The Press: Ads Across the Sea

It began when the New York Herald Tribune’s fun-loving, Paris-based Columnist Art Buchwald put an ad into the famed agony column of London’s Times: “Would like to hear from people who dislike Americans and their reasons why. Please write Box R. 543.” The ad produced not only 209 replies from as far away as California and Iraq and two columns for Buchwald,* but a rash of new ads putting Anglo-American relations to the test on both sides of the Atlantic.

Reticent Americans. Buchwald’s replies ran from the tersest reasons, e.g., “Suez,” “John Foster Dulles,” to full-scale defenses of Americans by British admirers. He concluded last week that Americans would be better liked in Britain if they “would stop spending money, talking loudly in public places, telling the British who won the war, chewing gum [and would] dress properly, throw away their cameras, move their air bases out of England, settle the desegregation problem, turn over the hydrogen bomb to Britain, put the American woman in her proper place, not export rock ‘n’ roll, and speak correct English.”

Even before Buchwald could sum up, another ad popped up in the Times: “Do you dislike the British? Advertiser would be grateful to hear reasons . . .” Then another: “Would like to hear from anyone who likes Americans and why …” The first of the ads was placed by BBC TV’s topical show Tonight, whose spokesman concluded: “Americans have a commendable liking for the British, or you are more reticent than we British, despite a widespread belief to the contrary.” The second ad brought 250 friendly replies to the American Weekend, a weekly published in Frankfurt.

Archaic Britons. Meantime still another ad began appearing in newspapers in U.S. cities: “Student of Anglo-American relations is anxious to know what qualities are most disliked in the British . . .” It proved to be the work of the London Daily Mirror’s waspish Columnist Cassandra (William Connor), who could hardly wait to return from his vacation to see what the postman had brought. One of the papers carrying his ad, the Washington Post and Times Herald, published its own reply: “The British are archaic. They cling to worn-out practices. They profess to see virtue in . . . training for public service, in honest elections . . . in decent manners, in regard for learning. . .

All of these tendencies are absurd, objectionable and of negative survival value. The British will not last. The only thing that keeps them alive at all is their sludge-weighted coffee, warm martinis and tiors d’oeuvres made exclusively by smearing stale anchovy paste on soggy crackers.” Columnist Buchwald. tiring of it all, wondered if he could end it by placing one more ad in the Times: “Will people who like killing birds as much as I do write Box 000.”

* Also a furrowed-brow item in U.S. News & World Report, beginning: “American and British officials in London would like to know what is behind the following classified ad . . .”