 The Columbia Broadcasting System presents Norman Corwin's One World Flight. There was little Jane, the English-speaking schoolgirl in the Russian broadcast. Good morning, good morning, good morning to you. Good morning, good morning, we are glad to see you. And the beggar song in the Chinese program. And the Maori chorus in the report from New Zealand. You have just listened to voices recorded in Russia, China and New Zealand. Three excerpts among the hundreds heard in the course of twelve broadcasts in this unique and unprecedented CBS series which comes to a close tonight. For this is the thirteenth and last program based upon Norman Corwin's recent global tour as first winner of the One World Flight Award. At the end of the broadcast, Mr. Corwin will announce on behalf of the One World Award Committee the second recipient of the award. The name of the man who will start out on another globe circling trip this year in the interests of peace and one world. This is Norman Corwin. This is Norman Corwin. Just as a traveller re-entering this country declares his purchases at customs I submit for inspection in this last broadcast the main impressions of my global trip. The first of them is that in less than two years since victory too much has been forgotten. This was reinforced in my mind by an experience of the past week. I was hunting through recordings of the One World Flight and came across a mislaid item which didn't belong in the log. It was a disc made by the BBC in London in September 1940. I played it and what came from my loud speaker jolted me back to those days and made me realize anew how much has been forgotten. Here's the authentic soundtrack of a mere twenty seconds out of Britain's war. A fragment of one of a thousand nights of terror which visited cities and towns far from the fronts. But it brought back the time when each fresh headline told worse news than the one before. When Nazi conquest spread from the Arctic down through the English Channel over the Balkans into North Africa, eastward to the Volga and the oil fields of the Caucasus these were only a few bombs in a district of London but they recreated Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor the collapse of Singapore the fall of Tobruk. It was not so long ago that our papers were printing casualty lists. The telegrams went out each morning. Those were the days when there was a working unity among the United Nations. People were speculating about the chances of ending this war not the prospects of beginning another. Wendell Wilkie flew around the globe and wrote a book called One World which roused the hopes of the American people and gave them a vision of a future secure from bombs and violence from the anguish and horror that is war. Those were the days when we regarded Russia not as a menace but as a courageous ally and friend when we waited tensely for the last bulletin from each disputed street corner in Stalingrad. I was deeply disturbed by this souvenir of the Blitz on London. I looked up another memento of fascist warfare nothing at all dramatic merely a recording I made for my own notes on a sleepy summer afternoon last July in Czechoslovakia. I know you'll forgive a recording of my own voice in view of the fact that the men of this place could not speak for themselves. This is Lidate. Today there is nothing here but grass is all overgrown or a clearing in what was once the central of the village is the monument to the dead of Lidate. There is an enclosed area of about 50 square feet a small gate to this enclosed area is an inscription, what walk we love most daily signed the woman of Lidate. No one was walking on the sacred grounds of Lidate or Anzio or Lublin or Iwo Jima all of whose graves contain that which someone loved most daily. But there were people we met here and there around the world who have forgotten and there were even more people who believed that America has forgotten. In all too many of the countries overrun by war people felt that America as the only major power fortunate enough to have escaped blasted cities and severe privation did not deeply enough understand the war. This feeling expressed more in sorrow than criticism was voiced by such people as the educator who lived only a few miles from Lidate Professor Kozak of Charles University in Prague who had lost his own son, a flyer. He asked Americans to bear in mind the differences between countries which had experienced varying degrees of war. I think you must bear in mind that the mentality and the mood in the countries overrun and tortured by the German occupation forces by the Gestapo and so on is different from the almost unbroken happiness and sweet reasonableness of countries untouched by war. The professor was being ironical when he spoke of unbroken happiness and sweet reasonableness, for he knew well that little of either quality is to be found around the world. There are instead varying degrees of trouble, anxiety and tension created in the main by the unreasonableness of particular parties, factions and individuals never by large masses of people created by men who have already forgotten unwittingly, unintentionally Some of them walk on the graves of those we love most dearly when they talk of the certainty of another war when they talk of the inevitability of a showdown clash between two or more worlds. This talk is dangerous and that it is dangerous was emphasized all the way around the world from England through Russia to the Antipodes. There was the American in Rome, Dr. Eva Landsberg an unrephysician who last July had this forbidding thing to say about the war spirit in Germany. I don't know