London Looks at the U. S.

Britain's weekly Picture Post gave U. S. readers a laugh last winter when it printed a fantastic illustrated description of the life of "an average New Yorker" (TIME, Dec. 18). With Britain facing Adolf Hitler's hungry legions and looking over her shoulder to the U. S. for arms and sympathy, Picture Post's Hungary-born editor, Stefan Lorant, made up his mind to publish a special U. S. issue, commit no errors, tell British readers the impartial truth about their lost colony.

Result: Picture Post's U. S. issue, out last fortnight, sold its entire first edition of 100,000 copies by nightfall. Another 100,000 rolling off the presses last week were gobbled up as fast as they reached the newsstands.

When he first started preparing his issue, Editor Lorant wrote U. S. Ambassador Joe Kennedy a letter, was startled next day when his phone rang and a Yankee voice announced: "American Ambassador speaking." At Kennedy's suggestion, Editor Lorant hopped a Clipper, spent three weeks in the U. S., interviewed editors of TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, commissioned articles from Raymond Daniell of the NewYork Times on Franklin Roosevelt, freelance Writer Jack Alexander on Washington. Most of his 172-page issue was carefully checked by U. S. newsmen in London.

Approximately half of Picture Post's text consisted of a workmanlike condensation, Reader's Digest style, of FORTUNE'S U. S. issue of last February. In its brief articles on U. S. writers, women, newspapers, magazines, cities, eccentricities, on WPA, farmers, Negroes, the unemployed, Picture Post used British parallels to explain U. S. institutions. Example: Writer John Escher explained football and baseball in rugby and cricket terms.

A native of Budapest, 39 years old, Stefan Lorant was once a concert fiddler, still lets his dark hair (balding in front) curl behind his ears. For seven years he was editor of the Muenchner Illustrierte Presse, built it up to a circulation of 750,000 before a rival editor named Adolf Hitler had him arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 for "Bolshevik conspiracy." After his release Editor Lorant wrote a book (I Was Hitler's Prisoner) that sold 400,000 copies.

One howler in Picture Post's careful study of the U. S.: under a picture of Supreme Court justices a caption read, "Every bill, after it has passed both Houses and received the President's approval, must be accepted by them before it can become law. It is in their power to veto. . . ."

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