Double Muddle

Cavalcade--not the first, but the second British magazine to lift TIME'S form and formula--has devoted a large part of its two years in business to falling between a succession of journalistic stools. Last week currency was given to the most recent and most awkward farrago in Cavalcade's career.

One sticky July day last year this letter arrived at Cavalcade's Fleet Street office from Hove, Sussex: Wherever the Roman Catholic Church was founded, its behaviour during the last few years has been no recommendation, for they evidently show their Christianity by massacre and slaughter both of defenceless mothers, and their own people, as seen in Abyssinia, Ireland and Spain. I would rather be a Moslem. ...

Turner

With north-country directness, perspiring Editor William James Brittain, aware that lords sign a solitary surname, dispatched a blunderling to find out if there was a Lord Turner. In a Hove telephone directory the editor's helper found the name of Sir George Robertson Turner. Thereupon Cavalcade printed and credited Sir George with a letter he had not written. In court, Sir George, an 82-year-old, devout Church of Englander, said Cavalcade's botchery had caused him great pain, for his friends began suspecting that, at his great age, he had lost his mind.

Cavalcade's back-bending apologies placated the old knight, but within a month Cavalcade's muddling had Sir George's attorneys again on the trail. While Editor Brittain was away recuperating from his strenuous July, another blunderling picked an old letter from Cavalcade's, unused type, slapped it into the August 7 issue to fill out a column. By the weirdest chance this second letter attacked Sir George for attacking Catholicism: Didactic, Semitic, would-be letter -writer George Turner should learn that in the art of good journalism lies the avoidance of tautology. His very being would de novo prefer Islam and his statement of such fact is redundant. Exasperated, Sir George again sued hapless, tautological Cavalcade and has just settled for 5,000 of the dollars Cavalcade can ill spare. "Even our solicitors," said flabbergasted Editor Brittain, "looked at me queerly when I told them the facts."

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