At War44-04-1144Wild River

Listen. The trickle of water. Snow melts in the wild-eye hills and the river begins its odyssey. Down through the foothills, far down through smoliansk and legendary keith, down through the freshening meadowland of the Ukraine, down to the distant sea, fourteen hundred miles of broadening, swelling power, river, nipper, wild river of Russia.

Giant river, your voice is of many voices blending into one. But above all, swells the deep chorus of the people. Listen you men and women everywhere, and I will tell you a story of love and toil and sacrifice and faith beyond all understanding.

The story of a wild river and the Soviet people. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council on Books and War Time, presents another program in the series Words at War.

Tonight's script, written by Charles Newton, is a radio impression of the novel Wild River by Anna Louise Strong. Now let me review your argument, Nikolai Petrovich. It is your view that while the river is potentially a source of great wealth, it is today making beggars our soul?

Exactly your excellency. Once each year, sometimes more often, the neighbor overflows its bank. Thousands and thousands of peasants and landowners lose their crops and off of their homes. It is a great waste to the nation.

And you propose that this dam of yours to set up a system of flood control? The dam would accomplish that and many other things. Now for instance, boats from the Black Sea can navigate upstream on the so far as the Parogia.

Then 60 miles of rapids cut the river in two. But with a dam and a lox there, the boats and barges can travel almost a thousand miles further north. Well that might be very profitable.