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An Invitation
(On New Year’s Day, Ira Dilworth, general
supervisor of the International Service of the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, addressed
a message of greeting to Canada’s shortwave
audience around the world. Here is an extract
from his remarks on that occasion.)
_.. More than seventy-five years ago, Matthew Arnold, looking out toward
the coast of France, was inspired to write "Dover Beach”, a poem which is
often described as one of the most pessimistic written in the Victorian period.
Its pessimism is couched in such a dignity and beauty of language that readers
have very often missed what, for Matthew Arnold, with his strong faith in
Humanism, must have been its most important line. Turning from the beauti-
ful but soulless pageant of nature which lay before him and which had brought
into his mind the struggle and misery of men throughout the ages, the poet
exclaimed, "Ah love, let us be true to one another!” There it is! That is the
only hope and it is a great one and a challenging one — a hope which has
been the basis of the strong faith of men in all ages. At the moment of peril
and hazard we are turned in upon our own spiritual resources and on the basis
of our humanity we are challenged to meet each other and find solutions.
I should like to say a word to you about our Service and I should like to
make it a very simple word. I hope it is a friendly Service, not official or
pompous or boastful. We have no high-flown illusions about it. We do not
think it is going to remake the world, but we do hope that it may help us to
be true to one another. We attempt to speak from Canada for Canadians,
ordinary Canadians, to you across the sea. We attempt to project the life of
our country for you to see. Oh, I am not sure that there is a Canadian way
of life. I know there are many ways in which Canadians do the many things
that life confronts them with. Some of these ways are special and characteristic,
but most of them are like your own ways with only minor surface differences.
We believe that only good for all of us can come from a better understanding
of the differences which exist among people and from a discovery that beneath
these differences are essential similarities and that these are the basic, impor-
tant human things.
In our Service I hope we open the door of Canada and give you a glimpse
of what’s going on inside — the things that occupy us during our working
hours, the things which delight us in our leisure, even sometimes the things
that make us anxious and worried. We ask you to come into our house and
sit down with us for talk and, we hope, for refreshment of your spirit.
May I indulge in a parable? It recalls to me, this opening of our house to
you, some of my earliest experiences. It was a common thing on the Western
cattle ranch where I was raised to have neighbours and often total strangers
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