 The Columbia Broadcasting System presents One World Flight. You are listening to a 71-year-old Polish pianist, Madame Zofia Obsawitz, playing Chopin in a room in shattered Warsaw in the heart of Poland. This is one among several authentic recorded sounds of foreign places and voices of foreign people. To be heard in this fourth of a series of Columbia Broadcasts, a series based upon Norman Corwin's 37,000-mile global tour, as first winner of the Wendell Wilkie One World Flight Award. This is Norman Corwin. Between no two cities in the world, could you find greater contrast than between Stockholm, capital of Sweden, and Warsaw, capital of Poland? One is beautiful and intact, with not a scratch of war anywhere on its surface. The other is a vast ruin, the most completely destroyed city of the war. The people of one suffered little more than shortages and the tensions of neutrality. The people of the other suffered anguish and horror beyond record and beyond belief. Stockholm stands at a junction of a lake in the Baltic Sea. The waterways which have earned at the name of Venice of the North are sparkling in blue and reflect a montage of docks and palaces, wooded islands, bridges, banks, ships, hotels, in general an attractive mixture of the antique and modern. In the summer, when we were there, the northern night gets no darker than an American twilight, and half the city seems to go boating or dancing or promenading in the famous Tivoli amusement park. It was here one night that we realized Tin Pan Alley runs right around the world. Almost all the music heard there came from Broadway, including this familiar tune which we recorded along with the dancing of Swedish Pete. Not only Sweden's standard of entertainment, but its whole standard of living is closer to that of the United States than any other countries. Stockholm, at least, is rich and relatively well fed. It lacks only enough fuel, a serious lack in this latitude, to equal in material comforts to typically prosperous American city. In Europe, it's most uncommon to hear a homemaker say that she misses nothing. Yet in the next recording, an average Swedish housewife, Mrs. Eva Daenerys, wife of a laundry worker, says that very thing. I asked her whether she was short of butter, eggs, meat, or other commodities. I can't say that I miss anything. You don't miss anything? No. You don't have to stand in line for bread or for food of any kind? No. Sweden comes by her prosperity through many causes, not the least of which was her neutrality in two world wars. She has a modified capitalism with a blend of socialism in the form of a cooperative system. She has resources and highly developed industries and good relations between management and labor. But Sweden resembles the United States in more than levels of wealth and plumbing. You find that modern American culture is heavily imported. American music, films, periodicals, fashions. Swedish newspapers run pictures of Californian bathing beauties along with local news. The comic strip Popeye appears in the Ufton blooded under the name of Carl Alfred. The week we were there, Popeye had an adventure which ended with his saying Varikmir Svansson, meaning, well, shake my tail. You find that the schoolboy of Sweden has roughly the same ambitions as the schoolboy of Missouri. I had a talk one day with a shy 18-year-old over Bergstrom in a country town near Uppsala. He said he wanted to be a businessman, to travel, to see America, to look at the motor industries in Detroit, and the film stars in Hollywood. He thought Russia was dangerous. I think Russia is a dangerous country, too. I don't trust one. And why don't you trust it? All the troubles were the English and the American every day. All the troubles were the English and the American every day. In Sweden, as in America at that moment, Russia was regarded as a crucial and pivotal point in international relations. I heard some anti-Russian talk, more than in Denmark and Norway, but there was also the attitude expressed by the Baroness Erin Kroener, a young, blonde newspaper woman on the staff of the Ufton blooded. She said, Speaking of Russia, I have an idea here. It's not mine. It's from many interesting people in Sweden, especially the youth. They would like to get in touch with Russia. Because we think that cost what it may... Cost what it may? Peace only can be gained by obtaining the confidence and belief of all peoples and in all nations. We must show Russia our belief in them and not mistrust them. Not mistrust them. And in exchange, obtain a positive something from the Russian nation to believe in in our term. And in exchange, obtain a possible something from them to believe in in our term. The prosperity of Sweden is by no means confined to industrial workers. I was told that its agriculture is in excellent shape. In a farmhouse near the village of Norby-Satteri, I interviewed a husky pink-faced farmer, Sven Siddin, whose house looked as though it had stepped out of a fashionable architectural magazine. He was happy with the way things were going. Said his only need was for American tractors, which he preferred to any other kind. I asked him... From where you sit here on this beautiful farm, do you feel nervous about the future? Or are you pretty confident? No, I don't feel nervous about it. I don't think that we get another war in my time. In all countries visited in the One World Flight, most people were eager for a unity that would guarantee existence against the hazards of the atomic age. But nowhere did individuals and government alike show more fervor for peace than in Sweden. It was almost as though having been without war for 140 years, they were anxious to stay that way forever. Swedish women especially seemed to be thinking hard about means of perpetuating peace. And I heard all manner of plans, theories, dreams, ideas, some good, some perhaps