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Sir:

Recently in TIME . . . and other publications I have seen increasing use of "recession," "slump" and "depression" regarding our present business situation. It seems to me that by using these terms we are talking ourselves into a good, all-out depression. This sort of talk scares customers . . . They tighten up their purse strings and wait for more price cuts. Businessmen begin to worry and slash payrolls needlessly. Pretty soon the scare builds up like a snowball going downhill.

Would it not be better to refer to our "recession" as a "return to normal" after the unusual postwar highs . . . ? Many businessmen, wishfully thinking, seem to have taken these highs for normal business and are now crying because the balloon has burst as we all knew it would.

GEORGE A. RETELLE Detroit, Mich.

Warning: No Smoking

Sir:

Novelist Charles Yale Harrison may flaunt his return to heavy cigarette smoking after a serious coronary attack at the age of 49--if he wishes--in his book Thank God for My Heart Attack . . . However, great harm may come from TIME's blithe presentation [May 23] of Harrison's stand to millions of readers, without inserting some hint of the possible dangers involved . . .

Harrison and your readers should be told that there are very few men dying of coronary attacks below the age of 60 who are not tobacco smokers; that all men below 41 (on whom information could be obtained) dying from this cause during 1946 and 1947 in Cincinnati were cigarette smokers; that abnormal addiction to tobacco smoking is present to a highly significant degree in male coronary victims of all ages; that these facts and similar ones for peptic ulcer are most likely based on the well-known toxicity of nicotine for nerve cells of the automatic (involuntary) nervous system controlling these organs.

Desiring a reliable standard of smoking habits, Dr. Marjorie Mills Porter and I queried people of both sexes and colors, and all ages above 20, in every tract of Columbus, Ohio, and then checked the findings against representative groups in Cincinnati. We are thus not guessing when we say that coronary victims of all ages are abnormally addicted to tobacco smoking . . .

With nicotine so strongly suspect, it would seem the part of wisdom at least for Harrison and others with obvious coronary disease to break with the smoking habit.

CLARENCE A. MILLS, M.D. Professor of Experimental Medicine College of Medicine University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio

Red, Ben & Neat

Sir:

. . . Your well-written and illustrated piece about "Plain Ben" Jones and the Calumet stable [TIME, May 30] ... is turf reporting at its best, and has caused much favorable comment here in Derbytown . . .

ISRAEL GOODMAN Louisville, Ky.

Sir:

... A well-timed and well-done cover article . . .

SPENCER J. DRAYTON Thoroughbred Racing Associations of the U.S. New York City

Sir:

"Devil Red & Plain Ben" is a masterpiece of reporting. But you missed one bet. Where does Mrs. Warren Wright get such "neat" names as Whirlaway, Citation, Coaltown and All Blue? . . .

WILLIAM S. BUTTON Avondale, Pa.

P: Mrs. Wright names the Calumet horses as most owners do--starting with the names of the sire and dam, going on from there with the aid of dictionaries, Roget's Thesaurus, friends' suggestions, etc. She has found that horses named after friends seldom turn out well.--ED.

The Huie Case

Sir:

Your ["Four-Gram Jitters," TIME, May 30] was unfair and inaccurate.

1) You state that my book, The Case Against the Admirals, was ghostwritten for an Air Force general who disowned it . . . The book was written for my signature alone; it was checked to the complete satisfaction of the publishers; and it was published as a contribution to the fight for unification.

2) You state that "boiled down, his case for air power got the Reader's Digest into boiling water with the Navy." Your implication . . . that I have in some manner embarrassed the Digest ... is a false implication . . .

3) You parrot the old story . . . about "trouble" that Collier's had with a football article in 1941 . . . I tilted at the hypocrisy of college football . . . [using] the University of Alabama as the case in point . . . Collier's conceded two insignificant errors, not in the basic facts, but in the dramatic trimmings. I conceded nothing.

4) Finally . . . TIME, if it chooses, can believe the AEC's story of wastebasket recovery. I don't believe it.

BILL HUIE Silver Spring, Md.

P: 1) Author Huie is entirely right about his book; TIME was dead wrong. 2) In a letter to the Reader's Digest, Admiral Denfeld's office took exception to 26 points (some of them labeled "major misstatements") in Huie's first Digest article. 3) Collier's found "no basis" for six statements in Huie's football article. It printed an apology: "A serious injustice [to] the University of Alabama ... we sincerely regret its publication." 4) Both the FBI and Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, said they were satisfied with AEC's account of the recovery of almost all the missing uranium.--ED.

Vaccination Dilemma

Sir:

You mentioned Dr. Milo Brooks's dilemma caused by the increasing skimpiness of swim suits [TIME, May 30] . . . My daughter's case, may put the doctor at ease . . . She was vaccinated on the bottom of her foot. Result: no visible scars. This is excellent for children who are not yet walking.

JOHN J. SOUCY South Brewer, Me.

Half-Century Man (Cont'd)

Sir:

... I was shocked and dismayed when I read your Letters column and saw Harry Truman suggested for Man of the Half-Century [TIME, May 30].

Surely, if Reader Daniel is a "do or die Democrat," he should have nominated F.D.R. . . .

RONALD BAYES Freewater, Ore.

Sir:

For Man of the Half-Century: F.D.R., Churchill, MacArthur, Stalin, Hitler. Take your pick. I pick Churchill.

MYRL M. MILLER, M.D. Akron, Ohio

Sir:

... Professor Albert Einstein, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Dr. Theodore Herzl, T. S. Eliot . . .

HERBERT RUHM Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . Without the shadow of a question or a doubt, it is the late Mahatma (Great Souled) Gandhi . . .

V. B. S. RAGHAVAN New Delhi, India

Sir:

. . . Winston Churchill, of course . . .

GEORGE HENDERSON New York City

Sir:

. . . Franklin D. Roosevelt.

DAVID GAWLEY Toronto, Ont.

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