English Announcer Quotes in Foreign Correspondent (1940)

[last lines]

[radio broadcast from London]

John Jones: Hello, America. I've been watching a part of the world being blown to pieces. A part of the world as nice as Vermont, and Ohio

[siren sounds]

John Jones: , and Virginia, and California, and Illinois lies ripped up and bleeding like a steer in a slaughterhouse, and I've seen things that make the history of the savages read like Pollyanna legends. I've seen women...

[bombs begin exploding]

English Announcer: It's a raid; we shall have to postpone the broadcast.

John Jones: Oh, postpone, nothing! Let's go on as long as we can.

English Announcer: Madam, we have a shelter downstairs.

John Jones: How about it, Carol?

Carol Fisher: They're listening in America, Johnny.

John Jones: Okay, we'll tell 'em, then. I can't read the rest of the speech I had, because the lights have gone out, so I'll just have to talk off the cuff. All that noise you hear isn't static - it's death, coming to London. Yes, they're coming here now. You can hear the bombs falling on the streets and the homes. Don't tune me out, hang on a while - this is a big story, and you're part of it. It's too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come... as if the lights were all out everywhere, except in America. Keep those lights burning, cover them with steel, ring them with guns, build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America, hang on to your lights: they're the only lights left in the world!