Arithmetic for Vassar Girls

Sir:

If Sarah Gibson Blanding recognizes the importance of "home economics" and "budgeting" [TIME, Dec. 22], let her educate her girls and stop revising men's college curricula. Some attention to simple arithmetic would be a fine start. I have a Vassar wife and I know. . . .

CHARLES W. B. WARDELL JR.

New York City

Imperceptible Club

Sir:

However Brown, Sproul and Eccles may differ about the Board's (not Eccles') special Reserve plan [TIME, Dec. 22], there is no perceptible disagreement among us as to the relative insignificance, as an anti-inflationary measure, of increasing Federal Reserve Bank discount rates. Member banks do not like to borrow, and do not have to when they can get reserves via gold inflow or selling some of their holdings of Government securities.

TIME marred an otherwise good reporting piece by making it appear that the discount rate is a club to beat inflation down. It would probably be an overstatement to call it more than a toothpick.

M. S. ECCLES

Chairman, Federal Reserve Board

Washington, D.C.

P: TIME said: "The proposed rise in the rediscount rate . . . was too small to be more than psychological in effect."--ED.

Jorrocks!

Sir:

Hold hard! No true Irishman would delight to see a hunt riding just on the tails (ugh!) of hounds [TIME, Dec. 8].

If you're up with hounds, the only place to be is alongside 'em, not pressing the beauties on from astern. But I still think TIME is a capital magazine.

FRANCIS GILROY ROMFORD

London

P: TIME's face and an Irish M.F.H.'s "hunting pink" are a perfect match. --ED.

Sweater-Stretchers

Sir:

Shame on TIME for missing a beat on that Marie McDonald item [TIME, Dec. 22]. The sweater-stretcher lady told the reporter that he ought to see her mother's figure. What about us TIME readers? . . .

JEROME HULITT JR.

Brooklyn, N.Y.

P: Seeing is believing (see cut).--ED.

P.W.s at the Pits

Sir:

I wish to congratulate TIME on the very good coverage of the last three months' events in France. Special commendation goes to the article titled Pistol-Packing Padre [TIME, Dec. 15].

Abbe Lorent's story clearly exemplifies what had been in the mind of most Frenchmen in recent years. Like Abbe Lorent, they had hoped they would be able to collaborate with Communists in the national task of putting France on her feet again, only to realize gradually that every effort to get along with them was doomed to failure.

In the Abbe's story, however, TIME omitted to mention that the Communist strikers who attempted to storm the priest's house had with them a large number of German P.W.s currently working in the coal pits. Other P.W.s had been enrolled by the comrades, and picketed the entrances to the pits in many parts of the coal-mines district.

This is just one more example of Communist double-dealing. It was only a few months ago that their press and their representatives in the Assembly had uttered loud protests, because those German P.W.s were given too much freedom of movement and had had the front to strike for better food. . . .

LEON DESMETTRE

Tourcoing, France

P: After a Communist leader told some 200 P.W.s that Abbe Lorent had struck one of their fellows and objected to their dancing with French girls, the mob invaded the priest's garden; one prisoner, who took the Abbe's side, was beaten up.--ED.

Friendly islands

Sir:

Congratulations on a very fine article about Hawaii [TIME, Dec. 22]. If Nicholas Murray Butler had been lucky enough to spend close to three years in the islands as I did, he never would have uttered those false words ["In population, in language, and in economic life, Hawaii is distinctly a foreign land"].

STANLEY R. SANDIN

Kansas City, Kans.

Sir:

. . . Although I was born in Glendale, Calif., I have been a native of Hawaii for 19 years and have never regretted it. I've lived next to Hawaiians, worked with Japanese, and some of my very good friends are a mixture of races. And in all this friendliness, there is no racial prejudice. . . .

PAT BARKER

Honolulu, Hawaii

Cal Cards

Sir:

. . . After reading your story about [the University of California] and Dr. Sproul [TIME, Oct. 6], I saw the U.S.C.-Cal game and took some pictures of the card-stunts by the Cal rooting section [see cut]. I just got them back and thought they might interest you (unless you have already gotten three thousand of them).

LOIS WHETSTONE

Salinas, Calif.

Second Look

Sir:

Timester Richard L. Williams complains that the only American news regularly printed in such big British newspapers as the Daily Mail and Daily Express is supplied by . . . "grab-bag gossips" like the Mail's Don Iddon and myself [TIME, Dec. 15]. . . .

So, what did TIME print from Britain in that issue? All I could find was--a once famous magician had died; there had been divided opinion over Celia Johnson's success in Saint Joan; Winston Churchill had worn a frock coat; G.B.S. had come out against philanderers. . . .

TIME erred [by skipping] the serious news ... of the first concrete signs of British recovery. An American story of equal magnitude would most certainly have been published by both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express ... on Page One.

C. V. R. THOMPSON

London Daily Express

New York City

P: A second glance through TIME would have showed Correspondent Thompson reports on 1) the London Conference, 2) the thawing of the British loan balance, 3) British writers of the year. The signs of recovery were noted in TIME's next issue.--ED.

Stalinists

Sir:

I agree heartily with H. V. Richards' letter [TIME, Letters, Dec. 1] that a new word for members of the U.S.S.R. fifth column is desirable. Most of the recent discussion over the Thomas Committee's questions usually bogged down because of misuse of the word "Communist.". . . No one who has actually read Das Kapital could mistake the present U.S.S.R. way of life as communistic. . . . The U.S.S.R. is ruled by a power-hungry "Party Elite," totaling about 1/10% of the population, and their current figurehead is Stalin.

I suggest we call them Stalinists, indicating the absolute dictatorship of a very small group whose sole motive is power and its extension.

J. N. A. HAWKINS

Hollywood, Calif.

Scots, Who Hae

Sir:

Your [cover] of Ambassador Douglas [TIME, Dec. 1] shows the American eye surveying the British Isles. The story it tells is, alas, true in its every aspect. As your artist indicates, Scotland is completely bypassed.

In a survey made by the Daily Express (circulation 3,749,376) during 1947, it was discovered that 76% of the people of Scotland wish for self-government.

Scotland, which should be one of the wealthiest countries of Europe, is taxed and drained of materials in such a way that our standard of life is brought down to that of those who rule us from London. . . .

JAMES V. THOMSON

Edinburgh, Scotland

P: For further news of the Scottish "case" against London (and vice versa), see TIME, Jan. 5.--ED.

The Historical Jesus

Sir:

Congratulations on the Albert Schweitzer article [TIME, Dec. 15]. It is heartening to many of us to see this deserved recognition coming to "the greatest man in the world."

The article is so well written and presents in brief space such a comprehensive picture of Schweitzer's personality that it seems unappreciative to point out a small blur on an otherwise lovely picture. . . .

The conclusion to which Schweitzer really came was that the true Jesus cannot be found through an appeal to historical science alone. . . .

The following quotation from his The Quest of the Historical Jesus will help to establish the point. . . : "We modern theologians (the Quest was first published in 1906) are too proud of our historical method, too proud of our historical Jesus, too confident in our belief in the spiritual gains which our historical theology can bring to the world. The thought that we could build up by the increase of historical knowledge a new and vigorous Christianity and set free new spiritual forces, rules us like a fixed idea, and prevents us from seeing that the task which we have grappled with and in some measure discharged is only one of the intellectual preliminaries of the great religious task."

STANLEY M. TAYLOR

Assistant Minister

West Presbyterian Church

St. Louis, Mo.

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