unsound, but all sincere. One plan was that of Mrs. Ludovica Heinish, who represented a group called the Universalists. She explained the main point of their program. But I want to come to a special point, which is interesting us. We thought it would be worthwhile to try and make a big effort towards really realizing our principle. It is in just two words, it's mothering the world. There was an aggressive peace plan of Mrs. Karin Hamar, a twinkling and energetic grandmother of about 60. She believed that if house mothers of the world united in a great labor union, we might be on our way to unity. Mrs. Hamar lives in a small town near the industrial city of Bofors in the center of Sweden. I asked her if it wasn't in Bofors that the famous anti-aircraft guns were made. That's where they made the anti-aircraft guns, no? The anti-aircraft guns? Yes, oh yes, yes. But he's a very peaceful man. Your husband makes anti-aircraft guns. But he's a peaceful man. He's a very peaceful man. He wishes that they would use guns. Just to shoot birds with, not men. Yes, and one world, quite a few. And I am also grandmother. You are grandmother? Yes, and I have four grandchildren. Grandchildren, yes. Mrs. Hamar, what is the name of the organization that you represent? The house mother's labor union. I asked her if she'd like to send a message to America, and when she made sure what I meant by consulting my friend Sven Norberg, sitting next to her, she straightened up and proudly extended greetings. Would you kindly say a word or two to the housewives of America? What? Saying a word in his name... Yes, so. They greet each other. I greet all American house mothers from all my heart, and I hope that they will be happy and economic independent, and they will be able to work for the peace, not only in America, but in the whole world. And then there was the little silver-haired 70-year-old Kirsten Heselgren, first woman to become a member of the Swedish parliament and a long and staunch fighter for women's rights. She offered no specific plan for peace, but did make a strong general recommendation. Begin with the children. Teach the children from the very first to cooperate and understand each other and respect each other. Teach the children to respect work, their own work, and to respect other countries as well. And there you have a beginning of the possibility of cooperation amongst the nations. Sweden at this time had not yet been admitted to the United Nations and it was anxious to join. In the face of current talk of new power blocks, the acting foreign minister, Nils Kwenzel, made a statement to me which indicated without any question where Sweden stood. He said, quote, Sweden is willing to relinquish its neutrality to the extent demanded by the statutes of the United Nations in case of a future conflict. But if there should appear a tendency within the organization to a division of the great powers into dual camps, our policy must be not to let ourselves be forced into any such grouping or block, end quote. Together with statements previously made to me by the foreign ministers of Denmark and Norway, this amounted to complete agreement on the score among the Scandinavian countries. One of the most internationally-minded men whom I met in Sweden was the tall, young, handsome Prince Bertil, son of the crown prince Gustav Adolf and fourth in line for the crown since the recent accidental death of his older brother. I had an interview with a prince just before I left Sweden and in it he said, Sweden is fully aware of the simple fact that she can't exist alone and by herself or even as a member of a group or a block of countries. Whenever there is an attempt at breaking down economic barriers, you are bound to find Sweden in the front line. I'm sure that during your stay here, Mr. Corwin, you've noticed how anxious we are to take part in any constructive attempt and international collaboration. To me and to my countrymen of Sweden, it seems clear that as good Swedes, we must at the same time be good citizens of the world. We left Stockholm for Warsaw on a bright cloudless morning which bore the good American date of July 4. It was the maiden flight of a new skymaster freshly delivered from Santa Monica. All the signs and legends on the ship were in English, but the Swedes had painted the name of a girl on each motor, Margit, Gunther, Ingebritt and Ingrid. We crossed over the calm Baltic, bisected the island of Gotland, covered more open sea, and finally made our landfall on the coast of what was once East Prussia. This territory was the first crossed by our path in which we saw any full-scale devastation. Bomb pits and tank tracks were visible even from 8,000 feet. But not until we approached Warsaw itself did we see how ghastly a terrain can look when it has been systematically destroyed. From the air, the city was weird and unbelievable. It looked like a painter's imaginary conception of catastrophe in which he had overstated his case. Little of the harsh detail could be seen in flight. We had to wait until we were on the ground and could see it face on before we could appreciate the vastness of the ruin. We landed at an airport whose only runway had been reclaimed from bomb craters. It was oppressively hot. The flat countryside was parched. We were met by a representative of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He greeted us and said, I am instructed to tell you that you were invited to go anywhere you please in Poland to see anybody you wish and to discuss any subject of your choosing. We were taken immediately to a reception in the garden of the Polish State Radio Station. The ride in from the airport was past long vistas of broken and toppled buildings, burnt out homes, twisted debris. The radio station itself was in an old mansion whose blasted interior had been rebuilt since the liberation. Our hosts had learned