how it is in other countries but in Germany today you have one only voice and that is not will there be another war but when will there be another war? Everything is pushing toward the suppression of everything that is against the next war and coming to a point where all forces deep peace, Germans and many Americans are looking forward to a war against the Soviet Union. And in the Soviet Union itself the editor Boronin of the Moscow News warned against what he called war mongers who would create a world conflagration merely because it would afford themselves a bit of warmth. These that conflagrations don't start at once they start from the spark but the conflagration starts and there are people who will start a world conflagration as I read what he said in order that it be warm or sunken they don't care for the interests of humanity so long as it keeps them warm those are the war mongers the war profiteers those are the reactionaries and 20,000 miles further along in the trip in another latitude and another accent the prime minister of New Zealand Peter Fraser quietly scolded those who talk of inevitable war I think that those who talk about the inevitability of war are in a great deal of harm on the basis of hundreds of interviews out of the essence of a thousand kaleidoscopic impressions all of us seem to be farther from Wilkie's one world today than when his thesis was published five years ago everybody seemed to be agreed on the desirability of one world but very few on the method recommendations came easily but they were as varied as languages and customs in England Clement Attlee recommended patients in France Louis Aragon asked for remembrance of the past women should organize said Mrs. Hamar in Stockholm begin with the children said Mrs. Heselgren more frankness among diplomats said Altsing Anderson of the Danish Parliament in these words I think that the first condition is that the nations and their spokesmen both the politicians and the journalists in the press speak frankly to one another combined moral and material resources said Hans Engen in Norway developed the social sciences said Peter Capetze in Russia destroy suspicion the moment it arises in international affairs said the president of Poland exchange artists said the actor Jan Warrick in Prague education said Dr. Wan and Nan King return to the principles of Franklin Roosevelt said Mr. Aurel in Manila implement the four freedoms said Pandit Nero in India adding you cannot cooperate with people who are not free and who are suffering from all manner of complexes of fear and the rest therefore those countries who have power and influence in the world today should themselves give the lead in this matter and work out as rapidly as possible the ideal of call it the four freedoms or what you like that no nation no people should be subjected to another no race should be considered an inferior race as a race there were a few recommendations some of which you've heard on this series in past weeks for the achievement of one world by violent means drop an atom bomb on Russia without delay said some people such as this Filipino woman in Manila if I were your people in America I am going to induce president Truman right now to finish up Russia because if she does that right now we have no worry about her in the next in the future she was not the only one to propose war as an instrument of peace but she belonged to an infinitesimally small minority among the people we met most of the men and women we questioned about the atom bomb expressed either fear of it as a weapon of unimaginable horror or hope that atomic energy could be put to work as soon as possible for constructive and peaceful ends now and then we ran into the view that atomic war would be only little worse than any other kind since any other kind was bound to be catastrophic anyway Professor Edie Vallanda, head of the Swedish Engineering Research Academy was of this mind any kind of war would be catastrophic for Sweden I don't think the atomic war would be worse than any other and across the Baltic from Stockholm Professor Ignans Latowski Poland's delegate to the Atomic Energy Commission of the United Nations took a similar view We see here in Warsaw that it was possible to destroy a city without using the atom bomb and it is certainly true that if there are conditions now or in the future for another war no one will think in terms of using atom bomb if it is necessary to start a war and yet the atomic energy can improve our standard of living tremendously we see today that in Poland where is so much to rebuild if we could use a new source of energy but most of the people we quizzed we weren't attempting to conduct a poll or anything like that said they were sorry the atom bomb was kicking around in the world sorry that any country which found the secret might build the bomb sorry the world hadn't agreed on a way to control it yet sorry it might lead to an atomic armaments race a sheep herder in the back blocks of Australia was among these people well not much about that I think it's a pretty big habit what do you recommend we do about it? we heard a thousand opinions on a great many subjects but there was only one point on which everybody agreed one in which I as a travelling American took pride it was the view that the United States is unquestionably a colossus in the world without precedent and without peer when I started out I had hoped to find that our enormous resources and prestige and the greatness of our democratic tradition were helping to lead peoples out of suspicion, tension and fear but I was dismayed too often to find that the reservoir of