Slavic Professor Will Direct Foreign Language Newscasts

Samuel II. Cross '12, professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, does not confine his activities to the classroom and Widener. Every Monday afternoon this fall he will be found in the studies of shortwave station WRUL (formerly W2XAL) directing a foreign language newscast aimed at Europe.

The programs will consist of discussions in German, French, and Italian covering "the American business situation, data on American politics, and an account of the American point of view on some important problems of foreign affairs," according to Professor Cross.

Little War News

War news will not be carried "except where some specific event has exerted a marked reaction on the American state of mind," he said yesterday, citing the sinking of the Athenia and the German-Russian Pact as examples of exceptions to the general rule.

The French text will be provided by Marcel Francon, instructor in Romance Languages; and the Italian, by Charles R. D. Miller '23, instructor in German. Professor Cross himself will prepare the German text. Their words will be shot into the ether via WRUL's new directional antenna, part of the equipment which makes the station one of the strongest shortwave units in the country.

Cross Old Hand

Professor Cross is an old hand at this game. It was last spring that he began writing experimental news broadcasts in German for W2XAL, a non-commercial station owned and operated by the World-Wide Broadcasting Foundation.

"While no effort was made at propaganda," he said yesterday, "events were naturally interpreted on these broadcasts from the democratic and specifically American point of view."

The programs were "favorably received" in Europe, he maintains.

Discontinued over the summer, the broadcasts were resumed on a daily basis during the August crisis. They were again suspended only when it became high treason under German law to listen to foreign newscasts, and when all powerful receiving sets in Germany had been confiscated.

The present broadcasts in German "are aimed at Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries," Professor Cross explains. The program is on the air between 4 and 5 o'clock Monday afternoons, on a wave length of 11,70 kilocycles or 25.4 meters.

Professor Cross's background for his new avocation goes beyond the academic. For six years after graduating from Harvard he served in the foreign service of the Department of Commerce; part of that time as commercial attache at Brussels and the Hague, and for the remainder as the Department's European chief.

These news broadcasts are entirely separate from Harvard's weekly general programs, broadcast in English and also over WRUL