IT was bound to happen sooner or later. Though Robert Elson is TIME'S bureau chief in London, and his son John is TIME'S religion editor, they have had little chance to work together professionally--except as competitors. Last year, when Robert Elson was detached to write an article about Pope John for LIFE, Son John was writing a TIME cover story on the Pope, and, sighs the father, "his story beat me by two weeks." They were competitors again more recently on stories about the new Pope. But usually father concerns himself more, in his London TIME job, with Harold Macmillan, Geneva conferences, Tory and Labor politics, and the higher significance of Christine Keeler.

In London, partly because of the father-son relationship, Bureau Chief Elson generally stays away from religion stories. Father believes that he himself, after 39 years of journalism, may have the edge in news experience and judgment, but thinks his son "much better informed" in religion and better educated in philosophy (at Notre Dame). Son John similarly hesitated to work from his father's files: "We are both a little edgy about it." But there comes a time.

For this week's cover story on the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bulk of the London reporting came from Charles Champlin. But it was natural for the London bureau chief to add a few words about the church's role in today's morally troubled Britain. Elson also traveled down to a little village in Dorset, where in a book-lined study that looked like a stage setting for Trollope, he had an engaging interview with the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher. Son John read his father's file, then relaxed: "He's a good reporter--as a matter of fact, it is always a small shock of surprise to see again just how good he is."

WE have always operated on the journalistic principle that we should "people" a foreign country with others besides its leaders, and we believe that to report the gross national product is only the beginning of describing a nation. From Germany in recent months we have had a number of stories describing changes in that country's way of lite --the breaking-up of the upper class ("an eclipse of princes"), the role of marriage brokers, the practice of nudism, the absorption of Germans expelled from Communist territory, the way Germans are buying up foreign real estate ("Lebensraum with a View"). But few of them have stirred up more reaction or been more widely reprinted than our recent story about fat Germans.

Bavarians took it jollily, Berlin winced but was not upset, image-conscious Bonn worried about whether its image was too big, and Ludwig Erhard's aides protested that high tide for him now is only 198 Ibs.

This week in THE WORLD comes a natural sequel, a report on how a record 3,500,000 Germans are trudging off to spas to take the Kur. The story is called, forgivably enough, This Year in Marienbad.

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