11.4.42

It [1] has flopped after all. I don’t regard this as final, however. Listened-in to Cripp’s speech coming from Delhi, which we were re-broadcasting for England etc. These transmissions which we occasionally listen-in to from Delhi are our only clue as to how our own broadcasts sound in India. Always very bad quality and a great deal of background noise which it is impossible to take out in recordings. [The speech good in the earlier part and plain-speaking enough to cause, I should think, a lot of offence. In the later part it rather moved off into the breezy uplands vein.] It is a curious fact that in the more exalted passages in his speeches Cripps seems to have caught certain inflexions of voice from Churchill. This may point to the fact – which would explain his having undertaken this mission when only having such bad terms to offer – that he is at present much under Churchill’s personal influence.

[1] Sir Stafford Cripp’s mission to India