Biright Half Sirs:
CAPSULIZED COST OF LIVING PARAGRAPH IN
TIME [AUG. 13] IS BLACK HALF OF STORY. HERE IS BRIGHT HALF: FROM DECLARATION OF VAR IN 1914 TO ARMISTICE IN 1918 U.S. COST OF LIVING INDEX ROSE OVER 60%. BUT FROM DECLARATION OF WAR IN 1939 TO V-J DAY PRICE CONTROLS HELD RISING COST OF LIVING INDEX TO 30%. SO FAR WE'VE DONE TWICE AS WELL THIS TIME AGAINST INFLATIONARY PRESSURES MANY TIMES GREATER. BIG CHALLENGE TO AMERICA NOW IS FOR BUSINESS AND CONSUMERS AND GOVERNMENT TO HOLD THE LINE THROUGH TRANSITION PERIOD TO SUSTAINED PROSPERITY. AFTER END OF WORLD WAR ONE COST OF LIVING INDEX ROSE ANOTHER 40%, CAUSED MISERY AND HARDSHIP. WE ARE DETERMINED THAT SHALL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.
CHESTER BOWLES
OPA Administrator
Washington
Army Doctors & the A.M.A. rs:
In the current Journal of the American Medical Association is an announcement saying in Dart: "A statement in TIME magazine [July 30] to the effect that 'Army doctors with iittle or no prospect of being mustered out were those already in the Pacific area (especially men in some much-needed specialty like psychiatry)' is said by the Office of the Surgeon General to be absolutely without any foundation in fact.". . .
C. H. WHITTAKER
Westminster, Md.
Sirs:
. . I don't believe the medical profession will take as too infallible the denial that A.M.A. claims the Office of the Surgeon General made regarding the mustering-out of Army doctors. Dr. Fishbein [editor of the Journal] is too anxious to deny any statement concerning the medical profession ... if any publication other than the A.M.A. Journal made it. ...
J.W. LANE, M.D.
West Chicago, ILL. .
P:Far from being "without any foundation in fact," TIME'S story, which was published before Japan capitulated, echoed an official War Department release. The prospect of an early mustering-out for Pacific-based Army doctors is brighter now, but it will still be a slow process.--ED.
World-Shaking Prophecy
Sirs:
On Monday, August 6, we released the atomic bomb. Eight days later the official Jap surrender inaugurated world peace. All this was almost exactly foretold last April 7 (see cut) when my cartoon "Private Breger Abroad" was published in some 120 newspapers.
For further world-shaking prophecies do not look to me.
DAVE BREGER
Great Neck, N.Y.
The Maligned Sex
Sirs:
Grace Moore's recent spleen on faithless wives of overseas servicemen [TiME, Aug. 6] just barely deserves the dignity of a reply. Nothing is so pitiful as a woman maligning her own sex, and at a time when womanhood should stand together for protection from those who think in little cliches.
Who is this paragon of virtue that she should set herself up as judge and jury? And what does she know of ... the life of a serviceman's wife?
Has she ever been a camp follower whose husband has implored her to follow him from camp to camp and who, to make it financially possible, has knocked herself out working in laundries and hash houses? Has she ever seen the light go out of a woman's eyes when something a little more glamorous comes along and all he can see is "the tired little woman?" . . .
Don't go overrating this "overseas" stuff. A uniform and a Government-sponsored boat ride won't necessarily make a good husband out of a poor one. There are bad husbands overseas as well as good ones. No, the kinds of wives the men left behind are of their own making. . . .
MRS. FRANK C. MALOOF
Junction City, Kan.
Canonically Speaking Sirs:
In TIME [Aug. 13] you publish a picture of five women in religious garb and call them "dancing nuns." I am going to correct you. These women are not nuns at all, but members of various religious congregations or institutes, and as such pronounce only simple vows at their religious profession. A nun is a member of a religious order and takes solemn vows. There are other differences, too. But, canonically speaking, a nun and a sister are not the same thing. I have noticed before, and often too, that you have made this same mistake. Perhaps, though, as a stripteaser with a traveling carnival, I shouldn't correct your unctuous religion editor. But he often has burned me up in things like this.
MARGIE FLYNN
J. J. Page Shows
Elizabethtown, Ky.
P: TIME'S thanks to Stripper Flynn for a scholarly differentiation. But popular usage permits the terms nun and sister to be used interchangeably.--ED.
Salute to Tradition
Sirs:
From an old St. John's University fan [Annapolis, Md.], an approving salute to Harvard [TIME, Aug. 13] and to Yale also, for again coming to the forefront of American cultural education.
Cohesive modern living and thought in a "Free Society" must have recourse to tradition as well as to current special knowledge. And our tradition in turn is based on the best wisdom of all past ages, to which we are natural heirs. . . .
I. H. KAY
First Lieutenant, U.S.A.
Fort Lewis, Wash.
"German"--and Proud of It
Sirs:
Mr. Vansittart [TiME, July 16] conveniently "forgets" to take into account the fact that the "Germans" of whom Velleius Paterculus wrote were the people who lived in northern Europe in the land which then included not only present-day Germany but also the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, northeastern France, Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. These same "Germans" make up the Saxon element of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and it seems to me that the English must be not a little proud of their drop of Saxon blood since they constantly refer to themselves as "Anglo-Saxons."
However, as Mr. Vansittart says, he doesn't have to go that far back. In fact, he doesn't have to go back at all. It shouldn't tax his muddled brain too much to recall that a few million Americans, many of German descent and including such notables as Eisenhower and Spaatz, saved the British Isles from invasion, and to realize that many others of German descent--Nimitz, Wedemeyer, Mitscher, Eichelberger and Krueger, to name a few--are helping to save the Empire.
I consider myself a "good American"; nevertheless I'm as proud of my German blood as any Irishman is of his, and I would consider myself a pretty shabby individual if I weren't.
RUTH ROHLOFF
Menasha, Wis.
Erroneous Flash
Sirs:
I think your Press section in TIME [August 20] was unfair to Mutual Broadcasting System. ... By omitting the names of all other networks, it implied that we alone were irresponsible in putting out the erroneous U.P. flash of the Japanese surrender. . . .
A. A. SCHECHTER
Director, News and Special Events Mutual Broadcasting System, Inc.
New York City
P:Let American, CBS and NBC be added to the record.--ED.
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