Shades of Dec. 7

Sir:

. . . [Some] politicians in Washington seem to think that the Korean campaign will be a trivial one, in which a few of our forces will get some combat experience for a month or two, and it will then be polished off.

Shades of Dec. 7, when we thought we'd lick the Japanese in six weeks! . . .

KEMP CATLETT CHRISTIAN

Chicago, Ill.

Watch Your Language, Comrade

Sir:

I wish to point out an additional reason for banning the word "Spasibo" in the Soviet Union [TIME, July 3]. Although used as "Thank you" ... it really means "God save (keep) you" (compounded from spasat, to save, and Bog, God). How could a self-respecting Communist use such a word? . . .

PAUL FONTAINE

Athens, Ohio

Praise & Appraisal

Sir:

Thank you for your pleasant piece about my "wakeup copy" for WNBC and for the unusually accurate quote [TIME, July 10].

Thanking you gives me an excuse to reprimand you for a not too accurate statement. In your review [in the same issue] of Poems by Christopher Smart you say that "[Editor Robert] Brittain's efforts may rescue Smart from his long imprisonment in a literary footnote." It is true that Smart had to wait a long time to receive his proper praise (and appraisal) as a highly original poet. But, after almost two centuries of neglect, Smart has been discovered and rediscovered in the last dozen years. I refer, for example, to the ten pages devoted to him in my Treasury of Great Poems (Simon & Schuster) published in 1942 . . .

Louis UNTERMEYER

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Levittown, Upper Level

Sir:

True, the Levitt organization is "the General Motors of the housing industry" [TIME, July 3], but we who bought from his Cadillac line instead of his Chevrolet line are sometimes irked by the public impression . . . that all Levitt houses are per se Levittown houses.

The homes in the Levitt-built Roslyn Country Club community may not be as interesting sociologically (they sell in the $18-$23,000 bracket) or statistically (he's building "only" 400 of them this year) as his smaller and more numerous dwellings, but they are creating a "new way of life" for higher-income families just as surely and dramatically as his Levittown houses are for the younger ex-G.I.s . . .

ROBERT G. PEARSON

Roslyn Heights, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . Housebuilder Levitt is quoted as saying: "In Levittown 99% of the people pray for us." After reading the article and finding no mention of a church or synagogue among the 40,000 residents of this youthful community, I am moved to ask: Where do they pray?

ADIEL J. MONCRIEF

St. Joseph, Mo.

P: Levittown has four Protestant churches, one Roman Catholic church, one synagogue.--ED.

Games/-

Sir:

Congratulations to [TIME, July 3] for giving harness racing its long overdue recognition. Your story of Proximity, now eight years old, breaking four world records and reaching the pinnacle of her racing career, warms the heart of every lover of the standard-bred horse.

It is to be hoped that from now on we will see more space in TIME . . . devoted to these, the gamest of racing horses.

FRANK L. MILLER

Walpole, Mass.

P: Keep looking--ED.

Tar & Feather Applique

Sir:

As self-appointed spokesman for women who "love having new clothes"--which should take in every normal, abnormal and subnormal woman in America--I'd like to say that Merchant of Unhappiness Earl Puckett [TIME, July 3] has a fair chance of accelerating his own obsolescence with his proposal to introduce a New Look each year.

His suggestions may be a profitable pattern for the garment trade, but if he cuts out "basic utility," he'll eventually cut the underpinnings out of his own foundations . . .

(MRS.) BEE MITCHELL

New York City

Sir:

, . . Mr. Puckett's attitude of "Let's milk the suckers for what we can" does more to bring on governmental economic controls than any socialistic campaign . . .

GEORGE W. STEVENSON

San Diego, Calif.

Sir:

I have seldom felt so outraged . . .

L. D. RAMBEAU

Grosse Ile, Mich.

Sir:

A good "soft line" for Style Arbiter Puckett would require, because of his reflection on American women, a foundation garment of tar with a feather applique.

M. A. HATCH

Lexington, Ky.

Sir:

. . . We are all of us the victims of ... Machiavellis like Mr. Puckett, who have reduced man's function on earth to being a consumer, and the more he consumes the better a man he is ...

C. VOLLNHOFER

Colfax, Calif.

For Whom the Tailor Tolls

Sir:

No doubt you will hear from many other people regarding the old saying "It takes nine tailors to make a man [TIME, July 3]." I think you'll find the "tailor" referred to is not the needle and thread tailor but something quite different. The term "tailor" refers to a peal of a bell (church, that is). When a person in a community died, the sexton rang "nine tailors" to indicate the death of a man and six for women; the peals were rung in courses of three. Hence the origin of the saying "nine tailors make a man". . .

ALICE A. MISSLEN

Philadelphia, Pa.

P: Both versions flourish. The peal of "tailors" seems to be a corruption of "tellers," a teller being one toll of a bell. Wrote Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus: "Doth it not stand on record, that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of eighteen tailors, addressed them with a 'Good morning, gentlemen both!'' --ED.

For the Record

Sir:

In your issue of July 10 you credit me with "the first successful removal of an entire lung, in 1933"...

Although my operation was the first successful one in which a whole lung was cut out at one stage, two other pioneers in this field deserve much praise for their courage and success. Rudolph Nissen, then of Berlin but now of New York, in 1931 caused the lung of a child to slough out by operating on her in two stages in such a way as deliberately to shut off the blood to the lung. In 1932 Cameron Haight of the University of Michigan . . . performed a similar operation on another child . . . Both patients recovered . . . The reason for the operation in my case was a cancer of the lung. The patient is living and well ... This case, therefore, was the first successful removal of a whole lung for cancer.

EVARTS A. GRAHAM, M.D.

Washington University

St. Louis, Mo.

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