"Holy Ghost"

Famed among world department stores is Harrods, of London. Here shop Britain's King and Britain's Queen. Here come Her Majesty of Spain, Her Majesty of Belgium, many a Lord and many a Lady. Not quite so large as Selfridge's, Harrods admits no superior in quality, in clientele. Head of Harrods is Sir Woodman Burbidge, Bart., C.B.E., member of Royal Automobile, Royal Thames Yacht, Ranelagh clubs, Commandeur de l'Ordre de Leopold II of Belgium. Solemn, dignified, impeccable, Harrods last week published in the New York Times and the London Times a series of testimonial advertisements so ingenious as to command the instant admiration of U.S. advertising men, to whom British advertising is often a source of amusement. The Harrods series was in fact posted on the bulletin board of the J. Walter Thompson Co., potent Manhattan agency.

The distinguishing characteristic of the Harrods series was its success in making three excellent testimonials out of three refusals to give testimonials. Harrods had asked H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw to "lend the influence of their pens to the cause of Business" by writing what might vulgarly be termed an advertisement for Harrods. All three refused. But all three also wrote long letters explaining their position. Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett virtually watered their refusals with their tears, Mr. Shaw seemed somewhat less tempted and some what less grieved.

Wells. Said Mr. Wells : "I can imagine nothing more amusing and exciting than to study your marvelous organization [but] our only paymaster ought to be the reader. . . . The writer . . . classes himself . . . with the teachers and the priests and the prophets. . . . Apart from that your project is most attractive."

Bennett. Said Mr. Bennett: "I am all in favour of the departmental store. I cannot keep my eyes off its window-displays, its crowds of customers, its army of employees [but] public opinion in Britain is not yet ripe to approve the employment of responsible imaginative writers ... in any scheme of publicity for a commercial concern. Personally I differ from public opinion . . . but I will not flout it."

Shaw. Said Mr. Shaw (in the course of a 1000-word essay): "To propose such a transaction to Mr. H. G. Wells is like offering the Archbishop of Canterbury a handsome cheque for dropping a recommendation of somebody's shoes or soap into his next sermon, or sounding the Astronomer Royal as to the possibility of keeping the clock back for half an hour during a big sale. ... Its acceptance would be the last depravity of corruption in literature. . . . For ... an author to accept payment from a commercial enterprise for using his influence to induce the public to buy its wares would be to sin against the Holy Ghost. ... By all means let our commercial houses engage skilled but nameless scribes to write their advertisements as such. But a writer who has been consecrated by Fame to the service of the public, and has thus become prophet as well as author, must take wages in no other service."

The pontifical quality of the three refusals was somewhat weakened by the fact that all three gave Harrods permission to print their letters. Thus the communications, appearing along with pictures of their writers, gave Harrods a most excellent advertisement and furnished the three consecrated prophets with much incidental publicity. Meanwhile, however, the honor of literature was preserved, and the purity of what Harrods termed "three of our greatest Masters of the Written Word" remained unsullied.*

*Mr. Wells has allowed his picture and a little sermon on Sleep to appear in testimonial advertisements for Simmons Beds.