when we were coming only the day before and had hastily arranged a party to coincide with the American Independence Day. In high spirits they shared our celebration of it. Some of this was captured by my colleague Lee Bland on the wire recorder. We live in a democratic state where the Polish people do not live. They do not live! They do not live! Long live the United States! Well, that was Professor Krzyżanowski of the Polish University of Warsaw speaking. He said that we are the children of the great national hero of both Poland and the United States of Tadeusz Kościuszko. He said that being and Kazimierz Pulaski, he corrects me, excuse me, who fell at Savannah. Who fell at Savannah, I said. Well, since we are the children of these two national heroes would like to greet on the Independence Day of the United States of America on the 4th of July. Well, all the best to the United States of America from all the Poles. The garden in which these toasts were made was a pleasant oasis of green among charred and fragmented skeletons of houses in the neighborhood. There seemed to be no point in the city from which the outlook was not one of utter demolition. Dr. Ignas Zlatowski, a scientist who has since become Poland's delegate to the Atomic Energy Commission, explained to me that whereas cities like Berlin and Stalingrad and Manila were devastated by fighting, Warsaw was largely destroyed out of Nazi spite. About 80% of destruction in Warsaw actually is due to the fact that after the well-known terrible Warsaw uprising the Germans decided to destroy the city in a very systematic and typically German way. In other words, house by house, street by street. In other words, it wasn't a regular warfare. It was just simple fascist vengeance. There were a number of artists, writers, musicians, scientists and radio men at this reception and their clothes were in every case plain and worn. Poland is destitute. It was the first country overrun by Hitler. It endured the longest occupation. It suffered the cruelest treatment. The Poles lost 6 million dead of whom 3 million were Jews. But in spite of the colossal and stark gutting of the capital the spirit in Warsaw seemed far from despairing or indolent. Workmen were hacking away at the ruins by the most painfully primitive means. They had no tractors, bulldozers, steam shovels, acetylene torches. I actually watched a man working on a thick steel girder with a 16-inch hacksaw, a task requiring hours when a torch could have finished it off in a minute or two. Life was going on stoically against unbelievable hardships. Families were living and raising children in corners of ruins which they had cleared of rubble. Students were sharing books. Everybody seemed busy including the intellectuals. The pianist whom you heard at the opening of this broadcast, Madame Rabshevitz who at 70 was not too old to be in on the uprising was still giving concerts. When she learned that I was going around the globe on a one-world mission she chuckled I really wanted to. Madame Rabshevitz says that she hopes that we will achieve one world living in peace but she is afraid she's rather old and will not live and have the chance to live in those happy days. I asked her whether she thought artists and musicians could contribute to the making of those happy days and she replied with Huma that she was an artist. I asked her if she could contribute to the making of those happy days. I asked her if she could contribute to the making of those happy days. I asked her if she could contribute to the making of those happy days. What she said was I don't know if all musicians are such politicians as Paderecki was so I doubted very much. It was a reference to the late pianist Paderecki who was also a pre-war premier. Not long before we arrived in Poland there had been a national referendum. Signs telling people how to vote were still evident on whatever walls were standing. The opposition to the Warsaw government principally the peasant party of Stanislaw Smikolajczyk had protested the voting procedure claiming coercion and intimidation. The country was then as it is now divided in what proportion I was in no position to judge especially in as much as the disputed election of two weeks ago were still seven months in the future. There was an act of underground against the government. There was violence and killing over political differences. Charges of terrorism were coming from both sides. American correspondents who were there at the time were themselves divided in their estimates of the situation. What most deeply interested me as a traveler trying to investigate prospects for one world was not the claims of either party but the question of whether from the standpoint of its effect on the world outside the forces which had destroyed Poland in the first place and killed its millions were still alive. My questions were mainly to this end. One day I asked to interview a typical group of Polish workmen and was taken to a newly reconstructed power plant on the banks of the Vistula. The men were politically conversant. One of them said he didn't think atomic energy was the greatest source of power in the world. When I asked him what he did think greatest he replied the human being. Another said he believed that the great powers should get together on a definition of democracy before they do anything else. A mechanic asked me to explain Wendell Wilkie's concept of one world and when I did he said something in Polish which the interpreter translated as follows. I want to say that this idea suits me completely but I would like to say too that within this one world every country for instance Poland should be free and have the round possibility to develop their national culture and feeling. To develop their national culture and feeling. Another worker complained that the Allies were giving more material help to their late