20 MAY 1938, Page 21

AMERICA'S PICTURE - NEWS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — It is

interesting to read in your article on " America's Picture-News," that the American picture papers have " got something " in the picture crime-stories they have lately introduced.

They have indeed. But like many another supposed American invention, they got it from us. In December, 1935, this paper published the first of a series of such picture detective-stories, to which we gave the name of " Photocrimes." The series has been running ever since. It has been bought for papers in half a dozen foreign countries, and in particular, in America by Look—one of the papers described by your correspondent. . There is, as a rule, not much in journalistic claims to have originated an idea, but in this case there can be no dispute. Your correspondent could have found existing here at any time during the past 24 years what he has managed to discover in America.—Yours faithfully, MAURICE A. COWAN, Weekly Illustrated, W.C.2. Editor.