Lake House,
Nakusp,
Canada
Dear Father:
You will see that I have, once again, not covered The Engineer and Aviation Week, and will, OF COURSE, be thinking that I have lost my copies again, and not at all about the fact that they are the most boring magazines I cover.
If it qualifies as an analogy. So the point is that I am missing two of the regular magazines in this week's letter because the robots have been on strike for months, and not because I left them on the train again.
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Correspondents wonder if the cross-eyed lion and the manlike tiger in pictures from recent issues are really cross-eyed, or men. No! They're not! Vincent Peters of New York City is happy to hear that doctors are trying to treat the "whole patient," since that is what educators have been trying to do with children for years. Unfortunately it turns out to be expensive. Karlheinz Schmitt writes from Flint that the world has nothing to fear from German militarism because young Germans don't want to be military. On the other hand, A. J. App, an associate professor at LaSalle College in Philadelphia, thinks that Germany should be able to have an army if it wants to, because all that WWII stuff is behind us, and John Karl Walrath wants the Wehrmacht back, because ditto. Gary Essert really liked the review of Gone with the Wind, which is out in re-issue. For Your Information reports that Raymond Moley will be making his annual summer road trip after all, because traffic has got a bit safer since last year when he had to give up and take the train halfway through. (I feel like there is part of the story Ray isn't telling us.) So he's going to be driving up to dams and asking them how they like the government. Not much, I bet.
The Periscope reports that the announcement of new evidence against Annie Lee Moss last week was precipitated by the leaking of "a copy of a report on her alleged Communist Party membership" to Senator McCarthy. Ike was very tough on Joe Meek before agreeing to endorse him, says sources close to Ike. Senator McCarthy is now under treatment for a sinus infection as well as stomach trouble, and the SEC is beefing up its presence in the West to oversee uranium securities trading. DC is going to step up its desegregation campaign by banning racial discrimination in hotels, once Congress adjourns. "Troubleshooter" John E. Peurifoy, fresh form Guatemala, will be the next ambassador to Thailand. Senator Ive's committee is going to out several union health and pension schemes as rackets. Leading Republicans are worried that Indo-China will go Red in the run-up to the '56 elections, and this will be bad for them. Sinclair Weeks is very pleased with himself for all the Yalies he hires. If you think Civil Defence gets ignored right now, wait till it is moved to Battle Creek, Michigan! Sources close to Secretary Wilson point out how firmly Secretary Wilson controls the Pentagon press. The Bell X-2 is sure to set new supersonic records.
 |
| Annie Lee Moss |
Where Are They Now reports that Julia Sanderson is 66, and lives alone in a cottage "not far from her birthplace," that is, Longmeadow, Mass. Walter Hagen spends his winters at the Detroit Athletic Club and is working on his autobiography.
National Affairs
The special feature on Chicago follows.
International
"Asia Defence: It Looks Bad For Us" Because the French have left the Red River Delta, refugees are fleeing south, and the prospects of an effective SEATO seem further off than ever because India won't join and Britain is reluctant to get involved if the Indian Ocean powers aren't. Nehru also points out that he can hardly police the Indo China armistice and join SEATO at the same time. Burma and Indonesia won't join, and Ceylon and Pakistan have mixed feelings.
"Too Little, Too Late?" Now that the French are out of Indo China they can send thousands of troops "pour[ing]" into North Africa, because "Without North Africa there will be no history of France in the 21st Century," according to Pierre Mendes-France. (In his defence, he has to say that.) But is it too late? Newsweek spends a great deal of copy on the homegrown Arab terrorists, the fellaga, and the foreign radio stations that urge them on, but then pivots to the French "counter-terrorists," who operate with impunity, just as they have somehow been allowed to forestall all reform plans in Paris. There aren't so many settlers in Tunisia that the French can't cut and run, which is what they seem to be doing, all denials notwithstanding. Similarly, in Morocco the French are deluded if they think they have a handle on nationalist opposition. It is clear that they mishandled the King, and the new French plan promising full sovereignty in 25 years is an insult given Tunisian home rule.
Costa Rica and Nicaragua are glaring at each other across the frontier, and in Guatemala the confrontation between the regular army and Castillo Armaz's "army of liberation" continues, and the State Department issued a white paper on Communist infiltration in Guatemala this week.
