From one of the Iron Curtain countries a clandestine TIME reader wrote us recently as follows:

"During World War II, I was a member of a resistance group that opposed our participation in Hitler's war of aggression. For our anti-war propaganda we used, among other things, postcard reproductions of cartoons showing various pieces of war machinery in the shape of grotesque monsters. There was an immensely smug bomber chased by a ferocious little fighter, a dinosaur-like gun, a radio imp, and others.

"... I never learned whence these cartoons originated, except that they were from 'some American magazine.' Even to the present day I couldn't find out about them because those who did know were liquidated. However, I chanced to see the January 23 issue of TIME, Atlantic edition, and immediately recognized the cover (Mark III, the mechanical brain) as the work of the same artist.

"Now I should like to know whether these cartoons [are available]. I'm sort of sentimentally attached to them, having risked my life on their account several times, and I should like to have copies made and framed for my living room . . ."

TIME cover artist Boris Artzybasheff, who did the animated paintings in question for LIFE (Nov. 3, 1941), has sent our Iron Curtain reader the copies he asked for.

On a national network radio show last week, irrepressible Betty Hutton, asked how she liked being on TIME'S April 24 cover, posed no false restraint. Said she: "I must have 50,000 copies in my house. I hand them out with dinner." She denied, however, that she had memorized the story.

Occasionally, a TIME subscriber writes us to the effect that "I always get mad when even my favorite magazines write me about my subscription without telling me whether I am paid up. I'm likely to 1) let my subscription expire, thinking it's paid; or 2) send in a check and find out later that I've paid for another year."

Despite the best efforts of our Circulation Department to prevent them, the indignities mentioned above do sometimes occur. If you happen to be the victim, I can only ask your forgiveness and pass along some information that may help you: If you will look at the address stencil on one of your recent copies of TIME, you will see two sets of three numbers just to the right of your name. The first two numbers of the lower line tell the month, the last one the year in which your subscription expires. For example, "050" means that your TIME subscription expires in May, 1950; "060" in June, 1950; and "101" would be an October, 1951 expiration.

At the end of a recent interview with General "Tacho" Somoza, William Forbis, TIME'S Central America correspondent, told the Nicaraguan dictator that in a report for TIME on censorship in Central America he had had to put Nicaragua at the bottom of the list. Somoza, who was himself the subject of TIME'S Nov. 15, 1948 cover story, insisted that "There's no censorship here." Forbis said the cable office apparently didn't know that.

Forbis, who had planned to go to Costa Rica to file his story, dropped by the cable office before leaving. To his astonishment, he found that all press messages could go out freely. After the operator had dispatched Forbis' copy, he asked what had happened. The manager told him that he had been visited by Somoza's chief aide and censor, and that the conversation had gone as follows: "From now on nothing is to be censored. That is, unless it seems to be critical of General . . . No, nothing at all is to be censored."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.