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DC Defence League

Wireless World, September, 1947.
    
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Radiolympia October 1947.

It is an axiom in this or any other country that if you have a grievance, whether it be against the Government or anybody else, you have only to bawl loudly enough and you will get it redressed no matter how imaginary it is. On the other hand, if you dont bawl nothing will be done about your grievance no matter how just your cause. This holds true from earliest infancy, for I personally soon discovered that a hearty yell was far more productive of the good things of life and got them much sooner than any amount of good behaviour.

A noisy and vociferous minority who wants the Government to provide red flannel underclothing for the grass-skirted maidens of the South Sea Islands can, by constantly bombarding MPs and Cabinet Ministers with postcards and telegrams, get far more action from them than the patient and silent majority who would rather have some red flannel under-clothing for themselves but haven't organised themselves into a body to demand it.

I have been at some pains to make the foregoing clear as there is in this country a long-suffering and patient radio minority for whom the fat and prosperous wireless community at large-including listeners, manufacturers and the hierarchy of Wireless World-care not a rap. I refer, of course, to the despised fraternity of DC users which is nothing but the Cinderella of the wireless community and will remain so unless the members organize themselves and set up such a yell that something will be done to redress their grievances.

Nowadays, of course, when the grid is groaning under its load, the big cry is that it is no time to think of adding to it. I am, however, willing to wager six bowler hats to a packet of cigarettes that in five years time, when we may reasonably expect the shortage of generators and electrical transmission gear to be but a dim memory, DC users will find themselves in exactly the same position as now unless they get together and do something about it.

The least that can be expected is the provision of AC/DC sets in adequate variety and quantity until such time as DC itself disappears for ever. As it is, one sees dealers' shops crammed to bursting point with post-war models of AC and battery sets with here and there a stray AC/DC set holding up its head amidst the obvious sneers of the ' AC only' aristocracy all around it. I dont know whether it will be the same at Olympia next month and I only hope that it is not too late now for the organizers to get all the DC exhibits into one corner of the show instead of leaving us to pick them out here and there in an obscure corner of each stand.

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