Ticking It Off reports that there is an Iranian oil settlement, with Iran getting the 50/50 split now standard in the Middle East, and paying Anglo-Iranian $70 million in compensation. Nuri el-Said is Iraq's premier for the twelfth time since 1930.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that corporate dividends are up, that job numbers are expected to start rising in the Fall, building may hit an all time high this year, inventories, business and consumer spending are all again said to be improving, but defence spending is levelling off. A new mobilisation committee will be announced this month. Sources close to the President say that the President believes in free trade and stands firm against new tariffs except for the ones he is giving in on, like lead and zinc(!) The upward tick in business spending gets the lead story in the section. Speaking of repetition, New York Airways gets a story, although there's some actual news here, since they are now flying in and out of downtown Trenton, N.J.
"How Soon Useful A-Power: Exclusive Interview with Gordon Dean" Atomic power would already be useful in places like Thule, or in countries without other power resources, like Sweden. In ten years, atomic power plants will "not be uncommon. The new atomic legislation will allow America to export its atomic knowhow and fulfill Point Four objectives. The fact that Sweden is developing its own atomic power plant is an illustration of where American diplomacy has already missed a chance.
Notes: Week in Business reports that American Tobacco is bringing out filter-tip versions of its Pall Mall line, that Studebaker's workers are still without a contract, that ad sales are running 9% ahead of last year by volume.
Lockheed has built a laboratory to work on an intercontinental ballistic missile like the ones the Russians are said to be working on.
Life and Leisure
Gilbert Highet and Sophie Kerr have published self-improvement literature lately. Nose and throat specialist Raymond Maw of Salt Lake City has packed in his usual fishing vacation to prospect for uranium. He has a Geiger counter. Everyone has Geiger counters. Here's a rundown on brands! People smoke now.
Gadgets reports that TV antennas disguised to look like weather vanes are available from two suppliers. Shav Pac is a 110v converter that plugs into the cigarette lighter in a car dashboard specifically to power an electric razor. Seadles are ladles with measurement lines engraved right in. Tipnot is a porcelain baby's dish with a rubber jacket and a suction base. Not only doesn't it tip, it will take a warm water bath to keep the food warm.
Medicine, Education
Carl Jung gets a profile in Medicine, followed by a look at the very strange fight between the Yale Law Journal and the AMA. I am not sure what business it is of Yale Law students but the Journal published an attack on the AMA's "monopoly" on the medical world last week. Newsweek is not taking a stand on the controversy, which seems like it will die away rather than being 'won' by anyone.
"Frenchmen at Yale" American students are all over Europe. Well, here's some French students, specifically French English teachers, at Yale! They have course taught by Charles Fenton, William Jordy, and Eric F. Goldman, and have had special seminars on special American subjects like television, jazz, and the Negro problem, and visit American homes and farms on the weekend. They are amazed by casual American academic dress of oxford-gray slacks and white-buck shoes, and find Senator McCarthy uncomfortably fascistic. They are amazed that Americans don't see this. (Philip Wylie appears in Newsmakers, below, largely because he recently gave a whole speech on the subject, and it is in Newsmakers because Newsweek's take is, "Oh, that fellow is so wacky!") After their courses they are doing tourist trips to Massachusetts and the West Coast.
"Segregation Problems" the Southern Education Reporting Service, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, reports that so far progress on desegregation has been "painfully slow, in some areas invisible." Mississippi seems to be going ahead with its plan to abolish public schools rather than desegregate them, and three Negro students in Kennett, Mo., are attending the all-White school instead of the all-Negro school in nearby Hayti, where students get a chance to earn cotton-picking money during the school's annual six-week recess.
.jpg) |
| "The Coming of Sinhala," scanned from Nalini de Lanerolle, A Reign of Ten Kings for Wikipedia |
Art, Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers
A failed assassination attempt on Brazilian newspaperman Carlos Locerda turned into a gunfight in the street. A newspaper circulation war between the Herald-Tribune, Stars and Stripes, Rome Daily American, set off by Mel Ryder moving his American Daily from London to Frankfurt, gunning for Stars and Stripes.
Sally Rand has a TV show in Las Vegas. Periscoping TV reports that Martha Rountree, who sold her interest in Meet the Press for $127,000, will produce a similar show, probably for ABC, airing weeknights, while Hedda Hopper will have a canned half hour TV show and Victor Borges is filming a series of shows for sale to local stations rather than through a network.
Emilie Dionne has died after a series of epileptic strokes at the age of 20. Shostakovich and Khachaturian have evidently been rehabilitated, because they were both made People's Artists this year. Rita Hayworth, Aly Khan, Maurice Chevalier, Senator Paul Douglas, Philip Wylie, Bobo Rockefeller, and Roman horsedrawn carriages are in the column for the usual reason, Joseph Welch for receiving death threats (although he says it has nothing to do with the Army-McCarthy hearings), and British Ambassador Sir Roger Makin for flying the Atlantic economy class. Anne Jefferys and Robert Stirling have had a baby. James T. Shotwell has had a birthday. Gioia Iolanda Marconi is married. Bess Streeter Aldrich, Colette, and David G. Fairchild have died.
