"Britannia"

Filtering through the mails last week, from London to U. S. advertising managers, came a letter which ran as follows: "Dear Sir:

'Britannia' is NOT the most marvellous paper that has ever been produced. It is NOT controlled by supermen and superwomen. The whole world does NOT eagerly await the appearance of 'Britannia' every Friday morning.

''But . . . 'Britannia' is out to make friends--not enemies. Will you not let us number you among our friends and give 'Britannia' a trial in your next appropriation?"

To this request even the most friendly could not respond, for while the letter was on its way, the choleric, anti-U.S. weekly Britannia (TIME, Nov. 5) had failed under the extravagant editorship of Novelist Gilbert ("Swankau") Frankau and was about to lose its identity in a merger with England's popular Eve, according to statements issued by wealthy, wiry William Harrison, owner of both publications and some 25 other periodicals.

In New York's Hotel Ambassador, last fortnight, nervous and be-spatted Publisher Harrison refused to discuss onetime Editor Frankau. He also refused to discuss the purpose of his visit to the U.S., beyond the usual foreigner's phrase: "I am studying America." But, in alternately low-voiced and explosive sentences, he was ready to speak of his fondness for golf; his many publications (including Tatler, Sketch, and Daily Chronicle); his 25 paper mills in England, Scotland, Germany; and his 1,500,000 acres of esparto grass in northern Africa.

Esparto is a wild grass, growing tall as the bulrush. It flourishes in the sandy parts of northern Africa. It is picked for Papermaker-Publisher Harrison by a small army of Arabs. It is expensive, for the boiling down of the pulp diminishes its bulk by 50%. With the vigor of a true Yorkshireman, Mr. Harrison last week took pains to denounce as an ass an imaginative U. S. reporter who wrote how esparto grass had to be plucked by sweating Negroes, one blade at a time.