New Design

Sirs:

Congratulations! Your new design is superb.

ROBERT PARIS

Grand Haven, Mich.

Sirs:

And why was it necessary to cheapen the appearance of the outstanding newsmagazine in America?

G. HARVEY PORTER

Baltimore, Md.

Sirs:

TIME'S crisp new cover and crisp new captions fit TIME'S crisp contents perfectly. Congratulations !

K. B. CAMERON

The Financial Post

Toronto, Ont.

Sirs:

Outraged, betrayed, dejectedly off to bed last night, the first Friday in years without having read TIME. Brooding thoughts while seeking escape in sleep: Whistler's Mother with eyebrows plucked, lips rouged and fingernails enameled a brilliant scarlet. The Blue Danube in swing. Saint-Gaudens' Lincoln with face lifted, wrinkles erased and character lines obliterated. The legs of a fine old Chippendale piece knocked off and replaced with chrome pipe. The interior of Mount Vernon done over in 1938 night-club modern. The mellow patina of a fine old bronze reliquary burnished away. . . .

SALEM N. BASKIN

Chicago, Ill.

Sirs:

So you don't like spinach! (Sincerely, it reads and looks swell.)

ROGER E. CHAPMAN

Los Angeles, Calif.

Sirs:

TIME LOOKS TERRIBLE !!

ARTHUR COTTINGHAM JR.

Greenville, S. C.

Sirs:

CONGRATULATIONS ON TIME'S NEW MAKE-UP NEW COVER A BIG IMPROVEMENT YOU'LL NEVER MISS THE SPINACH.

HOWARD C. VANZANT

Washington, D. C.

> TIME'S typographical changes are the result of long thought, much experiment, some compromise. Only object of undertaking any change was to eliminate fussy traits, to make TIME more like TIME than it had ever been before.

Credit for new design goes to Eleanor Treacy, able onetime Art Editor of FORTUNE, now an independent consultant.--ED.

Sirs:

The paper appears to be of an inferior grade, the type is not as easy on the eyes.

C. J. Ross

C. Ph. M., U. S. N.

U. S. S. Brooklyn

Navy Yard,

Brooklyn, N. Y. > TIME'S paper is still the same. TIME'S type face (except for heads) has not changed; it is still linotype's Old Style #7 set in the same size, 9-point, but in order to improve legibility the lines have been leaded, or spaced out, 1/2-point wider.--ED.

Missouri's Short

Sirs:

The six following constituents of Dewey Short, Missouri Representative in Congress from this district, request that you publish in TIME a short biography of Mr. Short.

F. M. BENNETT

FRANCES SHERREL

O. N. WAMPLER JR.

GRAHAM STARR JONES

ROBERT E. SEILER

MELBA GELLING

Joplin, Mo.

The record of Representative Dewey Short is as follows:

Born: Galena, Mo., April 7, 1898.

Career: The eighth child of Galena's postmaster and chief Republican little-wig, Dewey Short was named for the hero of the contemporary battle of Manila Bay. He went to work as a straw-hatted, barefoot youngster delivering ice and baggage by mulecart to pay for his education. Perhaps the most, if not the best, educated member of the House, he has studied at Baker University (Baldwin, Kans.), Harvard, the University of Berlin, Heidelberg, Oxford. To pay his way, he worked not only as a drayman but as a teacher of philosophy, a lecturer, for one summer as a Methodist minister. His itch for politics took effect one day in 1916 when he substituted for his father on the platform at a Republican rally, made a hit as a boy orator. Elected to the House by his lead-mining district in 1928, he made an unsuccessful try for the Republican Senatorial nomination in 1932, got back into Congress in 1934. He was Missouri's only Republican in the last two Congresses.

In the House Dewey Short has an almost model anti-New Deal voting record (only major New Deal legislation he has voted for: Social Security).

He has voted against reciprocal tariffs, the Court bill, Reorganization, the Frazier-Lemke Farm Mortgage Moratorium, permanent CCC, Wages-&-Hours, AAA II, both the 1937 and 1938 Relief bills. He explains his opposition mostly on grounds of economy, but he voted to override the President's veto of the 1936 bonus bill, the biggest Treasury raid in Congressional history. His fellow Republicans value him not as a legislator but as an oratorical shock trooper. Imposing, hawk-nosed, witty, a voluptuous lover of words, Congressman Short is willing to talk on almost anything, sometimes does so memorably.

On the Brain Trust: "A bunch of theoretical, intellectual, professional nincompoops from Columbia University." On the New Deal: "Spurious, sporadic, uncertain, unsound, unworkable, and unconstitutional." On the proposal to establish a Federal Fine Arts Commission: "I do not see how anybody can enjoy listening to the strains of Mendelssohn with the seat of his pants out." On President Roosevelt's promise that he did not want to become a dictator: "Assurances are not worth a continental when they come from men who care no more for their word than a tomcat cares for a marriage license in a back alley on a dark night." On AAA: "I was number eight in a brood of ten. Under this New Deal ... I never would have arrived at all. Or, had I been fortunate enough to have seen daylight . . . little Henry Wallace or Dr. Tugwell . . . would have knocked me in the head and plowed me under."

Convivial until he married Gladys Helen Hughes of the Library of Congress staff last year, Dewey Short now spends most of his evenings at home preparing lectures to supplement his salary. His chief political cross: his brother Leonard, who was killed trying to break jail in Muskogee, Okla. after having been convicted for a grocery store robbery.--ED.