The New Films
The New Films
Fox has Broken Lance out, a Cinema-Scope Western starring Spencer Tracy and Katy Jurado. Instead of a Mexican starlet playing the Comanche wife of a Hollywood star (for the second time in her short career), how about an actual Mexican film, Mexican Bus Ride? "Close, but no cigaro." Columbia's Pushover and MGM's Her Twelve Men get capsule reviews under a subtitle that tells you all you need to know: "Fair Warning."
Books
Hermann Hagedorn's The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill isn't a book, it's an event! James Aldridge's Heroes of the Empty Quarter is the British writer who was going to publish a manuscript debunking the legend of Lawrence of Arabia. Instead he's settled for a novel that portrays a fictional version of Lawrence to no good effect. (It's fictional in that this"Lawrence" fought in WWII and tries to lead an Arab revolt against the oil companies and not the Turks.) J. M. Thomson has edited and translated an edition of Napoleon's Letters.
Raymond Moley joins the nation in congratulating Herbert Hoover on his 80th birthday. No, really, the whole nation, Herbert. They would have come to the party but they had a really important appointment. The doctor, I think. Or maybe it was their lawyer. Or they had to be home to let the furnace repairman in. The point is, they tried to be here.
Letters
George Bent of the American Friends Service Committee has some objections to the article about Conscientious Objectors. Everyone liked the special report on Denver. I. J. Terry reflects on the old days, before the war, in Denver. James Schachter was happy about the story about the Newport Jazz Festival, and so is Chas. W. Roberts of Macon, who points out a mistake. For Your Information explains that Life and Leisure and Top of the Week are new features, because only Newsweek brings this exciting innovation of new features that better cover this exciting and rapidly changing world of ours.
The Periscope reports that Egyptian archaeologist Kamal el-Malakh believes that he might soon top his historic discovery of Cheop's funeral ship by opening a "nearly intact tomb" holding the mummy of Cheops, himself. The Soviets' next bid to split the East-West alliance will come during the next European trade meeting. FLASH: Greece isn't happy about the British position in Cyprus. FLASH: De Gaulle is campaigning for support! The latest Argentinian cabinet shuffle will probably lead to the shelving of Angel Borlenghi, whose wife "has long been tabbed as a key Red agent." (That means that she's Jewish.) Communists are said to be taking over the Federated Workers Trade Union in Trinidad. Castillo Armas might face a challenge from General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. Colonel General Ivan Serov of SMERSH is believed to be behind the Otto John defection, and is aiming to pull off some others using his mastery of psychological warfare. The latest neo-Nazi movement in Germany to keep an eye on is the Federal Association. The Reds are winning the propaganda battle in Indo-China because Voice of America isn't broadcasting enough. Iran is set to open new oilfields under the new agreement and may soon produce more oil than Iraq and Kuwait put together. Dag Hammarskjold says, indirectly, in the latest UN annual report, that Red China should be recognised, but because he didn't say it explicitly, it is okay. Everyone in the East Bloc is working together to subvert Thailand.
Electronics manufacturers are "curious, if not suspicious," about the boom in "tiny wireless microphones" which can be used to broadcast a conversation several blocks. They are obviously useful in espionage, and "Significant, many have been shipped overseas." Senator Welker is said to be considering a libel action against Drew Pearson for alleging that Welker has used "unethical methods." A primary fight for a GOP House nomination on Long Island is shaping up to be a proxy battle between McCarthy and Ike. Walter Bedell Smith is expected to resign, we're told who the likely next head of the American Legion is, an Army study shows that OCS favours "yes men." Where Are They Now reports that W. Lee (Pappy) O'Daniel is basically retired, while Immanuel Velikovsky lives quietly with his wife and is working on his next "cataclysmic" book, to be titled Earth in Upheaval, which will look at geological evidence for his theories.
Due to Hunt's suicide, Our Narrator makes a very generalised reference to Welker, Bridges and McCarthy's attempt to blackmail Hunt out of running for re-election by threatening to have his son prosecuted after he was arrested for cruising in a D.C. park. I'm almost more outraged that Allen Drury was allowed to leverage his fictional reversal of the political allegiances involved into a profitable career as an author of political thrillers, many of them devoted to the fear of a "Red" being elected President.
