What happens
Elmer Peterson, a returning veteran with a leg injury, spends a spring day in San Francisco in April 1945 reflecting on how much the world has changed while he was away. Wandering the city, he overhears ordinary people debating whether a peace conference can really prevent another war. He then visits the radio station and the hotels where foreign observers are staying, hearing from delegates and correspondents from Britain, the Netherlands, China, Guatemala and the Soviet Union about the aims they bring to the United Nations conference opening in San Francisco. The episode concludes with a discussion from Calvin Coolidge Bourne, a veteran commentator, about the limits of what the conference can achieve.
San Francisco, spring 1945, as the United Nations Conference on International Organization is about to open
Characters: Elmer Peterson, Jane, Timmy, Anthony Eden, Jack, Mr. Powell, Major Pelt, Fabian Chow
Listen for: The succession of foreign observers' views on the conference, and Calvin Bourne's closing argument that the conference is a beginning rather than a final peace.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.