In February 1946 two American organizations, the Wilkes Memorial and the Common Council For American Unity established an award consisting of a flight around the globe, a flight intended to dramatize and perpetuate Wendell Wilkes’s concept of One World. The first winner of the award chosen on the basis of contributions already made to this ideal was the CBS playwright and producer Norman Corwin. In June 1946 Mr Corwin, with Lee Bland of CBS and a magnetic wire recorder, set out on a globe-circling trip in the course of which they preserved a hundred hours of voices and opinions of the people of 16 countries. Each Tuesday night for 13 weeks Norman Corwin brings the story and record of his One World Flight.

In this episode Norman Corwin is in Rome in Italy talking to the people who, after the war under the control of the fascist Benito Mussolini, are living again in a time of desperation, unemployment, poverty and economic crisis.