National Affairs
Ticking It Off reports another group of Communists convicted of thinking Communist thoughts and thereby trying to overthrow the United States by a jury trial, a $200 drunk driving fine for Nixon's younger brother, a denial that Cpl Edward Dickinson is being abused by fellow prisoners, and a compromise on the "un-American trout" bill that will require restaurants serving foreign trout to advertise it in their windows, not on the menu. Ernest K. Lindley uses Washington Tides to explain what a great job Eisenhower has been doing.
International
 |
| Or it's a Myasishche vdesign and they can't spell it. |
"The Belligerent Host" Chou En Lai used the Labour delegation visit to give a belligerent speech about how China felt threatened by the anti-Chinese SEATO treaty now being negotiated at Baguio because it is the only place in the Philippines that you can think in August. Yuri Rastvorov has done a press conference to hopefully distract everyone from Otto John. Mendes-France is still trying to hash out the EDC treaty, with conversation turning to giving the West Germans guns, which still has its opponents in France, notably the Gaullists. The Indo-China war is officially over. Only a tenth of the expected 2 million refugees fled to the south, the French-recruited army has melted away, and Bao Dai is already fighting with the west's preferred southern leader, Ngo Dinh Diem. The strike wave in Germany continues with picket line violence in Bremerhaven. London is still waiting for Churchill to retire and be replaced by Eden. (Context is the bizarre decision by the Lord Chamberlain to censor a line in a song in the "Light Fantastic" review referring to Eden and Churchill). The Iranian economy is beginning to move again.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that the recession that wasn't going to happen and wich wasn't as bad as expected and which is already almost over is giving way to a "modest upturn," which is why Ike has to launch an ambitious spending package with fewer tax cuts than hoped. There is also a feature story to the effect that Democratic-aligned experts think that the economy will have to expand at 4.2% annually to maintain prosperity as population rises, but the President, at the advice of Gabriel Hauge, has refused to make that a target. The British are buying cars like crazy, and there's dark doings at the NYSE's Geyer.
Notes: Week in Business reports four big mergers (is the GOP in power? It is!), Federal Maritime's decision to buy two more 20 knot liners, Capital's decision to buy 37 more Viscounts (again), Kennecott's new laboratory in Salt Lake City,
Products: What's New reports a decorative cigarette lighter by Dunhill, imported from Britain, a new plasticised wall and table cover from Monsanto, a heavy-duty lawnmower with forward and reverse gears with an electric starter from Toro, a light plastic molding set from Bakelite, and an outboard motor muffler from Worthington Products.
"Wages and Sense: The Studebaker Decision" Newsweek is pleased by the company union's decision to accept a pay cut at Studebaker and looks forward to more of the same for the good of everyone.
Science, Medicine, Education
An Army barge slipped into New York to demonstrate the services' latest thinking on how to build early defence offshore radar stations and keep them working when they're out at sea.
Newsweek visits an innovative school for war orphans high in the Swiss Alps and Georgia's flourishing adult education scene, and reports on recent moves to alleviate the grade school teacher shortage with housewives, which is completely different from "substitute teachers."
"H-bomb Victims" The latest report from Japan claims that the 23 crewmen of Lucky Dragon are not out of the woods, that radiation is disintegrating their bones and will lead to cancer if they survive that. U.S. compensation proposals have reached a million dollars as Japanese consumers continue to refuse to eat any kind of "Bikini-affected" food, such as milk, radioactive vegetables, and fallout-contaminated mountain water. In spite of this, the Japanese are flocking to the beaches this summer, so they're all probably hypocrites. A long report on a study intended to establish whether toilet training wrong ruins kids finds that they can't draw any conclusions because anthropologists are too undisciplined to study the same things in every one of the "seventy-five primitive cultures" that a big Ford Foundation investigation was supposed to compare and contrast. In the future it is hoped that they will follow a checklist provided by the Ford Foundation, and we'll finally sort it all out. Also maybe put some non-primitive cultures in the picture!
Press, TV-Radio, Newsmakers
The latest cut in colour tv prices didn't impress anyone because it is just Emerson and RCA getting rid of small-screen sets no-one wants. Meanwhile, both sets and production very gradually creep upwards. The Army is testing TV's usefulness for controlling battles, CBS has combined its radio and tv journalists, and Periscoping TV reports a Dragnet-based medical show, Medic, a half-hour show for comedian Jack Carson on NBC starting 29 October, the televising of the 1954 Miss America pageant on 11 September, a tv series for Conrad Nagel, and that CBS is going to put Peter Lawford's Dear Phoebe up against Our Miss Brooks because it is doing so well.
 |
| I'm calling that one for three for Periscoping TV |
Life and Leisure reports that New York brownstones are fashionable now, publishes a guide to making beds, visits Cataloochee Ranch, which sounds like a cheap and convenient place to go on vacation in the mountains, that home economics texts teach home economics now, that ocelots make great pets, and that wall-mounted crank phones are the latest thing in luxury decorating.
