Daily Stars & Stripes

For the first time since the fall of Paris, a U.S. newspaper began daily publication in Europe* this week. The Stars & Stripes, successor to World War I's famed A.E.F. paper, changed from a weekly to the U.S. Armed Forces' European daily. The new Stars & Stripes is the first service daily in World Wars I or II.

The doughboys themselves forced the change. They wanted more news from home, and said so. Tired of trying to make something out of the dry, news-lean English papers, they wanted their news served up American style. Typical doughboy beef: "How can I tell the World Series scores when the London Times tells of a run scored in penultimate frames?"

Since its advent last April the Stars & Stripes has given doughboys in Britain an eight-page weekly ration of U.S. wire service copy and pictures supplemented by sports, domestic news and radio photos. More conservative than its rival weekly, Yank, published in New York City for U.S. Armed Forces everywhere, S & S has nevertheless carried its share of comics, cartoons, together with first-rate coverage of U.S. troops in Britain by some 15 newsmen attached to combat units.

The new Stars & Stripes does not intend to change its formula, merely to offer more of it. The paper will go up to eight pages on Mondays, will not publish Sundays. The Sabbath is reserved for bluff & breezy Yank. The two papers, which are not for sale to Britain's public or soldiers, will cost the doughboys sixpence a week. Although their circulations are secret, they are unquestionably the fastest growing publications extant.

Editor of Stars & Stripes is Major Emsley M. Llewellyn, a Tacoma advertising man who covertly sneaks his own contributions into his "Army Poets" column. Business manager is an ex-Hormel Packing Co. executive, Private Warren McDonnel. News Editor Robert L. Moora, a staff sergeant, is a former Herald Tribune desk man.

The staff of Stars & Stripes operates out of three rented rooms in the cavernous interior of the London Times citadel off the Thames embankment. The presses of the Thunderer now print Stars & Stripes --much to the Times's befuddlement. Like all U.S. journalists, S & Sers work in their shirtsleeves. They eat coatless in the austere Times restaurant. Such indecorum puzzles Times newsmen.

Some other things puzzle them even more. High-collared Chris Kent, Times's general manager, inspected dummies of the new Stars & Stripes recently. When he saw the Li'l Abner, Blondie and Joe Palooka comic strips, he observed: "It's a bit amusing. But think of the Times putting out this sort of thing!" A solid page of leg art stopped him cold. "Are you going to continue this sort of thing?" he ejaculated. "It might affect the morals of our composing room."

* After the fall of France, the New York Herald Tribune stopped publishing its Paris edition.

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