Times's Change

In England, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Bank of England are no more fixed institutions than the London Times. But last week the Times moved. Funereal Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain punched a shiny newspaper press button, formally opened a spick & span Times printing annex which precedes the re-placement of the whole group of grim historic buildings around dingy Printing House Square, a block from the sluggish Thames in "the City."

Fearful lest it should leave behind in its dilapidated quarters some of its impeccable character, the Times pondered long before moving, chose a site little farther away than its staid Editor Geoffrey Dawson could throw a handful of type. Its new six-floor 18th-Century style building did not startle the antiquated Blackfriars neighborhood, for the fagade is of dull Portland stone and weathered hand-made tawny-brown bricks, each chosen with fond care and joined, as the Times said, with "a sympathetic mortar." Lest the 152-year-old Times lose some of its hoary atmosphere, a new rubber-floored proofreading room was paneled in veneer made from piles of the old Waterloo bridge.

No new quarters have yet been provided for the guardedly anonymous editorial staff, who are still confined in file-cramped cubicles on three floors of the old Times building. Those ancient floors are joined at each end by a winding staircase and the Times's famed lift--"Full load, 3 persons"--in which, legend has it, the great Editor Dawson was once marooned between floors for an hour, copy for an important "leader" article quivering in his hand.

Eventually Times writers must venture into a new building, but for the Times things move slowly. Often behind other papers in reporting important news, sometimes withholding actual scoops until a Times man can make a personal check, the conservative standard-bearing Times gets no complaints for tardiness from its 196,000 respectable readers who expect only reliability, authority and dignified entertainment.

What it lacks in circulation (as contrasted with the Daily Express's 2,400,000 copies), the Times makes up in weighty prestige. Sometimes a hint from the Times's "parliamentary correspondent" paves the way for action at No. 10 Downing Street. Rarely the Times thunders forth, altering British policy. During a crisis foreign embassies with almost comic concern telephone the Times to learn what it is going to say, take its words as the British attitude, often before the Foreign Office has made up its mind.

This powerful force the legendary Geoffrey Dawson shares with Major the Hon. John Jacob Astor, principal stockholder in the Times Holding Company Ltd. which controls the profitable paper, and John Walter, fifth generation descendant of the Times's founder. Shareholder Astor of the English branch of the Astor family, bought the holdings of the late Viscount Northcliffe 15 years ago. To insure that no unworthy shall gain control of the Times, no transfer of common shares by a living holder to anyone except Owners Astor and Walter can be made without approval from an austere committee whose members are the Speaker of the House of Commons, Governor of the Bank of England, Warden of All Souls, Oxford, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice, Headmaster of Eton College.

To succeed the intellectual Mr. Dawson in that rarefied atmosphere, Major Astor is grooming a protege: Robert M'Gowan Barrington-Ward, late of the Observer and Balliol, Oxford. But most active figure on the staff is Foreign News Editor Ralph Deakin, a seasoned newspaperman who dresses in the lounge suits of Fleet Street, not the stiff Times garb. Daily he talks and cables to many of the Times's 100 correspondents, reminds them the Times is not in competition with the news agencies, is not interested in routine crime stories or sports events, does not want predictions, is ''as proud of the material we keep from the public as that which we publish."

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