The New Films
The Raid is a civil war film from Fox. The first fifty years of Civil War films have been pretty positive on the South, and this one is more of the same.
Books
Irving Stone's latest is, in one way, a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln. (Love is Eternal.) In another way, it is yet another Irving Stone book. Oscar Handlin is the best, and one of the few, historians of American minorities, it says here, and The American People in the Twentieth Century is a history of American minorities in the Twentieth Century and a plea for less pressure to conform to "Americanness." Jean Hougron's Blaze of the Sun is the first of what is probably going to be a genre of books about the war in Indo-China, as suggested by the fact that this is a joint review, along with Rene Hardy's Sword of God.
Raymond Moley has made it as far as Los Angeles, presumably via the Pacific Northwest, where he detects signs of underground conservatism, but stil doesn't expect a GOP sweep in the region.
Friday, 20 August 1954
Leaders
"Avoidable Accidents" discusses two recent airliner collisions, which, while the first, between an Air France and a BEA plane, caused no fatalities, profoundly disturb Flight. The second one was yet another collision with high ground. Cockpit radar will help prevent these in the future, but flying into high terrain and other airliners is also a failure in traffic control. Haste, not speed, is the problem. Like when you leave boring magazines on the train because you're about to miss an appointment! That is, the point, properly put down here at the bottom, is that Flight is arguing with critics of higher speed in commercial air services.
 |
The Folland Midge gets a two page spread.
Here and There reports that an international sonobuoy working party recently visited De Havilland Canada, which is also optimistic about a US Army order for Otters following on the Beaver order. SBAC will hear the first comprehensive lecture given in Britain on the medical aspects of aircraft engineering on "technicians day," 6 September. Harwell is holding its ninth annual electronics conference in November.
R. S. Scorer, "Clear-Air Turbulence and Mountain Waves: Correlation of Theory with Pilots' Experience" One of the country's leading meteorologists looks at the ongoing work in a rigorously mathematical way, as he is too lazy to spin wild theories about how sunspots cause cold winters and stock market runs.
Articles about gliding, parachuting, and flying the West African milk run with Hunting-Percival follow. (Not the real milk run, with actual milk flying out of Nutt's Corner. The one where planes stop in places like Abidjan and Bathurst.
"Boeing B-47 in the Air," once again bylined "The Editor," so I should just give Maurice Smith the authorial credit, but since Flight doesn't want to do that, I won't. This is the fifty-second in a series, so at this point what doesn't Maurice Smith know about big, expensive, modern aircraft? The Editor had to go to Wichita to do it, which you would think would get in the way of his editing job, and was an acceptance flight for a new production model, since you don't just fly a B-47, and was almost cancelled due to rain, insert Londoner joke here. Smith doesn't feel that he got enough of a chance to evaluate the plane, and points out that the B-47 is a very unusual plane, being the first of Boeing's thin, long, swept wing designs, with their extreme wingtip deflection. He found it a perfectly good flight admittedly within the plane's narrow operating parameters.
Civil Aviation reports that Airworks and KLM will begin scheduled cargo flights on the Atlantic route in the fall. Tasman Airways is nostalgic about the excellent safety record of its Solents. (It will be recalled that those are Short Sunderlands given one of any number of new names depending on the day's star signs.) We haven't mentioned Lufthansa once this issue, so here's mention. Airwork lost a Viking. While it's probably the last place they remember having it, anyone who sees a Viking should tell Airworks --oh, no, it was just a fire.
Correspondence
V. N. Butler thinks that Hendon should be an aviation museum and not a housing estate or a golf course or anything else remotely practical. D. H. Black has a correction. N. G. Bennett and J. C. Corbett remember the old days, before the war. Paul B. Hawkins (aged 15) hopes that the P.1 will win the world aviation speed record back. E. G. Monk sends a congratulations Elliott Brothers' way for stabilising the Barodeur, right after the Mystere IV.
For some reason there is space left after Service Aviation, which is slightly less useless this week itself because it covers the return of the Greenland expedition, anyway, we fill up the pages with advertorials for an aircraft battery by Varley Dry Accumulators and Latex Upholstery, Ltd.'s Kargo Pak, which makes the experience of flying in a combined passenger/cargo space more visually appealing. Then we get The Industry, with more advertorials for Jove Wadpol airplane soap, which is a real product, the Curta hand calculator from London Office Machines, and an agreement to license Thermal Control fire-detectors in France.
