The Press: Hot News

The complaint to the London Times from Reader Peter Allison of Stapley Road, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, was headlined, A CRY FROM THE HEARTH. Reader Allison protested that it was “unforgivable” that “a journal so rich in tradition . . . should fall down on this one vital issue which affects every household in the country.” The issue, according to Reader Allison: three times he had tried and three times failed to light his fire with a copy of the Times. If he failed once more, he planned to transfer his business “to a newspaper which shows more readily combustible qualities.”

Last week fire-breathing readers of the Times hotly defended the paper. “Our copy of the Times burns beautifully,” wrote Lady Balfour of Burleigh, “and by its very quality can be made to form a hard core which replaces and saves wood. Mr. Allison should have his chimney swept.”

The good, grey New York Times settled the matter in its own exhaustive way. It tried the burning qualities of both London’s and New York’s Times, described the tests in a deadpan report. “They were made in three phases: 1) burning rate of a tightly rolled sheet of newsprint, 2) burning rate of a loosely crumpled sheet, and 3) determinations of the advance of a burning edge on a single, unfolded sheet.” Found the Times: “In all three comparisons, the London paper’s newsprint appeared to burn equally fast, and probably faster than the New York paper . . .

“Either paper . . . might be used to start a fire of any desired size. An additional test with newsprint of the New York Daily Worker, sometimes regarded as an inflammatory paper, revealed no significant difference in burning quality.”