BBC and Mutual Broadcasting System, New York, 18 OCTOBER 1942
The extracts from this two-way broadcast give only Orwell’s contributions, in context. There are gaps in the transcript (represented by ellipses) where, presumably, what was said could not be heard to be transcribed; there is no indication that the censor cut anything. The programme was purportedly repeated on 19 October in North American and Eastern Services, but not noted in ‘Programmes as Broadcast’ (the BBC’s record of broadcasts made).
NEW YORK STUDIO: Master of Ceremonies: Peter Donald, radio raconteur ‘Can you top this?’
LONDON STUDIO: Master of Ceremonies: Colin Wills
| Speakers | Speakers |
| Howard Dietz, playwright | George Strauss, M.P. |
| Madame Lee Ya Ching, Chinese woman pilot | George Orwell, author of ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ |
| Pat Mulhearne, editor of ‘Hobo News’ | Commander Pauline Gower, A.T.A. |
| Aircraftwoman Dean, W.A.A.F. | |
| W. Vaughan Thomas of ‘John Londoner’ |
ANNOUNCER: This is London, England. And you’re about to hear the British programme Answering You—65th edition. Again questioners in a New York Studio address themselves directly to speakers in London and they are ready and waiting with our Master of Ceremonies, Mr. Colin Wills, Australian War Commentator.
After the introductions, Pat Mulhearne asked the first question:
MULHEARNE: After the first war General Pershing said that the American hobo was one of the best fighters under his command. He said that they can march further with a pack on their back, they could go for days without anything to eat, they could sleep in a ’bus, car or a trench—it didn’t make any difference. And what is the British military opinion of this?
WILLS: Well Pat we haven’t got any British military leaders right here in the studio but we’ve got a fellow who’s a Sergeant in the Home Guard—you know what that is. This Sergeant is George Orwell. He’s also a bit of a poet and he’s been a bit of a hobo in the English way. So George, will you tell him how the British hobo—if you can define such a person—gets on in the war.
ORWELL: Well you’ve got to remember that in England the whole set-up is a bit different. There isn’t that big hobo community here that you’ve got in America. The reason is at bottom that England’s a very small country—I suppose it’s only about as big as one of the smaller American States. It’s very thickly populated, there’s a policeman at every corner, you can’t live that sort of wild, free life found in … novels and so on. Of course that type exists in England but they generally tend to emigrate to Australia or Canada or somewhere. You see, people going on the road—as they call it here in England—is generally a direct result of poverty, particularly unemployment. The time when that population on the road was biggest in England was during the slump years when I suppose there were not less than a hundred thousand people living that sort of life in England. But I’m afraid that by American standards you’d find it a very peaceful, harmless, dull existence. They’re extremely law-abiding and their life really consists of going from one casual ward to another, eat a very unpleasant meal of bread and margarine, sleep on a hard bed and go on to the next.
MULHEARNE: But how about their fighting qualities?
ORWELL: Well it’s quite true that some of the best regiments in the British Army, particularly the Highland regiments—the Scotch regiments—are recruited from very poor quarters of big towns such as Glasgow. But not, I should have thought, from what you could possibly call the derelict community.
DONALD: Well any more questions on that theme?
MULHEARNE: Question number two. The American hobo you know is basically a skilled migratory farm worker, or what you’d call an appleknocker. Now are the English hobos skilled in farm work? And what part are the English hobos playing in this war? Are they digging up a lot of scrap over there and so forth?
WILLS: Well, George here will answer that one too I think.
ORWELL: Well I think the chief fact about them as a result of the war is that they’ve diminished in numbers very much—they have sort of got jobs or are in the army. There is in England that nucleus of skilled or semi-skilled migratory farm labour. For instance hop-picking, potatopicking, even sheep-shearing is done largely by that type of labour. But very largely by the gypsies. Or apart from the gypsies there’s other people who are not gypsies by blood but have adopted that way of life. They travel around from farm to farm according to the seasons, working for rather low wages. They’re quite an important section of the community. But I think that’s been somewhat interfered with by the war because now there’s all sorts of voluntary labour, also Italian prisoners, schoolboys and whatnot.
Later, Dietz asked about the democratizing effect of the war. Strauss replied at length on the theme that ‘war is a great leveller’, and he quoted figures given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that, whereas in 1938 there were 7,000 people with an income of over $24,000 net per year, there were only 80 in 1942. He concluded, ‘Those modifications will go on, and as the war goes on, will get more level.’ Orwell was asked to respond.
ORWELL: Well, I can’t altogether agree with Strauss about the decrease in big incomes, I know that’s what the statistics say but that’s not what I see when on occasion I put my nose inside an expensive hotel.
WILLS: You ought to put your nose inside a British restaurant.1
ORWELL: … war, two years during which at any rate there has been a good …2 in people’s thoughts, is that people are still thinking in terms of what they call going back to normal after the war. For example, it’s a fact that the average man working in a factory is afraid of mass unemployment after the war. I do agree with what you might call mechanical changes that have been brought about by war rationing and lack of consumption goods and so on, but that to have any real deep effect without any structural changes is dependent on the war going on for some years. I think we must conclude that a change is happening in England but it’s happening in a very peaceful manner—sort of twilight sleep.