Letters
The Periscope reports that Seventh Fleet will stop any Red attempt to invade Formosa, but won't intervene against any Reds on the ground in Formosa. "It is not generally realised that the U.S. has entered the critical danger period" predicted two years ago. By late this summer the Reds will have enoough atom bombs and long range bombers to conduct an atomic offensive against the United States. Say some. Secretary Wilson doesn't think so! Uncle George certainly doesn't think so! The Koumintang has finally convinced a sailor from Tuapse to defect, and promise that his press conference will feature "startling revelations." The President may summer at his Gettysburg farm rather than Denver this year. Atomic scientist have had it up to here with Lewis Strauss for blocking the appointment of Trevor Gardner as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. Army Secretary Robert Stevens is in trouble with the Senate again, this time for closing army bases in congressional districts. Now that the US is pulling four divisions out of Korea, the British are talking about cutting their own forces there, which the U.S. will oppose because sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Funding for the education of the orphan children of US veterans will be pushed in Congress again next session by Olin Teague of Texas. The State Department will back Syngman Rhee's demand that Polish and Czech representatives be expelled from South Korea.
Where Are They Now reports that Frankie Parker is a sales representative for Kraft Containers in Chicago, and is married to Audrey, formerly the wife of Baker's coach and personal guardian. Captain William Brown, the man who grounded the Mississippi on 17 January 1950, is in charge of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.
The Periscope Washington Trends reports that Eisenhower's latest secret plan to save the world involves a massive extension of his atomic peace proposal, and that he will be a dynamic campaigner in the Fall. (Which is also the lead story in National Affairs, following.)
Also in National Affairs yet another checklist of Presidential wins and losses in his first term, and one winding up the 83rd Congress, and we look at public versus private power in the West as an election issue. OPERATION FLOODOUT, a paper exercise by Civil Defence is their latest attempt to get some attention and money.
"Mark Clark Explains His Stand on 'Preventive War' and the UN" General Clark fears that left wing influence at State may be damaging United States interests because, who knows, maybe those pinkos will do something recklessly stupid like starting an atomic war with Russia
.
 |
| The first US reactor to be connected to the grid, says Wikipedia |
.
Ticking It Off reports that General Lawson, the Signal Corps commanding general who cooperated with McCarthy, has retired for health reasons, that the inheritance fight over the Montgomery Ward fortune has kicked off, that an attempted blackmailing of Kay Halle failed, according to sources close to Kay Halle, that Lieutenant Colonel Henry Fielding is the first Korean officer POW to go on trial for collaboration, that the Army will field test its mobile atomic power plant based on the reactor of the USS Nautilus at Thule Air Force Base. It is the size of a small apartment building, and can be taken apart and moved by air. Meanwhile the AEC has unveiled its latest reactor, designed to create the most intensive neutron bombardment ever, at Idaho Falls. Herbert Hoover, Jr. gets a brief profile as his rehabilitation continues, and even Ernest K. Lindley is a bit tired of anti-Communist gestures in Congress, he says in Washington Tides, the bright side being that it was executed by Democrats, and is hopefully sign of an era of bipartisan common sense taking hold, leading to a break with the demagoguery of the past. Giving in to McCarthyism stops McCarthyism in its tracks! The September long range forecast is for a dry month.
International
"Food for Propaganda" It turns out that the French Union POWs from Dienbienphu were well fed after they completed their death marches to the prison camps. It's Red propaganda! Colonel de Castries is so happy to be free that he could dance. The Greece/Cyprus thing still looks like the next mess after Suez. The four US divisions to be pulled out of Korea are meant to strengthen, not weaken the free world's defences, unlike the proposals by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to cut the Commonwealth Division there.
Ticking It Off reports that Indonesia's Soekarno is demanding that the Dutch get out of "Irian," or West New Guinea, that the SEATO conference will be held in Manila instead of Baguio because it is typhoon season, Karl Franz Schmidt-Wittmack, a Bundestag member and a Christian Democrat, has followed Otto John in defecting east. The Seventh Fleet is demonstrating in the Formosa Straits off the Koumintang-held Tachen Islands. Felix is in charge, instead of one of the fire-eaters, thank Heavens. In a press conference, Stump pointed out that in spite of Chou's threats, the Reds have not reinforced their troops along the coast and are not gathering boats. They are just trying to exacerbate Anglo-American divisions, while in Peking, Premier Chou bent over backwards to play good host to the Labour delegation.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that the recession that wasn't going to happen and wasn't as bad as expected and is already over, is almost over. To be scrupulously fair to the column, it reports this by listing a potpourri of facts indicating recovery drawn for the Special Reports on American cities, so there are some numbers to the column, but it is frankly anecdotal.
