by Havers, the Bulgarian Wolf, the Russian Wolf. And if any of these agencies became restless under their humiliating subservience and tried to break away, well, it just could not be done. Why? Well, it would cost millions to do it. They controlled the cables, held all the franchises, one word of complaint, and they could have ruined us. Yes, that's the picture. A tight combination of three agencies dominating 20 countries. And because they could control the press in other lands, because they themselves were often subsidized by their own governments, Havers, Reuters, and Wolf sent through their exclusive channels the tainted, corrupt news loaded with prejudice and breeding hate, all in the name of the welfare of their national state. Havers, Reuters, and Wolf. You did a good job serving your governments. You helped to lay the groundwork for more than one bloody war. You can rest content. Your work was most effective. Gentlemen, step forward. Receive your medals of honor. To a vass of Paris, subsidized by the French government, exercising control over one-third of the world, for disseminating material hostile to the peace of the world, the Legion of Honor. What we did, Monsieur, we did for the love of La Belle France. Oh, like what you've spread through South America, discrediting the United States? The people of South America will readily recognize that the home of world culture is France. The birthplace of Molière, Cornet, Voltaire, neighbor to the north, a great in area only, is a young country formation from La Belle France, which should be entitled How to Cut Throats and Influence Nations. What we did, we did in good faith. Such as the report you sent out when the United States fleet was off the Chilean coast, your slant then was that we intended to drop anchor in the harbor of Santiago without permission of the government, implying we were threatening Chilean independence. But we had no ulterior motives, Monsieur. And the reports of Nazi pledges and promises you fed your own national press because it was to the interest of your government? Reports such as these. Our official of the German government declared today that his country has only friendly intentions towards France. French men, he said, can depend upon and rest assured of German friendship. There is no cause for alarm. Yes, gentlemen of the Havas Agency, for that the dead thank you. For that assurance of Germany's friendship and others like it, French corpses will maintain their immortal calm. Their sons and daughters, their wives will all thank you. Grateful for your deliberate withholding of vital news, for the lies made necessary by French policy of those years. It is the hands of the betrayed that present you with this medal. To Wolf of Berlin, controlled in its early days by the personal banker of the Kaiser, later as DNB, controlled by the personal criminals of Hitler. To you we award the Iron Cross. What we did, we did for the greater glory of the powerland. By disseminating anti-French, anti-English, anti-American, and anti-Russian propaganda throughout the Balkans and Germany. The state demanded certain procedures. We are Germans. Which procedure comes under the name of premeditated murder? We were patriots. To what? Your nation is murderous kingdom. Your patriotism, the loyalty of gunmen. Ah, but the Iron Cross grows heavy in my hand. And so, for the issuance of hate bulletins to your own national press, for the corruption and lies and animosity you spread through the Balkans, for your share in the deliberate assassination of peace, this Iron Cross. Forged from the ruined spires and girders of smashed cities, from the gaping, tumbled homes of a multitude, sticky with the blood of martyred million. And what shall we award to Britain's Reuters Agency, King of them all in the old days, dominant leader of the World News Cartel, trapped by its own blindness when it could have helped to prevent war? What shall we award you gentlemen? The Legion of Honor and the Iron Cross? Or the bitterness of bombed English towns? The old Reuters is dead. What prejudices we circulated will be spread no more. But it was done. The damage was done. You sat upon the crossroads of international news and through it you lulled your own nation as well as others into a false sense of security, when danger, like mythology's sword, hung by a thread above the world. You men of Reuters were more skillful than the rest, but your guiding principle was always the same. Shall I send out this donator? Does it promote British interest? Yes, sir. Very well, send it. Shall I send out this donator? Does it harm British interests? Well, it might be so interpreted, sir. Then kill it. But we do insist on keeping the record straight. It's true. You men of Reuters cleaned house in 1939. But by then it was too late. For by then the world's most promising student of propaganda had learned all you news agency gents could teach him. This is what he had learned in his own words. Leave us face it as we uneducated Americans are want to say. You sowed a wind and reaped the whirlwind of hate, pillage and fire. The opinions and the prejudices you fostered through your controlled news channels now come back to you. And to us in the shape of shattered towns and blasted hopes of seared flesh and vacant mines and graves and aching hearts. And now, perhaps too late, we've learned the lesson that news is a powerful weapon, a weapon that can cause a war or keep the peace. Or have we learned this lesson? For those who haven't, bring on the grim exhibits. Let the victims come forward. The people who daily bought and read their press and believed. Let them come forward. Those who during the intervening years of two great wars have been read to, preached at and bargained for. Those who have been whittled, coaxed, warned and commanded through poison news. Let the victims come forward. First, Virginia Stevens, born in the town of Coventry in England. The daughter of poor parents, her age seven. Virginia Stevens? She cannot answer. Why not? A child of seven can hardly speak when she lies beneath ten tons of rubble. You will find my baby under our house. If they could find her from so high in the air, surely you can find her from so near. How could they do it? How? In God's name somebody tell me. Seven years old. Was she a danger to them? Could she have hurt them? Could somebody tell me? What made them kill a seven-year-old child? Their brutality made me a killer, too. A Polish teacher of fine arts named Peter Wozik. How? Stormtroopers entered our street in Warsaw one night. She had only gone downstairs for a moment. But they saw my sister. It was night. Later, I heard her crying and whimpering on the stairs. I carried her up. Her clothing was torn. She was bleeding. I put her on the couch and took the gun my father always had. And then I went downstairs. I don't remember how many times I fired at the stormtrooper. In the middle of the street I kept firing, firing, firing. My sister was only 15 years old. That's all. A child. 