Dick Tracy Goes Abroad

The Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert McCormick and his New York News's cousin, Captain Joseph Patterson, are more like black sheep than lambs. But last week these two Anglophobes (Colonel McCormick thinks of Rhodes Scholars as fifth columnists in tweeds) surprised everyone by lying down with a lion; their Tribune-News syndicate made a deal with the British news monopoly, Reuters, to peddle each other's wares.

For 41 years Reuters and the Associated Press had an agreement to stay out of the other's backyard. The pact ended in 1934 (although the A.P. still trades its U.S. news for Reuters' foreign coverage). In the ten years since then, Reuters has acquired only 32 U.S. clients, got only as far inland as Chicago. One handicap: the wide suspicion that Reuters is a semi-official propaganda arm of the British Government. To combat this impression, Reuters took ads in U.S. trade papers to prove that it is a cooperative like the A.P., owned by British newspapers.

Henceforth Reuters' big sales force in Europe, the Middle East, India and South Africa will devote part of their time to building Gasoline Alleys on the Danube and giving every Hottentot a daily diet of Dick Tracy. In return, the Tribune-News syndicate's wide-traveling salesmen in the South and West will take Reuters everywhere that Little Orphan Annie goes.

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