goodwill toward the United States about which Wendell Wolke spoke enthusiastically in 1942 had drained to a low level from all I had read I expected to find and did find areas of suspicion, fear and criticism of Russia in certain countries but I did not expect to find the United States also suspected, disliked and resented to find that we are known in some quarters by our worst features and not our best this Austrian refugee Mr. Straw for example the lynching of Negroes gives me an uncomfortable feeling because I think of Nazi Germany and the persecution of the Jews and other peoples and in Rome, Saguio Amadei writer of the prize film The Open City expressed concern through an interpreter over what he believed to be this country's preoccupation with military matters there is a danger that Americans will forget their responsibilities in if you will pardon the word a drunkenness of victory I am afraid that in America I don't mean fascism they are developing a preoccupation with defense which is dominating the idea of peace and the woman in the town hall of Sydney, Australia speaking from the floor during a question period following an address on one world I feel there is a great danger in America of a native fascist movement with this lynching of Negroes and such things going on there and I feel the American people the trade unionists must be very vigilant and must fight this fascism which may be a danger to the whole world and not only to lovers of democracy within America itself and the inference by Ambassador Paul V. McNutt that the United States cannot expect the reservoir of goodwill in the Philippines to take care of itself automatically the reservoir of goodwill is intact but there are certain obligations on us to keep that reservoir intact less than half way around the world I got the feeling which strengthened as I progressed that all nations should do more about the principle of cultural exchange especially as it applies between countries whose political relations are strained it's pleasant enough to exchange artists and students and new compositions with countries who love us but cultural exchange takes on its greatest meaning and value in cases where the respective peoples knowing too little of each other harbor mutual suspicions and apprehensions what you're now hearing in the background is the Russian composer Aram Kachaturian playing a theme from a new unpublished work in the living room of his home in Moscow our visit there was typical of this kind of exchange before the interview was over we understood better something of the Russian attitude toward culture among other things and he perhaps understood something of the American view when he finished playing we got down to a rambling two hour conversation which ended in our toasting the peace, friendship and prosperity of both our countries multiply this meeting itself insignificant by several hundred or thousand and the principle of exchange could begin to assume proportions as a device by helping break down the barriers and misconceptions which keep people apart but it seemed to me as I went around that the greatest peril today is a sort of phobia created by factions who would have people everywhere believe there is no room in one world for more than one economic and social system in view of the existing facts such a world obviously could not be achieved without a war in which one crushes the other the idea there being room for only one system would be easy to accept if it were not for the fact that in several of the countries we visited notably Britain, Sweden, New Zealand and Czechoslovakia it was impossible to distinguish whether we were in a world of capitalism or socialism since patterns were being sought which would blend the best features of both and there was a remarkable unity within these countries in spite of the fact that several parties were represented in each government in Czechoslovakia, whose economy as well as geography represents a meeting of east and west and whose cabinet is a coalition of four parties President Edward Benish was able to say you can see in the streets of Prague everybody is working everybody is enthusiastic there is a very great alarm very great enthusiasm spirit for the work and all they knew that they are working for a new liberty and for a new independence in New Zealand there were only two major parties in the government but here again there was a blend of the better features of two economic philosophies both of which were living side by side very comfortably hence it occurred to me that if a united country can base its future on a combination of the most workable features of opposing systems we have no right to rule out the possibility that the same can be done by a united world indeed I came back from this trip with the belief that the very basis of a democratically united world is the establishment first of the will then of the means by which differing social and economic systems can live amicably together and the most important contribution to be made toward this goal is to convince the peoples of the world that a third war is not necessary or inevitable this task of debunking the cry that war must come was considered by most of the informed people we met to be the first and most urgent responsibility of the great powers and it struck me that perhaps the worst possible approach from any side is to attempt by propaganda, polemics, intimidation or by force to persuade either one of the two systems to abandon what it considers its righteous course for the other especially since down through history such attempts have only widened not narrowed basic differences that