"U.S.-Soviet Trade: Opening Wage" Just to review, trade with the Communist Bloc is bad, trade with the Communist Bloc is good, there isn't enough of it, there will soon be more of it, and there should be less of it. I think that covers it! Studebaker's new chief gets a brief profile. Notes: Week in Business reports that 33 American companies have been invited to bid for a "packaged" atomic power plant, ATT is launching a round of stocks and bonds offerings to raise $3 billion, Ohio is asking the FCC to investigation a big trucking company, and Gordon Dean is starting his own atom business. Beddell Smith is joining American Machine and Foundry, various companies are investing in titanium, the takeover effort at Montgomery Ward continues, the textiles industry is showing signs of recovery. Products: What's New reports that U.S. Rubber has a foam-rubber mattress whose firmness can be controlled with an air valve, Shelton Manufacturing has a new wrapping material with corrugation on one side and cross-scoring on the other side so that it can be folded in any direction, Harris Foundry has a press which can compress old auto bodies into a compact cube, Minnesota 3M has a new field cable-splicing equipment. Charles Silvers gets a profile, and an editorial note at the bottom of the page, for the first time I have noticed, reports that Henry Hazlitt is ill, and that Business Tides will resume when he recovers.
Science, Medicine, Education
"On the Move" Foreign scientists are less and less interested in visiting the U.S. for the obvious reasons. Dr. Newton Gaines is a very amusing physics professor at Texas Christian University who enjoys throwing boomerangs for his classes.
"Crisis and Care" It is polio season, and cases are rising towards the highest peak seen in years, with heavy patient loads threatening care, which is why there is an emergency March of Dimes campaign on. The nation's desperate eyes turn towards the promising Salk vaccine.
"Prisoners' Progress" It was feared that the 3300 Korean War POWs would suffer the same fate as the victims of Bataan, many of whom never recovered. But, while 95% lost weight, 15% needed psychiatric care, 80 were malarial, 58 had tuberculosis, 54 had lost fingers or toes, and 11 had lost limbs, within two months, two-thirds of the men were back on duty, and today only 40 are still hospitalised, 22 for tuberculosis, and only 108 had to be given medical discharges. Not one has died since releae for causes attributable to their captivity. This compares with the 90% of Bataan survivors who had to be discharged. Bataan survivors suffered deprivation longer, during the siege, and were older, at an average of 35, than the Korean POWs (25), and to the advance of medicine. 
"The Schools: Good, Bad, or Just Crowded?" The American Federation of Teachers conference in Chicago last week heard the usual worries about the quality of teacher's education and such, leading two Yale professors of education, C. Winfield Scott and Clyde M. Hill to round upt he criticism. Some critics don't like "rubbish" progressive education, which teaches "socialism." Others, like Jacques Barzun, think that teachers don't know enough. Others think that the only real change in the schools is that so many more people go to them. Also, the citizenship committee of the American Bar Association is in trouble for suggesting that the facts of communism be taught in American schools so that the students would know what they're so afraid of. Critics seem convinced that if you taught Communism the kids might go Communist. It is hard for me to understand why that is a criticism of Communism?
Art, TV-Radio, Press, Newsmakers
Photographer Bob Wendlinger gets a brief profile; Alexander Tvardovsky has been purged in Russia; Aline Mosby of UP is in the news for a bikini shot in wide distribution. Periscoping the Press says that the "Joseph Doyle" byline of a recent Look article about "anti-McCarthy commentator Ed Murrow" is a pen name for a journalist named Joe McCarthy, not used for obvious reason, that John Barrymore, Jr., is upset about all the stories about his alcohol use, since he is a teetotaller, and that he wishes the papers would stop.
One story in The Arts reports a show for Ellen Emmet Rand, who is clearly a great female painter because she was a woman and she died in 1941.
"The Homeland Angle" reports on the success of non-English programming aimed at immigrant communities, and notably Aldo Aldi of WOA TV in New York. Periscoping TV-Radio reports that NBC is still auditioning toddlers as it tries to cast Baby Snooks for this fall's version of the Fanny Brice radio comedy, with Fred Clark already set to play Daddy. Kukla, Fran and Ollie will return to ABC after a two year run on NBC this fall. Stop the Music will be back on ABC this fall, with Exquisite Form Brassiere as sponsor and, it is hinted, bra models on the broadcasts. General Electric Television Theatre will return.
