The circulation war between what are usually known as the
four popular daily papers is entertaining, if not altogether edifying. On Saturday the Daily Mail, the Daily Eapress and the News-Chronicle all announced, with striking simultaneity, that they had ascertained that the 14 4s. Presentation Set of Dickens offered by "a daily newspaper" to its readers for the sum of Us. in fact cost less for production and delivery than that modest sum. "A daily newspaper" was, of course, the fourth of the class, the Daily Herald. The announcement (front page in each case) seemed a little gratuitous, but on Wednesday came the sequel. With equal simultaneity the three non-Labour papers an- nounced an offer to their respective readers of a different set of Dickens, "bigger, better, cheaper "—the price in this case being 10s. The whole thing is, of course, a circulation scheme. Herald readers with their 11s. have to send coupons cut from the paper over a period of months, and no doubt the Herald's inlitators, the details of whese offers are not yet published, will make the same condition. When will the papers agree to scrap their insurance schemes and their guessing competitions and their four-guinea Dickenses and the rest of it and be content to stand or fall by their merits ?
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