the people of the world are more interested in agreements than in differences was hardly an original thought the British minister of state Philip Noel Baker now minister of air voiced this very sentiment in one of the first interviews of the trip nobody denies that after a war you're going to have a lot of trouble and a lot of quarrels before you can settle down toward a peace for my part I think things are going much better than I expected I lived through the period after the last world war and I knew how much worse the destruction was this time and how much more widespread the fighting had been and I expected things to be a good deal worse than in fact they are people want well there are only a few minutes left to this one world flight and I come now to a final accounting in the 17 countries of this journey we found things which both disheartened and encouraged elated and dismayed us perhaps the single most hopeful sign was that most people no longer considered it sentimental and idealistic visionary to talk in terms of a unified world in which security and peace are sensations greater than tension, hostility, crisis and war they listened soberly to such talk and though many of them had doubts as to the way of achieving one world or were cynical about their chances of living to see it they all wanted it, they yearned for it they were willing to work for it there were the ugly aspects too glittering political dumpfires which unheated or deliberately fanned could spread and envelop the earth again hunger and poverty, ignorance and disease lay like a smoke haze across the Middle East, India, China the homeless slept on the sidewalks of Cairo and Nanking the stench of decomposing corpses rose out of the sewers of Calcutta there were pogroms in Poland, riots in Italy bombings in Palestine, massacres in India civil war in China and the Philippines against such troubles involving hundreds of millions of human beings the hopeful things of the world may seem few and scattered, lonely and shivering and lost but they're actually far from lost far from hopeless the majority of people we talk to felt that to despair of the world today is to resign from it to assume that human nature is committed to another war is to assume that suicide is a natural remedy for our ills if I learned anything out of the many miles and hours the many meetings and events the many people and the leaders of people it was that each one of us can help the world to its feet we can first of all stop thinking in terms of war and start thinking in terms of peace we can stop taking the view that every difference between nations is necessarily a crisis we can realize and accept the fact that the problems and maladjustments of this particular era are a direct consequence of the fiercest war in all history a housewife in Wellington named Mrs. Jeffries living 18,000 miles from the office of Mr. Noel Baker in London had a formula for the relationship of the individual to peace and one world work hard for the goodwill and the happiness of all the people nearest to you and then increase your efforts as you get further and further out to the circumference of the circle that's a conference to be the circle of the globe and I think that if each individual every day and in every way work sincerely and hard and unflinchingly towards that end and then praise hard for that ideal I think might come the informed and articulate people of the earth of whom Mrs. Jeffries is representative have a conscience and a will the will is to be free and peaceful in a single world to resist corruption and to make none of the old mistakes anew nobody wants ever to awaken the night again and hear the sound of careless politics raining down on them these sounds of indiscriminate warfare are obsolete today not because man has pledged himself to be less inhuman to man but only because there are far deadlier weapons yet perhaps all such sounds can be banished forever if each of us is willing to assist in the mammoth task of preserving the peace if each of us is willing to accept his share in what is far and away the greatest challenge of our lives and the greatest opportunity of our time the making of One World One World Award Committee I have the honor to announce in a moment the winner of the One World Flight Award for 1947 formal presentation of the award will be made at a public function in New York City on May 11th and on a date later in the year the recipient will take off on the second annual One World Flight the citation of the committee reads as follows in appreciation of his outstanding public service both nationally and internationally and particularly in recognition of his fearless expression through the radio and press of the highest ideals of One World the One World Award Committee has named as the 1947 winner Fiorello H. LaGuardia former mayor of New York City and director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Mr. LaGuardia is listening to this program tonight at his home and I know that the rest of our audience will join us when we wish him the best of luck and happy landings We have been listening to Norman Corwin CBS playwright producer and first winner of the One World Flight Award for the series of 13 broadcasts based upon his recent global trip Guy Dela Chapa was associate director of the series assisted by Richard Teela Lee Bland who accompanied Mr. Corwin about the world supervised the transcription process Special engineers were Harold Warner, Carl Harris, and Armand Gagnon Alexander Semler composed and conducted the musical scores for the series This is Lee Vines and this is CBS the Columbia Broadcasting System