EXPERIENCED radio listeners know by now that the best news of the war can be obtained at 8 A. M. and 6:45 P. M. on the Columbia Broadcasting System. For at those hours one can usually hear Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts, with their reassuring salutation, "This is London." Ed Murrow is still "over there," but CBS has transcribed all of his broadcasts, and the best of them are here published in book form. "This is London," with its excellent commentary by Elmer Davis, is practically a textbook on London's history in the last year and a half. But it is doubtfull that a more readable and engrossing textbook has ever been written.

The remarkable thing about Murrow as a news broadcaster is that he never was a newspaperman. Practically every commentator nowadays is or was a well-known journalist, but Murrow's only news experience has been at a London microphone. Yet Murrow can describe a diplomatic treaty as well as the bombing of London's East Side.

You apreciate his wry humor when he says, "It is reported from Oslo that the Norwegian Noble Committee has reached a decision on its annual peace award. It has decided not to award a peace prize for 1939." You are sure of his sincerity when he says, "How long these people will stand up to this sort of thing, I don't know, but tonight they're magnificent. I've seen them, talked with them, and I know." You realize what the spirit of the Londoners is when he says, "Today I walked down a long street . . . In one window--or what used to be a window--was a sign. It read: SHATTERED--BUT NOT SHUTTERED."

One might suppose that a day-by-day account of London in war-time would be monotonous because it is no longer news. But reading the book is an excellent way to brush up on one's history of the last 19 months. And the picture it gives of democracy under fire is as timely and graphic as it was when it was first presented.