A Letter From The Publisher, Oct. 28, 1946

Here is some incidental intelligence about TIME and 1) Luxembourg fleas, 2) Japanese journalists. 3) surrealist art, which has come to my desk lately and may be of interest to you:

Andre Laguerre of our Paris bureau reported the incident of the small Frenchman in a big beret who drove up to the Luxembourg Palace, where some 1.200 delegates have been trying to write the peace, prepared to do business with the authorities in charge. He parked his car, which was equipped with a padlocked trailer loaded with intricate contraptions, and sent in his card to the secretariat. He was given an immediate audience.

To the official who received him, the small Frenchman announced modestly that he was France’s leading scientific flea-catcher. He understood that the palace had been invaded and, for a small fee, he was prepared to remedy the situation.

Asked where he got the idea that the Luxembourg had fleas, the courteous fleaman said he had read about it in the American magazine TIME.

“You shouldn’t let yourself be impressed by frivolous journalism!” cried the outraged official. “There aren’t any fleas at Luxembourg. There never have been.”

Crestfallen, the little man in the big beret made for the exit. As he reached the door, the official shouted after him: “One thing more. If there are any fleas here, they must have been brought by delegates.”

Whatever became of the Luxembourg fleas, correspondents had firsthand evidence of their presence.

Unlike U.S. journalists, who are hired by the whim or good judgment of their editors, Japanese journalists are traditionally hired on the basis of formal examinations. Recently, 488 selected applicants for ten reporting jobs on Tokyo’s Asahi Shimbun demonstrated their ability at composition, foreign language, Japanese vocabulary, dictation & rewrite.

For “composition,” they had to write an original piece on Retrospectin!! the Past Year Since the Termination of War (almost all of the aspirants praised democracy). Asked to identify such newsworthy designations as GHQ, Bikini, UNRRA, etc. on the vocabulary test, all but ten got GHQ. One thought that Bikini was “the place where the American fleet was crushed by Japanese forces”; three listed UNRRA as the capital of Turkey.

TIME was used for the fourth part of the test: dictation & rewrite. The applicants took down a Japanese translation of TIME’S (Sept. 2) review of a year of Japanese occupation. They were given half an hour to turn it into a Japanese-style news story.

Recently, Kenneth Parker, of Janesville, Wis., sent in a kind of painting, done in oils, which he thought would interest and amuse us. An unidentified artist had painted it on wood bent at a go-degree-angle so that the picture could occupy the corner of a room.

Here is Reader Parker’s description of it:

“The picture . . . shows an obviously worried and harassed ghostlike human being reading TIME. News and data are flowing prismatically into TIME, and from TIME into the figure’s head. The portrayal of the head indicates that the reader is in a mental tailspin, and confusing thoughts are shown arising from his brain. [He] is relaxing uncomfortably in an impossible reclining attitude. His le:s are crossed and there is a banana peel under one foot, which he seems likely to slip on when he gets up. An Irish setter is asleep on the floor.”

TIME, which is accustomed to skidding on banana peels and having its

crossed legs pulled, is seldom admonished so abstractly. After due scrutiny and reflection, Reader Parker’s whatnot was returned to him with our thanks.

Cordially,