(b)

T): The Director-General.

FROM: Professor Hilton.

As an outcome of my Talk on the B.E.F. wave-length last Tuesday I have received up to date just over 400 letters from listeners at home. A large number of them are from people who want to help in one way or another to make the lot of the men in France and on the seas and in training or on duty at home more easy. Many others raise questions of great moment to the writer bearing upon the keeping of the contact and the spirit between the men in the Forces and their people at home smooth and close. Many of them make suggestions of considerable value either for helpful action that might be taken by the authorities, or for topics which might be dealt with to good purpose over the air. A few of the letters are from men with the Forces, but the bulk of these (if bulk there be at the start - for as I said in my note. I believe the listening to the spoken word to be almost nil) will be a day or two yet in coming.

These letters should be dealt with. Mr. Stewart (of Mrs. Vyvyan Adams’ staff) and Miss Senior, my secretary, volunteered to stay at work over the week-end in order to open them and make an analysis of them, and I attach herewith a rather hastily prepared analysis of the first 249. Many of them ought by right to be answered.

[[Superseded by later analysis - (c) attached]]

I cannot possibly deal with them myself. At the present rate of reception there is a full week's work for at any rate one person and I rather think for two. In today's broadcast I am asking listeners at home not to write, and that will have, I hope, a damping effect, but it is for consideration whether it is not wiser to allow such letters to come and to deal with them than to choke them off. In that case, so long as I give these weekly broadcasts to the Forces, I shall need the regular assistance of one and possibly two persons.

There is of course the question whether this kind of work belongs at all to the Ministry of Information. I think myself it does. If it is our duty to keep the public in good heart, to use to the full every means of conveying heartening messages to those who feel keenly about the national cause, and to allay disaffection caused by misunderstanding, here is a golden opportunity.

My own feeling is that the means of influence opened out by this kind of talk to the Forces, overheard by large sections of the public at home, is something of quite superlative importance. It is an approach to the public from an entirely new angle. The broadcasts themselves could be so shaped as to do an immense amount of good. The correspondence resulting from this first rather feeble one is a sign that something of great moment has been opened out.

I am personally torn in all sorts of ways by this new phenomenon. Assuming that others see these possibilities in the clear light in which I see them, and assuming that I were thought to be the most effective person for the talks, I am confronted with the prospect of having to give up all other activities and take on either in the Ministry or in the B.B.C. or as a free lance this new mission.

I should like to discuss all this with yourself an[illegible] the Minister, but if I am to go on with even a weekly broadcast, and if I am to receive several hundred letter [illegible] week as a consequence, I must have someone to deal with t[illegible]

(sgd) JOHN HILTON

February 27th, 1940.