SPEAK up or shut up." "I have ^ died in Viet Nam. But I have walked the face of the moon." "Remember the good old days when only God could end the world?" "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their planet." "Do This or Die."

These striking words are part of an experiment in communications that TIME has been conducting for the past year. Last May we invited advertising agencies to use TIME'S pages to talk about anything at all -an idea, an ideal, a cause, a program -except a specific service or a commercial product. We gave them four columns of free space in which we hoped to see much inventive use of the printed page.

Originated by TIME Promotion Director Richard E. Coffey, the series titled "The Power of Print" has more than lived up to its theme. The response from agencies themselves was immediate and overwhelming. Nearly 200 suggestions came in, of which 34 have been printed. TIME'S readers have been graphically reminded about racial harmony, child abuse, Viet Nam, pollution, truth, patriotism, the American Indian. But they did not merely read. They acted, too.

Smith/Greenland's ad urging the public to speak up on current issues and incorporating an eight-point opinion poll to be sent to President Nixon triggered 115,000 letters to the White House. Young & Rubicam's modest plea for funds for "a small park in Harlem" was greeted with sufficient donations for five parks. Leo Burnett Co., Inc.'s warning on environmental hazards resulted in requests for more than 300,000 reprints. The very first ad in the series, Savitt Tobias Balk Inc.'s reflections on the meaning of Independence Day, drew immediate requests for 10,000 reprints. The ad was used in a civil liberties case and recently won the Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor.

At the Time & Life Building's Exhibition Center in New York, the advertisements that have appeared in the magazine's domestic editions so far are on display, as are 140 that have not run. In subsequent weeks, they will be shown in other major U.S. cities. The editors believe the exhibition is a remarkable tribute to the power of the printed word, and to TIME readers who respond to it.

This week the Business section deals with the embattled Nixon Administration's attempts to stabilize the badly unsettled U.S. economy. The cover story was written by George Church, researched by Kathleen Cooil and Eileen Shields and edited by Marshall Loeb. The view from Washington was provided by Correspondent Lawrence Malkin, while the assessment from Wall Street came from Correspondents Rudolph Rauch and Roger Beard-wood. For Rauch, at least, the belt-tightening was only too graphic: lunch in the private dining room of a Manhattan brokerage house consisted of franks and beans.

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