From The Land Of Silent People

Words at war presents Robert St. John's from the land of silent people. That is the proud national anthem sung in Yugoslavia until the Nazis came. That is the scream of a Yugoslav woman. She's not being molested, her pain is mental.

She's just remembered something that happened on Bloody Sunday in Belgrade in Yugoslavia. That's the bomb that killed her husband. When she looked from a window of their house and saw him running across the square, disobeying the shallowed orders of the soldiers and the police.

The sight of a man being blown to pieces is a horrible thing to remember. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council on Books in wartime, presents the sixth in the series, Words at War.

Tonight, offering a radio adaptation of Robert St. John's Great Book, from the Land of Silent People. And now it is our pleasure to present in person Mr. Robert St. John. Scriptwriter Neil Hopkins has prepared a dramatic impression of my book, which does not pretend to portray everything that I've written.

Neither does it pretend to portray the hope, which today surges through those occupied countries of Europe as Italy teeters, and deliverance becomes more than a vague hope for the distant future. And since I don't pretend to be an actor, Don McLaughlin will play my part.

From the land of silent people is my report on some nations and some people who are for the moment silent. I'm a reporter and I saw it happen. Once on a lecture platform, the chairman of the meeting said to me, now just one word of advice before you speak, Mr. St. John, please remember that you're speaking after the dinner