Face Lifting
Sir:
Strange things have been happening lately to TIME. First, the black lines above the department titles were changed . . . Then the size of the headings was varied alarmingly . . . Now the lower line of all the picture captions has gone into light sans-serif . . .
Surely nothing is gained by . . . these goings-on . . .
H. A. FIELDHOUSE
London
Sir:
. . . The secondary caption [now] looks . . . quite foreign to the general format . . .
I do, however, like the change in the departmental headings . . . The "open air" over the titles seems to add more freedom and strength.
MELVIN T. BISHOP
West Hartford, Conn.
Sir:
I think that your new type used under pictures is easier on the eye ... It makes the whole printed column more trim . . .
HARRY COHEN
Philadelphia
Sir:
. . . I have been trying to reconcile myself to the radical change ... in TIME'S makeup . . . I thought it looked better the other way . . .
MALIN VAN ANTWERP
Danville, Ky.
Sir:
I have watched with a good deal of interest the face lifting you are giving TIME through a gradual change of type faces here & there, dropping top lines for your section heads, etc.
You are doing an excellent job of keeping TIME up to the minute typographically without making any change so violent as to be obtrusive to the oldtime TIMErs. . . .
ROGER BURGESS
Nashville, Tenn.
"We Have Failed"
Sir:
. . . I do not believe the American people should allow our troops to remain in Korea to face a possible and highly probable Bataan. We were fighting in Korea to halt aggression and possibly save the world from an all-out war. We have failed. We have only succeeded in aggravating a greater aggression . . .
There is no reason for sacrificing any more troops in Korea. If it is being done to save someone's face, we in Korea have news for them: we are interested in saving something, too--and it's not pur face. The great showdown is approaching . . . Are we going to sleep right up to the minute the opening gun is fired?
We must take these steps immediately: 1) remove the troops from Korea and send them to Japan--they are going to be needed for the greater struggle; 2) prevent any landings of Chinese Reds on Formosa; 3) arm Japan; 4) mobilize America now--immediately; 5) prepare with the utmost haste to defend Europe . . .
CAPTAIN DAVID E. WEIGHT
1st Cavalry Division Eighth Army Korea
Man in Doubt
Sir:
Your excellent article [on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, affirming the right of Communists to remain silent about their affiliations-- TIME, Dec. 25] makes it clear that the line of decision of the court as to Communism strongly resembles the wag's poetic description of a snake trail:
It wiggled in and wiggled out Until it left the man in doubt Whether the snake that crossed the track Was going north or coming back.
HOWELL C. FEATHERSTON
Lynchburg, Va.
A Matter of Taste
Sir:
You invited it with your provocative subtitle ["Modern art is a matter of taste"] under that Dec. 25 cover.
Would that I had the ability of our President to describe it in befittingly vitriolic language . . . It's poorly drawn, depressing, dull and drab ... and it is decidedly sacrilegious ...
It stinks . . .
E.D. CHASE
Boston
Sir:
. . . It is one of the ugliest covers it has ever been my displeasure to view. And the Nativity scenes inside were even worse! . . .
KATHLEEN MURPHY
Boston
Sir:
. . . Art may be art, but when it gets that repulsive you might as well go back to the good old traditional pictures.
R. VICTORIA UBIL
San Marino, Calif.
Sir:
. . . Many thanks to TIME for an excellent cover story for a troubled Christmas.
R. J. HOCHSTATTERR
Chicago
Hardin & the Hump
Sir:
In your Dec. 18 cover story on Major General Tunner, you say he was sent to India to take charge of the A.T.C. airlift which flew "the Hump," and quote General Wedemeyer: "Tunner created an epic in air operation."
Tunner came over in August 1944 . . . The Hump was almost whipped--but not quite--by June 1944. There still remained those mythical monsters--of whom all the pilots had heard--that rode the winds of the Himalayas and slammed planes in,to mountains . . .
There was a man named . . . Brigadier General Thomas O. Hardin . . . In his leather jacket and beat-up hat, he was zipping back & forth over the Hump at times when any self-respecting general would have been making out his per diem vouchers. . Legend has it that he started over one night shortly after a group of transports took off. Arriving in China, he was something less than delighted to learn that all of the transports had turned back because of thunderstorms. He then issued his famous proclamation: "There will be no more turning back because of weather conditions . . ."
All through their training, the cadets had been taught that one goes around a thunderstorm, or one turns around--but he never, never attempts to go through it. With a choice of flying through thunderstorms to certain death, or of facing the wrath of the horny-headed, fork-tailed Hardin, most of the pilots chose the certain death as the easier way out.
Surprisingly enough, they found that the general was right . . . This was in June 1944. Morale rose to the heights in the next two months.
B. F. R.OCKECHARLIE
Portsmouth, Va.
Upsy-Daisy
SIR:
GRATEFUL YOUR WASHINGTON POST STORY [TIME, JAN. 1], BUT YOUR FOOTNOTE SLIPPED A
BIT. YOU QUOTE POST ADVERTISING LINAGE WITH CUSTOMARY DEDUCTION FOR SUNDAY SUPPLEMENTS, BUT ADVERTISING LINAGE YOU QUOTE FOR THE TIMES-HERALD INCLUDED SUNDAY SUPPLEMENTS. MEDIA RECORDS FIGURE FOR TIMES-HERALD LESS SUNDAY SUPPLEMENTS IS 20,032,756. ON THIS BASIS, POST LEADS (NOT LAGS) THE TIMES-HERALD BY 489,000 LINES ADVERTISING FOR FIRST ELEVEN MONTHS OF 1950, AND ALSO LED TIMES-HERALD FOR PAST FIVE YEARS.
DONALD M. BERNARD ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
THE WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON, D.C.
Homework
Sir: . . I have just run across your Dec. 11 story on James McGill and his experiment with high-school homework . . .
Now that I can look back upon [my own] ate homework hours, without prejudice or bias, I realize that too often the cause was a disinclination to tackle a disagreeable task. . .
I did not realize it at the time, but perhaps was learning the lesson of tackling and finishing a task, agreeable or not . . . Life is full of disagreeable tasks that must be done, often on a tight schedule . .
C. S. ANDERSON
New York City
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