World War I was hardly three weeks old when one William Ewert Berry, publisher of a modest group of British journals, came out with a weekly picture magazine: War Illustrated. Before the War ended and the Illustrated died, it had a circulation of 750,000 (record for its day) made Berry rich and helped earn him a knighthood. Editor was husky 43-year-old John Hammerton.
Last week World War II found War Illustrated back on the streets of London after a lapse of 20 years. Publisher was William Ewert Berry, now Lord Camrose, proprietor of a mammoth chain of newspapers (including the Daily Telegraph), and one of Britain's fabulous press peers.† Its editor was 68-year-old Sir John Hammerton (knighted in 1932), greyhaired but husky as ever.
Lord Camrose made up his mind to revive the Illustrated two days before war was declared, first copies reached the newsstands eight days after. Before the week was half gone, the original print order (500,000 copies) was exhausted.
Far cry from the dim photography of 1914 is the technical brilliance of war pictures in the new Illustrated. Its 32 pages show British anti-aircraft guns and planes waiting for German raiders, Britons scurrying into air-raid shelters, their children evacuating London while German armies overrun Poland. Most of Sir John Hammerton's scenes of actual war in progress came to him from the enemy's Ministry for Propaganda, by way of the neutral Netherlands and Scandinavia. He had no immediate plans for sending his own cameramen to the front.
War Illustrated had been out just five days when it found a rival: War Pictorial. Published by Bernard Jones Publications, Ltd. (whose Radio Pictorial and Football Forecast folded when war began), the Pictorial was guaranteeing a circulation of 200,000. It had 32 pages too, all gravure, with shots of the Westwall, the British Navy, the Royal Family, but no pictures of the war.
¶Press casualty of the week in London was William Burton Burton-Baldry's pithy two-page financial tipsheet, the Fortnightly Review. Editor Burton-Baldry, senior partner in a London brokerage house, had said in July: "War is not only unlikely, but almost impossible." With markets disrupted by an improbable war, the Fortnightly Review suspended publication "till the 'all clear' signal sounds."
¶British Fascists feared the same fate had overtaken Sir Oswald Mosley's Action when the first issue after war's outbreak failed to appear. Actually Sir Oswald's proofs were held up by the censor until too late for publication. Last week's Action (cut from 20 pages to eight) was out on time, demanding: "What is the policy of the Government in the present War? At first we were told this was a war to save Poland. Now we are told that it's a war to destroy Hitlerism. In plain language . . . it's a war to change by force the political system of another country."
†This week Lord Camrose became chief assistant to Lord Macmillan, Minister of Information.