enemies than to their recent comrades in arms. I think that it's amazing for us that Italy a country which holds allies does get more material help than Poland. It's amazing for us that Italy gets more material help than Poland. I told a third worker that in the United States there was the impression that a substantial part of Poland was unfriendly to Russia. His answer dodged my question. I think we will always work with this nation which will destroy the German power and not this power which will reconstruct Germany. Not the matter which power it will be. That was rough both in quality and language. What he obviously meant was that Poland would cooperate with any nation that would destroy Germany's capacity to make war and would not work with any nation which would reconstruct that capacity. The next day we went to the Belvedere palace to record President Bolaslav Beirut. The palace is a great white structure the simplicity and dignity of whose exterior made me think of our own White House in Washington. It was left standing because the Germans used it right up to the last moment. President Beirut is a short solidly built man with a strong face and a black moustache. His attitude in our meeting was friendly, modest, unhurried. For an hour sitting at a small table in the Pompeian room he discussed questions that I had submitted. Only when he was satisfied that he had given them sufficient thought did he commit his answers to wire. The first need of Poland he said is actually a long lasting peace between the nations. Only in this way can Poland hope to reconstruct the damage inflicted by war for it will take us a long time to recover. He then appealed for help to Polish children often by war and for assistance in re-establishing Poland's badly disrupted educational system. In answer to a question about means of implementing the peace he said I think that the best way of securing peace is to destroy suspicion at any moment it arises in international relations. The best argument for what collaboration among nations can accomplish in peace time is what it accomplished in wartime. But here is the voice of the president himself making additional points. I take the liberty of quoting the translation from the official transcript because the rate of speech of the on the spot interpreter is exceedingly slow. In the direction of relations between countries one must give thought not only to constructive possibilities but to the possibilities of a rebirth of these dangers we escaped such a short time ago these dangers still exist. I am thinking about the rebirth of fascism and Hitlerite militarism. In their common collaboration nations must not forget this danger even for a moment. We have lived through a terrible war that no one once repeated. One broiling afternoon we went into what was left of Warsaw's ghetto. For hours we crawled around and through the rubble of the once walled in city where the Jews after having lost nearly 300,000 men, women and children to the gas chamber, the oven, the poison pit to typhus and starvation rallied themselves together and with pitifully few weapons stood off a German army 25,000 of them were slotted in no time. The Nazis rolled tanks right up against their homes and fired point-blank. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies still buried in those ruins. To the eye there was only a sea of ashes and bricks to the ear a dead silence the silence of a city become a cemetery. Wherever a living thing could attach to the earth there were weeds growing but the detail as we went along was the little human heart-breaking detail a shoe part of a bureau some woodwork an old porcelain bathtub with shrapnel holes through it. This wasn't the work of aerial bombs this wasn't done by night raids in which the defenders had at least an anti-aircraft gun and a fighter plane or two and no so much of with all its cowardice and its sadism here was the ultimate picnic ground of the professional anti-Semite this was the paradise of Julius Stryker I heard more talk about fascists in Poland than in any place I had struck so far they used the word with special emphasis typical of that emphasis was what Dr. Zlatowski said to me we've realized that there are still fascists all around the world both in Poland and outside of Poland both on this side and on the other side of the big ocean there were still fascists in Poland all right and it did not make me any more hopeful of an early arrival at one world to know as I stood there in the ghetto that only the day before after all that Europe and Poland had gone through a pogrom in the town of Kelsa a hundred miles away a pogrom which according to six American correspondents who rushed to the scene had been coldly and deliberately planned and executed executed by elements whom the government immediately denounced as hostile to the regime in any case 41 Jews, men, women and children had been ambushed and cruelly massacred it was hot that afternoon in the ghetto hot and still I looked at a circular stone monument which the city had put up among the debris withered and dusty flowers were strewn about the inscription read in memory of those who gave their lives in a singularly heroic fight for the honor of the Jewish people for liberty for Poland for the liberation of all mankind the monument had been there for a year but the bodies in Kelsa were not yet buried you have been listening to Norman Corwin first winner of the Wendell Wilkie One World Flight Award in the fourth of a series of broadcasts based on his recent 37,000 mile global tour all recorded voices heard on this broadcast were transcribed in Sweden and Poland next week at this time One World Flight visits the Soviet Union tonight's musical score was composed and directed by Aleksandr Semler Guy Delachapa was associate director this is Lee Vines and this is CBS the Columbia Broadcasting System