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On 20 July 1924, the American Committee for Devastated France (ACDF) formally transferred its property in the Aisne province to French authorities. The three-hour ceremony precipitated French and American commemorations of ACDF activities, and public and private expressions of French gratitude for the humanitarian aid 328 American ACDF volunteers had provided to the Aisne's inhabitants for seven years. Yet the gifts, performances and speeches by local residents and international luminaries failed to catalyse what US Ambassador Myron T. Herrick hoped would become a greater ‘international partnership’ between France and the USA. This paper contends that this failure stemmed not from insignificant acts of remembrance towards the American Committee on the part of the Aisne's beneficiaries and French and American statesmen. Instead, the ephemeral recollection of the ACDF's legacy in both nations derived from the cognitive dissonance between the transnational goodwill the American organization and French citizens expressed towards each other, and the international antipathy with which each nation state generally regarded the other's world view in the interwar era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of international broadcasting using shortwave radio, focusing on the U.S. and France between 1925 and 1942. A partnership was created in 1931 to exchange broadcasts between the French Ministry of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones (PTT) and the U.S. National Broadcasting Company (NBC), a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The broadcasts were either heard directly on shortwave radios, or were heard on AM radio sets with the use of relays. Broadcasting during World War Ii is also discussed.