B.B.C. Mixture.—The B.B.C. is known by its initials the wide world over, and for many of its broadcasts its praise is in all countries. It is a monopoly, of course, and incurs, like nearly every monopoly, a deal of resentment on that ground. But the B.B.C. is far more than a monopoly. It is, from the strictly moral point of view, an impure mixture. It reminds one of the crisp and searching words in the Epistle of James: “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” The listeners-in hear good music and bad, fine singing and poor, high talk and low talk, Protestant preaching and Romanist preaching, words of wisdom and words which should never be spoken. Let anyone analyse the pabulum provided by the B.B.C. on any Sabbath Day. There are religious services, and dramatic pieces, and serious music and light music, and jokes and jazz—all mixed together, and following each other in swift succession as if it would almost be a sin for the B.B.C. machine to stop a little and be quiet. To many listeners, day in and day out, the ever-recurring gurgling of drinks from bottles and decanters, the clinking of glasses, and drinkers’ talk are disgusting. And, above all, the plentiful sprinkling, in plays and conversations, of swear words and the Divine Names hurts the Christian conscience intensely. It is time that something was done to cleanse and sweeten the fountain that flows from the British Broadcasting Company.—Bulwark.
Jewish Population.—The latest survey shows that of the pre-war Jewish population of 3,500,000 in Poland only 30,000 remain: 250,000 out of nearly 1,000,000 are still in Hungary, and 10,000 out of 75,000 in Yugo-Slavia. These are the figures of only three countries. In the last ten years about 5,000,000 have been killed in the Nazi endeavour to exterminate the Jewish race in Europe.