Puzzles & Politics .

The British press, much more than the American, is like the little girl with mid-forehead curl. No U.S. yellow journal is worse than Britain's biggest & worst, News of the World. But few U.S. newspapers can match the literary quality and accuracy of Britain's best (e.g., the London Times, London Telegraph). And in a half-dozen opinionated weeklies, the British press sets a standard, intellectual and literary, that is unmatched elsewhere.

A weekly that exemplifies British journalism at somewhere near its literary and critical best and prejudiced worst is the New Statesman and Nation. It is the biggest, orneriest and--in its rear parts--the smoothest of British literary weeklies. Since 1931, the New Statesman's circulation has soared from 14,830 to 87,156 (including 5,000 in the U.S.).

Maddening Muddle. The New Statesman is beloved, as Editor Kingsley Martin admits, by a "very high percentage of readers who say . . . that they read the front political part last and agree with it least." Politically, the weekly is a mishmash, an often-maddening muddle of Socialism, appeasement of Russia, and anti-Americanism. On the Korean war the New Statesman has adopted a "plague on both your houses" attitude, and has implied that worldwide Communism would be preferable to an atomic war.

The New Statesman's position as a kind of Chamberlain-of-the-left has endeared it to pacifist-minded intellectuals and greying Socialists who loved Russia in their youth, but it raises the hackles of most leaders of the Labor Party. When Prime Minister Clement Attlee was asked what publication he most disliked, he snapped: "The New Statesman."

Winged Barbs. In the sparkling back-of-the-book sections, directed by Literary Editor Thomas Cuthbert Worsley, surprisingly little of this left-wing fuzziness appears. Worsley, who is also drama critic and chief puzzle-master (under such pseudonyms as "Thomas Smallbones"), leans heavily on a few steadily brilliant contributors: Desmond Shawe-Taylor (music), Patrick Heron (art), G. W. Stonier, who also writes as "William Whitebait," (books, cinema) and topflight Book Critic V. S. Pritchett.

Though the magazine's pay is nominal, it has attracted such writers as G. B. Shaw, E. M. Forster, J. B. Priestley, Rebecca West and Elizabeth Bowen. A weekly feature is the barbed verses of Sagittarius (Olga Katzin, 54, a housewife who makes daily trips to the cubbyhole London office where she writes her poems). Recently, Sagittarius winged the government on the newsprint shortage. Said Sagittarius:

A little newsprint, shortly to be less, Outrages and insults the British Press A little muddle makes a pretty mess.

Wry Notes. In the column, "This England," the magazine regularly passes on to readers with an amused smile such deadpan comments on manners & morals as "The true story of the worst criminal in London's history. An admirably ghoulish play suitable for all the family. From poster for Shepherd's Bush Empire."

Probably the most popular of all New Statesman features is the "WeekEnd Competition," for which readers are invited to try their hands at everything from formal French sonnets to clerihews. Prizes range from one to six guineas ($2.94 to $17.64). In one competition, calling for parodies of the style of any novelist named Green or Greene, third prize (one guinea) went to "M. Wilkinson" for his parody of Novelist Graham Greene. "M. Wilkinson" turned out to be Novelist Greene himself, who complained that two other entries under different pseudonyms had won him no prizes at all.

Doubting Critic. The man largely responsible for the New Statesman's success as well as for its political fuzziness is Editor Basil Kingsley Martin, who writes most of the lead editorials and a gossipy column about cabbages & kings signed "Critic." With his querulous aquiline profile and his tonsure-like ring of hair, 53-year-old Kingsley Martin well fits his role as omniscient dissenter and belligerent pacifist. His sense of martyrdom is irritating and sincere, once prompted the remark: "If you see someone who looks as if he is on his way to Clarkson's [a theatrical wigmaker] to hire a crown of thorns--that's Kingsley Martin." Martin registered as a conscientious objector in 1916. After his return from World War I duties as a hospital orderly in France, he studied at Cambridge, fell in with the prevailing intellectual fashion of Marxism and, after a stint on the Manchester Guardian, became editor of the New Statesman in 1931.

Though he invariably writes with an air of great authority, Martin has pulled such bloomers as: "Among those who know Algernon Hiss . . ." Martin argues his views plausibly, sometimes brilliantly, but he is torn by constant doubt, often reflects the opinion of the last man to have his ear. Martin is no party liner, but since the magazine's unofficial policy board is made up of such anti-Communists as Labor M.P. Richard Grossman and such proCommunists as Alexander Werth (who is currently a Titoist). the editorial policy is as changeable as Martin. Said one British Socialist last week: "In its fantastic inconsistencies, the New Statesman distills the spiritual agony of the British intelligentsia."

But the New Statesman is read, and it does make money. Editor Martin says proudly: "I am proud of the fact that the paper has grown in influence and circulation without ever having consciously . . . played down to its audience or become less thoughtful. If it is to be called highbrow, then the number of highbrows must have enormously increased and that is in some degree our doing."

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