THE GRAMOPHONE

London OjJice: 68, Frith Street,

London, W.l.

Edited by COMPTON MACKENZIE

~paONBI Regent7977,7~78.

TELEGRAMS: Parmaxto, Weatcent, London.

Vol. VII.

SEPTEMBER, 1929

No. 76

EDITORIAL

ence as a novelist have led me to suppose that the public is a great deal less idiotic than the Automatic Press still pathetically believes. My experience of broadcasting has done much to confirm this impres

1.A.l\{ glad to be able to announce that my project of a new weekly paper about radio will be achieved this autumn. One of the benefits which the launching of Vox will confer upon THE GRAMOPHONE is that i t will enable us to move "into more convenient offices. We have been lucky enough to secure the upper half of a large eighteenth-century house in Soho Square where we really shall have room to listen to the gramophone far better than we can at 58, Frith Street. Among the other advantages of our new quarters is a small room, opening out of the audition room, into which the Expert Committee can be locked i f necessary like a jury. We shall keep the distribution office at 58, Frith Street; but the editorial and advertisement offices will be at lOa, Soho Square. After long and anxious deliberation as they say, which usually means after thinking over the matter for ten minutes in one's bath, I have decided to abandon the scheme of producing Vox at twopence and tosubstitute the undemocratic price of sixpence. I have come to this decision reluctantly, but the problem of distribution came to seem too difficult for the moment. The EdItor on the beach at Erlskay where Prince

Charles Edward landed from France, July 13rd, 1745.

sion, and I propose as Editor of Vox to test this theory of mine even more completely.

I regret extremely that lam not at present in a position to feel confident of being able to make this test with a twopenny weekly; but I pledge my word that i f I can make Vox a success at sixpence so that i t will shoulder i ts proportionate share of the" overheads" as stoutly as THE GRAMOPHONE will be able to, I shall later on try to produce a twopenny weekly as well. I believe profoundly that the Press, as i t exists to-day, is breaking up, and that radio (to which will undoubtedly be added television) is going to revolutionise human thought and human action as completely as the invention of printing revolutionised it.

I remember as a boy of thirteen buying the first number of the Daily Mail on my way back from school, and I remember the thrill with which I discovered that at last 'somebody had produced a newspaper to appeal to an intelligent boy of thirteen. I remember

My object is to bring out a paper-readable from cover to cover without pandering to what I am convinced is not really what the public wants at all. A legend has been created by what may be called the Automatic Press, of a reading public whose mentality is something between that of a half-witted nursemaid and a candidate for Borstal. My six years' experience of THE GRAMOPHONE, my two years' experience with the Sunday Pictorial, and my eighteen years' experi-

writing to my father and asking if, at any rate while he was away from home, we could take in the Daily M ail instead of the Daily Telegraph, pointing out that his consent would mean saving a halfpenny a day. At that date the columns of the Daily Telegraph were considered to have touched the limit to which a daily paper might descend in i ts search for readableness. The Daily Telegraph, however, did not appeal to clever boys of

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