This month a new line of "heraldic neckwear" will go on sale throughout the U.S. Behind this move is a story that directly concerns TIME.

Heraldry is a subject that has fascinated Myles Standish Weston of TIME'S Promotion Department since he was eleven years old. At that time, to settle an argument about the German Kaiser's responsibility for starting World War I, he wrote to Kaiser Wilhelm at his postwar refuge in Holland. In reply Weston received a packet of propaganda which said that the Kaiser not only had not started the war, he hadn't even lost it. This line of reasoning failed to impress Weston, but the Prussian royal arms on the Kaiser's letterhead did. That started him off on heraldry.

During World War II Weston had a chance to study his favorite subject on its home grounds--as a private, later a 2nd lieutenant, in the U.S. Army in Europe. He talked to heraldic scholars and added some valuable source books to his collection. He also found out that his hobby is a fighting subject--after a clash with a Belgian soldier on a blacked-out train over what arms should be assigned to the present wife of Belgium's King Leopold.

A few weeks after Weston landed his postwar job at TIME, Nick Samstag, TIME'S Promotion Director, found out that he was a qualified expert in this study of the shields, crests and supporters that accompanied the patents of nobility won by outstanding men of yesterday for outstanding deeds. After talking to him, Samstag got the idea that the ancient science of heraldry could be used to symbolize the many groups that make up the readership of TIME. The result, after much work by the Promotion Department, was a 28-page, 19 by 24 inch book titled The TIME Audience in Heraldry. In it were 16 shields, of which six are reproduced below, symbolizing the arms that each of these groups of TIME readers might have worn had they lived before heraldry fell into general disuse. Its purpose was to call attention to TIME'S advertising pages by demonstrating that TIME readers are a most desirable audience for messages about many major products and services.

Soon after the book had been distributed store executives began asking if they could use the material for window displays. TIME'S Merchandising Director, Stuart Powers, and his staff worked five of the TIME readers' coats of arms into displays for men's stores. (You can see them this month in some 200 stores across the U.S.) Cluett-Peabody, makers of Arrow shirts, ties, etc., heard about the displays and asked us for permission to use 15 of the coats of arms as designs for a new line of "heraldic neckwear."

In addition to his regular duties for TIME Promotion, Myles Weston has applied his knowledge of heraldry to the business of decorating some of Robert Chapin's maps in TIME, to LIFE'S series on the History of Western Culture, and other purposes. The latter include answering letters from readers taking spirited exception to one or another coat of arms that TIME and LIFE have printed. The nice thing about the subject matter, Weston says, is that it allows for equally spirited replies.

Cordially yours,

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