New High for Low

Only a small minority of U.S. newspaper readers have had a chance to see the brilliant cartoons of David Low, Britain's great political cartoonist. The New York Times, which for six years has held the U.S. rights to Lord Beaverbrook's brightest star, made no attempt to syndicate his cartoons. The Times let him shine only in its Sunday paper (circ. 1,148.000), occasionally let others reprint his work..(The only other regular U.S. outlet was the weekly Nation--circ. 45,000.)

The measly U.S. circulation and take of $100 a week was far from satisfactory to the Beaver and to William Aitken, his 42-year-old nephew and syndicate manager.

Brisk Bill Aitken had sold Low and other Express and Evening Standard talent to 119 papers from Iceland to Fiji. In Canada, he had sold the rights to Canada Wide Feature Service, Ltd., a flourishing baby in the publishing family of John W. McConnell's Montreal Star. Soon Low was syndicated to 25 Canadian dailies. As a reward, Canada Wide got the U.S. rights starting the first of the year.

Beachhead. Last week, in the first big invasion of the U.S. by a Canadian syndicate, Canada Wide was going strong. It had sold Low to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Boston Globe and others on a select list of 30 dailies. In Manhattan, the Times lost out entirely; the Herald Tribune signed up. TIME & LIFE bought the exclusive magazine rights, except for the Nation.

With Low, U.S. editors could buy Cartoonists Sidney Strube and Carl R. Giles, and Columnists Nat Gubbins and "Beachcomber" (John Michael Morton), whose humor would probably suffer more from a transatlantic passage than Low's (his sardonic New Zealander's eye has always seen farther than a Little Englander's).

Invader. At 56, the man who sired Colonel Blimp, and often appears as the Colonel's confused little partner in the cartoons, is well-padded and unpressed. He still frets & fusses for hours over each cartoon, in the workroom in his house. He still does "a little writing, some painting, a little sculpture, a bit of golf," a little broadcasting, occasional tripping, and a lot of thinking. His most difficult subjects are U.S. Congressmen and Americans in general; he feels that a rustic Uncle Sam no more symbolizes the industrial U.S. than a fat John Bull depicts undernourished Britain.

Low calls himself "nonparty, but not non-partisan." But he is enough of a socialist to favor the nationalization of Britain's basic industries. Under the controls of Labor's ordered society, he is sure that personal liberty--which he has always fought for--can survive. And he still regards Tory Lord Beaverbrook, his occasional target, as "a wide-minded man" and a good boss. "He doesn't resent my' publishing my views," says Low, "and I don't resent him publishing his."

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