Siren Songs Most of the advertisers in the New Yorker
seem to go on the assumption that it is read by relatively sophisticated Americans. There is no harm in the British Travel Association departing from this premise, and trying to lure visitors to our "warm, smiling land" with a piece of Butlinesque hyperbole which proclaims that "Everyone you meet, from the London Bobby at Buckingham Palace to the Ulster fisherman mending his lobster pots, is joined in the happy assignment of making you feel ' at home '." But I don't think the Association ought, in the captions to the photographs illustrating its advertisement, to make specific mis-statements of fact which are not so readily detectable as such in America. To say that "The sparkling smiles and fancy costumes of London's Pearlies are a familiar sight" is to say something which simply is not true; and "All over Wales you'll find the traditional Welsh costume" conveys a highly misleading impression of sartorial costumes in the Principality. I really think the British Travel Association ought to do better than this.
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