15 years. They're not human. Lies have made them into beasts. Victims all. Symbols of millions. Victims of all the hate propaganda loosed upon the world. The young, the unformed, made into killers before they hardly know what it is to be alive. I am 17 years old, Herr Leutnant. How long have you been fighting? 34 weeks before I was captured. Four weeks in Germany, 30 in France. You still think you'll win? If the first says so, we will win. How do you feel about this pillaging and murdering of conquered peoples? Those people are inferior races, Herr Leutnant. How can you be so sure of that? Be sure? I have read it. Dr. Goeppels' newspaper says so. Yes, Hitler knew what he was talking about. We saw his prophecy come to pass. A whole generation corrupted by lies and distortions. Their avenues of information is tightly guarded as their national frontiers. Educated by a controlled press. Educated to be beasts. And when we are reminded, we weep for their victims. But that is not enough. We must now solemnly resolve to build a future in which the printed word reflects only truth. A free, unhampered flow of news must be guaranteed so that this world war can end forever the hate and prejudice that brings slaughter and carnage in their wake. Hey! Yes? Why didn't they guarantee an international free press after World War I? They tried, my friend. They tried. Representatives of the American press tried to get it written into the Treaty of Versailles. Well, what happened? This. The American delegate wishes the floor? Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have a proposal to place before this treaty-making body. A proposal which I believe will make future wars such as the one just concluded impossible. Will you please state your proposal, Mr. Delegate? Gentlemen, I propose that in the writing of this peace treaty we include the principle of a free international press guaranteeing the unhampered flow and transmission of news and thus make the world's news serve the public good and not the powerful few. Stand by. Stand by all you unborn generations. The moment is a delicate one, unexpected, unforeseen. The chairman, worriedly eyes his neighbors, his free hand frets nervously at the Green Bay's tablecloth. His gavel has poised and bewildered suspense as a dead, tense silence. World, listen. You seven-year-olds in Coventry, you butchered innocence in Warsaw's ghetto, you gallant young Americans beneath the white crosses. Listen. I beg to inform the American delegate that the question he raised is being taken care of privately. Next business. Next business. And the moment almost grasped, roared by. We should have known that the conquerors would not deny themselves the use of the press as a propaganda arm. For although the battles were done, the war went on behind office doors, soundproof and heartproof. After the Treaty of Versailles, the wolf agency was pushed into the background, but Reuters and Habas gripped the channels of world news more tightly than before. The matter had been taken care of privately. We failed in 1919. We won the war, but lost the peace. We must not fail again. After this war, the press must be free. The techniques of circulating hate and prejudice must be banished from the world. How shall it be done? We are the people, the victims. Tell us how it must be done. Yes. We wait outside the treaty-making rooms when the decisions are shaping. And we stand in streets and squares and in the rain we stand patiently. Tell us how shall we make sure that the spreading of lies will end? Partition of your government. Demand that they include in the peace treaty the principle of freedom of the press throughout the world. We will demand it. Demand that they guarantee that at least one news agency in each nation be owned and controlled not by an outside group, but mutually by the papers it serves. Co-operative non-profit news agency. As Reuters is now at last by the British press. Yes. We will demand that at all. Demand that no news agency be restricted to making agreements with only one over-lord agency, but that each one shall make such international news exchange arrangements as it will. Demand equality to all agencies in the getting of all official news. Demand equal access for each one to transmission facilities, wires and cables. The truth must not be blocked. And with power to punish all violations, the treaty must prohibit the perversion of all news. It must forbid the inclusion of biased nationalistic propaganda in the circulation of world news. Yes. We will demand all these things. For we are the victims. The brotherhood of man is not merely a martyr's dream. It's an objective to be fought for just as any town or railroad line. It's not impossible. It can be won. It can be made the enormous victory of this war. By permitting international news to flow unhindered between the peoples of the earth like a clear untainted river. By letting truth so long wounded and weary move in freedom through the world, peace can be won and held. The slain and the cripple stand at our shoulders now. And like us, they will stand outside the treaty-making rooms, overflowing into the streets and avenues, a great multitude, united in their determination that there shall not be a World War III. Ladies and gentlemen, a footnote to our program given in person by the author of Barriers Down. Mr. Kent Cooper, general manager of the Associated Press. Mr. Cooper. As a newsman myself, I have sought independence in gathering and disseminating the news of the world. I am not alone in seeking that idea. The executives of the other American news agencies are in this fight heart and soul. So are all American newspaper and radio men. Together we shall demand that the peace treaty include a provision guaranteeing worldwide freedom of the press that we need the help of all the millions of freedom-loving, war-hating people in the world. And so tonight, I ask all of you listening in, will you please help us to strike down forever the barriers that stand in the way of worldwide freedom of the press to strike down forever one of the greatest barriers to worldwide peace. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kent Cooper. Tonight on Words at War, we've brought you Barriers Down by Kent Cooper. The radio dramatization was by Raphael Hayes. Barry Kroger was the narrator and Mr. Cooper appeared in person. The music was arranged and played by William Meader and the production was under the direction of Anton M. Lieder. Next week, Words at War will present the radio dramatization of Camp Follower by Barbara Claw. This series of programs is brought to you in cooperation with the Council on Books and Wartime by the national broadcasting company and the independent radio stations associated with the NBC network. Jack Costello speaking, this is the national broadcasting company.