Evening star., 1928-11-25
"Grahan1

Phillip Car.in once said. in broad
casting a championship prizefght,
These words are being heard yester-
day, today and tomorrow" 1t was true.
The international radio hook-up, cover
ing all the time zones of the world, had
achieved the miracle of making single
human utterGnce audible in past, pres
ent and future. l envied Mr.. Carlin
this happy expression, and as I see radio
treading closer on the heels of Father
Time in flashing intelligence of great
news events, / am more and more i'm
pressed with the fact that radio is
building up new world conceptions of
time and space. Gabriel's trumpet,
searching out all the millions on the
earth, might well prophesy the loud
speaker of today. Science is surprising
the ancient miracles.
When the steamship VeStris went
down we were all thinking of these
things with considerable Solemnity, and
the entire world few hours after the
disaster had more complete and accu-
rate information than it could have OBJ
tsined in months in the old days. The
saving of lives in such sea horrors is
becoming an old story now. Unques-
tnhably more than 200 persons would
rajio-and brave Michael OLaughlin,
who stuck to his post. Marconi and
the others, down to the boy in the attic
with his hay-wire set, who pioneered
radio, saved those lives. and, if radio
had come a few hundred years earlier
other lives would have been saved and
history might have recorded less of war
and misunderstanding. less of blood
shed and futility. Just to check up on
this, I dug into one of my old school
history books the other day to verify
something suspected but wasn't quite
sure about. Here is what I found, for
instance, in regard to the War of 1912:
Too Quick on Trigger.
When the war started the American
delegation was in London, trying to
patch up the trouble over the search
and seizure of American ships. Some
body, however, was too quick on the
trigger and the shooting began. The
peace negotiations in London were sue
ceSSful and the British agreed to the
sailing ships, which would have to take
the dust from a modern hay scow,
started numbering across the Atlantic
with the big news. Everything had
been fixed up and there was to be no
war But the boys we're already at it.,
hammer and tongS, and there were
plenty OF killings, Just because Morse
and Marconi were born too late. The
concluding engagement of the war, the
Battle of New Orleans, was a desperate
fight for Andrew jackson and his
handful of sharpShooters, repeIling
trained British troops from behind
bulwark of cotton bales. It was a great
victory, but the edge was taken off it
when six weeks later the news arrived
that before this battle was fought a
peace agreement had been concluded in
London, and all this killing was useless
These men died because science had
not yet learned to project yesterday
across the Greenwich meridian into
tomorrow. To me it points up the idea
that modern communications are taking
up the slack in daily history, and that
progress is recorded as more and more
millions live in the vital present instead
Of the moldering past. The radio
voltage now being poured into the air
Is galvanizing today and informing and
energiZing tomorrow and leSSening the
balance brought forward in the blum
derS and mistakes of yesterday.
The broadcaSting of the loss of the
dirigible Shenandoah first impressed me
with the availability of radio for the
instantaneous spread of information of
events of great public interest. My
next dramatic reminder was when I
sat at the bedside of Floyd Bennett,
prevented from flying to France with
Comdr. Byrd by an injury at the flying
field A microphone had been placed
by Mr. Benefits bedside. Through the
NIGHT, while Comdr. Byrd was over the