TIME Vice-President C.D. Jackson has just returned from a five weeks' visit to England, France, The Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia--and I thought you might be interested in some of his informal notes on the state of European recovery.

"C.D.," who is managing director of TIME-LIFE International (our 'round-the-world publishing and newsgathering operation), made the trip to present to British businessmen and government officials our recent survey The Market for United Kingdom Consumer Goods in the United States (A Letter from the Publisher, May 31); to visit some of our News Bureaus abroad; and to talk business with our distributing agent in Czechoslovakia, where TIME and LIFE are still banned.

"As an American observer who really didn't have too much time to observe," Jackson says:

"Over all, I felt highly encouraged by what I saw. I believe Europe has a real chance now. The French, unlike a year ago, are now going strong. For one thing, they're eating better--self-sufficiency in food is a priceless advantage in the current crisis. They may have more Communist trouble, but it looks like they will be able to take care of it. The Dutch, too, are on the road back --when even conservative Dutch officialdom admits that things are better, they're better.

"Czechoslovakia, however, is another story. I arrived the day before the Benes resignation--and the gloomy atmosphere enveloped me almost at once. People have all acquired the standard tell-tale gesture of the police state--the hunched shoulders, the furtive glances to right and left before one starts to talk. (Ambassador Steinhardt's telephone was housed in a heavily insulated box; it seems that the Russians have a supersensitive pick-up that eavesdrops on a conversation over the telephone, through voice vibrations in the room, even when the instrument is not in use.) But in Czechoslovakia today, people simply aren't the kind who swarm into the streets looking for a scrap. Right now, I think they are just bemoaning their fate, and secretly hoping to be liberated by war between Russia and the U.S.

"London is having her first coat of paint since the war, and the masons and glaziers and bricklayers are busy everywhere. Underneath the refurbished facade, though, is a grimness which reveals in lots of little ways that the British are worrying that the gap between what's going out and what's coming back isn't being closed fast enough.

"Psychologically, the British stiff upper lip is as imperturbable as ever; mathematically, their plans don't yet add up. But their problem is less a mathematical equation than it is a human one. Sir Stafford Cripps, who I had always supposed was an archangel of austerity, turned out to be a warm, genial, thoroughly pleasant personality, with plenty of humor -- and goodness knows, Britain's terrific problems will have to be solved in human terms, not just mathematical ones.

"It's comforting to remember that exactly 100 years ago, in the historically discontented year of 1848, Britain was going through one of the most serious economic crises of the 19th Century; yet only three years later, at the Crystal Palace celebration, Britons were toasting their unquestioned supremacy in the world of commerce."

Jackson's associates in TIME-LIFE International are hoping that his experience with a Corgi motorbike, given him by its manufacturer, will not be too typical of forthcoming British-American trade relationships. Jackson took the 65-pound bike (a civilian model of that used by paratroops during the war) out for his first spin, skidded in some loose gravel, fractured his left foot. Rather, they like to dwell on the gift which Jackson received from another enthusiastic Britisher, the morning after his speech at the British Consumer Goods meeting -- a case of Scotch whiskey (now selling for $18-$20 a bottle in London).

Cordially,

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