Remark

Sirs:

In TIME, Sept. 12 you published the statement: "U. S. Ambassador to France William Christian Bullitt went further, suddenly declared impromptu at a Bordeaux banquet in the presence of three members of the French Cabinet: 'France and my country are indefectively united in war as in peace.' "

This statement was never made by me at any time anywhere. The origin of it was the imagination of a reporter of a minor newspaper. La France of Bordeaux, who admitted that he had not been present while I was speaking. Incidentally, he happened to be the local correspondent of the Associated Press.

The Associated Press, after circulating the falsehood, announced that the reporter had withdrawn his story. Meanwhile, it had been given currency throughout the United States. . . .

I do not criticize TIME in any way for the reprinting of this report; but I should be obliged if you would make the facts known to your readers.

WILLIAM C. BULLITT

Embassy of the United States of America

Paris, France

Inexpensive Fun

Sirs:

So you think "flying is one of the most expensive ways there is to have fun" ? (TIME, Sept. 5, p. 29).

Well, I don't.

We own a Piper "Cub" (which cost us new, $1,398 with a few extras) and it takes two of us all over the country at a speed of 70 miles per hour and at an average gasoline consumption of 23 miles to a gallon! This is the only way to travel, off congested highways, dirty, smoky cities, and traffic noises.

The trend nowadays is towards light-planes which you or I can and do own. In our club are two members earning less than $20 per week, the other three earn under $45, so if it were so expensive we would not be able to fly.

WALLACE R. KENNEDY

Treasurer

Brown Deer Flying Club, Inc.

Milwaukee, Wis.

P. S. Out of the 2,289 domestic commercial planes built last year, almost 1/4 or 1,713 were so called light-planes which can be bought new below $1,500. Proof: Air Commerce Bulletin (issued by Department of Commerce free), Vol. 9, p. 230.

In What Language?

Sirs:

History is in the making, but in what language? Does the erudite Mr. Chamberlain speak German or does bellicose Mr. Hitler roar in English ? Or is the whole affair tamed by translations? . . .

H. L. RODGERS

Bradford, Pa.

> Messrs. Chamberlain and Hitler carried on their recent historic conversations through interpreters William Strang and Dr. Paul Schmidt of the British and German Foreign Offices-- ED.

Anguished Voice

Sirs:

Generally sharp and penetrating in its analysis, TIME went askew in its appraisal of radio during the war crisis [TIME, Oct. 3].

"Touted as an instrument of international harmony," you declare, "radio has a bad record as a peace maker." . . .

If radio did nothing else, in bringing the anguished voice of Chamberlain and the guttural defiance of Hitler, it drove the point home that war was near, that the world was small, that what broke out in a small speck would in short envelope the entire surface of the earth. . . .

ED KIRBY

Director of Public Relations National Association of Broadcasters Washington, D. C.

> In radio's infancy, many an idealist hoped that with man speaking to man through the air across national boundaries, international harmony might prevail. It has not done so.--ED.

Chamberlain et al.

Sirs:

. . . Chamberlain and Daladier conducted themselves as dignified men of reason and intelligent representatives of nations prepared to fight to their utmost ability if necessary. Lesser men would have been tempted to again snare conceited, sentimental, weak-minded Uncle Sam under the claptrap against dictators and antireligion.

The success of the conference seems to have been due to the fact that Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler and Mussolini were all fundamentally honest and each willing to understand, contemplate and sympathize with the problems of the nations represented by the others. . . .

H. GRAHAM

Phoenix, Ariz.

Sirs: Passion Play Season 1938-1939

Cast

Christus--Eduard Benes

Pontius Pilate--Neville Chamberlain

Judas--Edouard Daladier

Peter--Maxim Litvinoff

Caiaphas (High Priest)--Archbishop of Canterbury

John (the Beloved)--My Czech son

Cross Bearer--Haile Selassie

Roman Centurion & Dice Thrower-- Adolf Hitler & Benito Mussolini

Mary--My Czech mother

Cheer leaders--Goebbels, Goering, Lord & Lady Astor

FREDERICK EMANUEL

Otisville, N. Y.

Sirs:

I have invented a new cocktail which I would like to give the world through your columns. It is called Cocktail Europa and the recipe is:

2 large jiggers Perfidious Albion gin

1 large jigger liqueur essence traitresse Franc,aise

9 1/4 c.c. Hitler's psychoneurotic schnapp-suds

1/4 gill megalomaniac absinthe `a la Mussolini

1/4cup dry water

1 handful lukewarm ice

1 11beral dash Czechoslovak bitterness

Hold nose while drinking. This is especially recommended to those wanting to suicide quickly.

A. PIERCE ARTRAN

Los Angeles, Calif.

P. S. Isn't the North Atlantic a beautiful, wide ocean?

Sirs:

You will surely have many readers who will be disturbed by the way credit for the Four-Power meeting in Munich today is being laid at the door of Mr. Roosevelt, and who will share my concern lest Mr. Roosevelt or some of his less astute advisers begin to conceive Wilsonian ideas about the role of America's President in saving the rest of the world from its own folly. . . .

But that's not the real purpose of this letter. I simply want to give you a chance to chuckle with me over the humor of having Mr. Mussolini cast himself in the role of "mediator," and how reminiscent it is of the old story about the three Scotchmen in church: when they were confronted with the collection plate only a few pews away and getting closer, one of them, with great presence of mind, fainted, and the other two carried him out!

WOODFIN L. BUTTE

Caracas, Venezuela

Sudeten

Sirs:

Is it Sudeten, Su-day-ten or Sudeten? Is P-r-a-g-u-e pronounced Pray-ge, Prog or Prar-gay ? Radio announcers and news commentators do not seem to know.

H. W. SMITH

Southern Railway System Charlotte, N. C.

> For Americans: Soo-day-ten, Prog. --E D.

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