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TIME will continue to regard Standard Statistics. Inc., world's largest statistical organization, as a source of thoroughly reliable financial information. No assumption, but a generally accepted fact is that, while capital appreciation need not be an investment manager's sole concern, preservation of assets should be his first concern.—ED.
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Sirs:
Your article on Investment Trusts (TIME, March 9) boils down to this: Since investment trusts in general showed no greater appreciation than the Standard Statistics Average of 90 stocks, the investor who bought shares of investment trusts would have done just as well if he blindfolded himself and picked his stocks by sticking a pin in the stock tables. . . .
IVAN C. PATTERSON
President
The Parker Corporation
General Distributors of Incorporated Investors
Boston, Mass.
An obvious exaggeration was TIME'S implication that any investor would have done better than many an investment trust manager by picking his stocks blindfold. Mythical indeed is the investor with enough capital to obtain the full benefits of the law of averages.—ED.
Sirs:
When my favorite magazine omits my favorite investment trust, I feel an explanation is indicated. Why not mention Massachusetts Investors Trust when listing outstanding investment trusts?
G. R. KlNGHAM
Faribault. Minn.
In surveying U. S. investment trusts, of which many are ably directed, TIME played no favorites.—ED.
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Royal Thought
Sirs:
I read your magazine TIME with great amusement whenever I can. I entertain the highest regard for your staff, who not only write at great length on foreign affairs, but who can, it seems, state with authority the private thoughts of monarchs.
Let me quote from TIME, Feb. 10, the passage, dealing with Great Britain, which especially caught my eye: ''His late Majesty (King George V of England) privately considered members of the Soviet Government the 'bloody murderers' of his first cousin Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsar's family." It would be very interesting to know how your reporter, who, I feel sure, had never even seen the late King of England, found out his private, therefore unpublished, opinion.
AUDRIE AUSTIN Wildey, Barbados, B. W. I.
The particular royal opinion which Reader Austin impugns was voiced to the foreign minister of a European Republic who is now its' President. It is not necessary to grill a king to learn his thoughts.
—ED.
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Cruel Irony
Sirs:
What cruel irony of fate was it that prompted the ad on p. 69 of TIME, March 16, to read, "When trouble comes fast," to show a flood, in all its unleashed fury, advertising a Hartford, Conn, company?
My sincerest sympathy to them, and a stricken New England people.
K. J. KURZ, M. D.
Germantown, Pa.
The offices of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co., whose ad showed a destructive torrent rolling through a city street, remained undamaged on the fringe of Hartford's flood waters. —Ed
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Steel & Steal
Sirs: