Debt Drop

Sir:

Eureka! At last a solution for the nation's financial troubles, i.e., the national debt, has been found.

In your article on the national budget, Sept. 1, you mentioned in a footnote that on Feb. 28, 1946 the alltime high had been reached, with the nation $279.2 billion in the red; while at present, one year and six months later, the debt has dropped to $258 billion. At this rate the debt could be discharged in a little over 18 years.

There must be an explanation. . . .

GEORGE Y. LESHER Normal, Ill.

P: The reduction in the debt was achieved largely by applying funds from the Treasury's cash balance, which was at a peacetime peak of $25.96 billion on Feb. 28, 1946. Since this huge cash balance was the result of 1) the sudden end of the war and the consequent cutting of military and naval expenses below budget appropriations, and 2) the greatly oversubscribed Victory Loan Drive of August-December 1945, the chances of similar debt reductions in years to come are nil.--ED.

Sir:

In your Sept. 1 issue . . . the Truman tax policy was explained: "Cut the debt by taxing heavily in prosperous times."

What could be more sensible than that? Every businessman wants to pay off his debts with an inflated dollar when business is good, so why shouldn't the Government? And yet the Republicans insist on wasting their time making derogatory remarks about a very sensible suggestion simply because it comes from a Democrat.

I am a harassed manufacturer and a nominal Republican myself, and I realize that they want to lower the debt by cutting expenditures. I know only too well what stupidity and inefficiency run rampant in some government bureaus, but why doesn't the Republican majority launch a constructive program to correct this basic cause of expensive government, instead of criticizing the sound policies of their opponents? . . .

G. A. CUNNINGHAM Ward, Colo.

Less Revealing, More Appealing

Sir:

The paraders and picketers against the era of long skirts [TIME, Sept. 15] may as well save their breath. The words "new silhouette" for the first time in years having a literally accurate meaning, the trend is only a natural demand for more flattery in the matter of feminine clothes: the wonder is that women haven't demanded the change much sooner. . . .

For the past decade and longer, the feminine fashion silhouette, far from following the natural lines of the figure, has been rigidly molding it into lines that are not only unnatural, but what is worse, unfeminine. Hips were strait-jacketed to nothingness; no one was supposed to have more bosom than an adolescent girl; the shoulders exaggerated and monstrous. . . .

As for longer skirts, any wise and well-dressed woman knows it is more appealing to conceal rather than reveal.

RUBY FOGEL LEVKOFF Miami Beach

Sir:

... To make it a little rougher on these certain women who are selfish enough to hide their better features, the guys in Theta Chi Fraternity at M.I.T. have vowed not to date (or even whistle at) any women wearing "their grandma's dresses." . , .

DON EATON Boston

Ace in the Hole?

Sir:

It seems to me that the TIME articles on Japan have been the first to call attention to the fact that the Japanese people have been the first, and only, of the war-ravaged nations, to pitch into the ruins and start rebuilding.

While other nations have given in to self-pity and threats to go all-out for Communism, the Japanese are proving that hard work and plain guts are the only methods which will enable a beaten nation to revive itself. Japan may be America's "ace in the hole" in a future war. General MacArthur knows it, but does Congress?

EDWARD J. DOYLE New York City

Lewis & the Devil

Sir:

Kudos to TIME for proclaiming the eminence of C. S. Lewis, a "Christian Revolutionary" [TIME, Sept. 8] of portentous stature destined to rank, perhaps, with Chesterton.

R. T. MALONE Lincoln, Neb.

Sir:

If only Christ had had the C. S. Lewis brand of Christianity! What an easy life He could have led! Instead of going out among the poor and lowly, preaching the brotherhood of man under the Fatherhood of God ... He could have stayed comfortably in the temple discussing intricate points of theology with the rabbis and answering the not-very-bright questions of the students.

Had Christ followed such a course, His career would not have included the bitter agony of Calvary. No doubt he would have lived to be a wealthy, opinionated "Christian" of the C. S. Lewis type.

ANNE CONNERY Great Neck, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . The Devil you depict could not seduce even Lena the Hyena. Nothing like him was ever kicked out of Heaven. Fact is the Devil is good-looking ... he has a Clark Gable mustache and a widow's peak like Robert Taylor. . . .

CHARLES OVERILL San Diego, Calif.

A Veto for Tito?

Sir:

With reference to the cover portrait of TIME, Aug. 18. . . . Excerpt from the records of the Lower Slobbovia delegate to the U.N.:

"We suggest that Tito--" Andrei rose and said: "Veto!"

"If Albanians, anyway--" "Veto," calmly said Andrei.

"As for Germany, it would be vain-- Andrei smiled: "Veto again."

"In the event that Hirohito--" Andrei snapped: "Veto, veto!"

Then he wired to the Top: "Veni, vidi, veto. Stop."

V. A. Boso Shanghai

Missourians on the Move

Sir:

So the U.S. Census Bureau reports [TiME, Aug. 25] that, of the ten leading states, only Missouri dropped in population in the interim between 1940 and July 1, 1946. . . . When you consider how many residents of that state Harry Truman has commandeered and moved to Washington, B.C., one is amazed that the loss in population was only 8,414, as reported.

STOWELL C. STEBBINS Marshall, Mich.

Sir:

. . . Don't worry about the 8,414 population drop in Missouri. They'll all start back after November 1948.

E. BROOKS KEFFER Philadelphia

One Man's Sweets . . .

Sir:

I beg to differ with TIME in its Art criticism of the paintings of David Leneman which appeared in the Aug. 25 issue.

I personally attended his Los Angeles exhibition and found his work far from "creamy and sticky" as you remarked, but on the other hand the style was fresh and original.

The critics' reviews in the Los Angeles papers spoke very highly of David Leneman's paintings, and I read nothing that would indicate or suggest that they were "rich, sweet and indigestible."

ALLAN F. SHOLL Glendale, Calif.

P: De gustibus. . . .--ED.

Another Man's Corn

Sir:

I was annoyed by "Satchmo Comes Back" [TIME, Sept. 1]. . . .

Jazz "purists" remind me of a little group of prim spinsters careening along in Henry's first Ford, warmly assuring themselves that the Lincoln Zephyr gliding by is only a commercial corruption of the Original Thing. . . .

Jazz was good in its day. So were vaudeville's Billy Watson and Edgar Allen Woolf, the cinema's Pearl White and Keystone Cops, radio's Ernie Hare and Billy Jones. But I don't hear of anyone claiming that the showmanship of Billy Rose or Samuel Goldwyn or Norman Corwin is a commercial distortion of the Good Ole Days. Why drape the chains around popular music?

Your Music editor, Old Satch Armstrong, Jazz Pedant Rudi Blesh and all the Faithful will never convince the millions of Americans like me that Musk'at Ramble is any more than a tinny, sloppy, empty rattle-bleat-thump serving of pure corn.

GRADY EDNEY Flat Rock, N.C.

Dictatorship on the Rampage

Sir:

In direct violation of Readers' General Order No. 1 ("To take for granted anything you may like and to complain immediately to the editor about anything you may not"), I would like to say that "A Clock for Fiumicino," in the Sept. 1 issue, is as enjoyable a piece of reading as anything I've ever seen in any magazine.

CHARLES T. KIRK Brooklyn

Sir:

. . . This serio-comic delineation of dictatorship on the rampage deserves a special niche in your Hall of Famous Ridicules.

I hereby propose that we declare "International Fiumicino Week," and invite the Fascists and Communists of every town and hamlet in the world to have at each other until they all die of political exhaustion. . . .

RAYMOND BELLEROSE Montreal, Canada

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