Susan Eisenhower, Marie Dionne, Susan Hayward, Barne Breeskin, Margaret Truman, Bertrand Russell, and Franchot Tone are in the column for the usual reasons. So are a five-year-old flower girl, for being in a cute photo and a doctor in England who had ten children and sounds a bit strange. Amos Alonzo Stagg and Bernard Baruch have had birthdays. Vice Admiral Ralph Ofstie and Captain Joy Bright Hancock have married. John Arthur Dewar, Paul W. Shafer, Charles Gioe, and Frank Maritote are dead.
Life and Leisure reports that Chicago is having lots of conventions this month, that Alan Tamplin of Birdhamm, England, has invented a remote control beer barrel, that no-one goes deer stalking in Scotland any more because the forestry plantations have made it less fun, and that Kodama Donsho is Japan's best soothsayer.
The New Films liked every film it reviewed this week. It liked Sabrina, with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, a "delightful" Paramount romantic comedy, The French Touch, another "toothful rigolade" featuring a French comic, Jazz Dance, a twenty-minute dance film, and Suddenly, a United Artist thriller with an unlikely star turn by Frank Sinatra. All this positivity and sunshine is too much for me!
Books
Charles Burton Marshall's The Limits of Foreign Policy explains that "politics, like life, is an unsatisfactory business." There's only so much that government can do. "He is against Utopian schemes, simple solutions, and righteous hindsight." The reviewer's introduction implies that this means that foreign policy has to live with Red China and could do with less head-on confrontation with Russia. Pinko! Adlai Stevenson's Call to Greatness is, as far as I can tell from the review, the same book, and not as funny as he is in person. Yamata Kikou's Lady of Beauty is "set in a world of paper lotus flowers and graceful rituals of death and marriage, [where] life is its own aloofness." This authentic and accurate treatment of old time Japanese upper class female life, book was written by a diplomat's daughter, raised, and now living, in France, and writing in French. (Ronnie rolls her eyes so hard she starts worrying about crow's feet.)
More honest and sincere than Yamata Kikou, not that it was given a chance.
Raymond Moley has either abandoned his road trip for a hotel in Los Angeles or is just filing from there, as this week he explains that Californians are so rich they're about to have a Communist revolution over price supports. That is, the price support-loving farmers will stage a revolution, if you were wondering. Because price supports are bad, and will lead to disaster by Tuesday next.
 |
| Ruth AS, I think. |
Flight, 27 August 1954
"Strength in Depth" Flight is pleased that Canada and Australia have their own aviation industries meeting their defence needs, although it worries about money. Canada is going to develop the CF-105, and has no plans for a medium bomber. Australia, on the other hand, is starting down the road of replacing the Canberra. We will see what happens.
From All Quarters reports that the press is being invited to the Aircraft Armaments Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down for the first time since the war to see what's up there. KLM and Braniff had accidents this week. Braniff's breaks a fifteen year safety record. KLM's doesn't. The Gannett trainer is flying. Canberras are now to be stationed in Germany, no more to be said there because moving medium bombers that can carry atom bombs closer to Russia is not something one wants to call attention to.
Some details of the Rolls-Royce Soar may now be released.
_(21396347034).jpg) |
| X-20 Dyno-Saur being launched by a Titan III For Wikipedia from the U.S. Navy Museum |
Here and There reports the USAF is stationing a squadron in Holland, that deliveries of Stratotankers to the USAF will begin within 18 months, that Secretary Talbot said at a dinner in Omaha that Air Force experimental aircraft had considerably exceeded the Skyrocket's 83,000ft, that A. E. Cutler of Redifon will give a talk on "Computing Circuits in Flight Simulators" at the London School of Hygiene next week. Civil Aviation reports that De Havilland considers the Comet 3 to be complementary to the Comet 2 that is facing sales resistance, that KLM is ordering more Super Constellations after seeing how well they crash, that Hunting-Percival is expanding again. We get Service Aviation out of the way before the special feature on the Commonwealth aviation industries begins, and paired is a brief review of "Commonwealth Air Services" to get that out of the way. I don't find much of interest to say about the profiles of Canadian aviation companies and, in less detail, Australian, but did you know that the RCAF operates 3000 aircraft?
So that's it for this week, because, as I said, no The Engineer or Aviation Week. The overwhelming impression of the week, apart from having mambo music in my head, is that we are getting more and more serious about travelling to outer space --at least to Earth orbit and the Moon. As far as I'm aware, there is nothing like the rumoured Russian 264,000lb rocket engine under development in the United States, and although the British do a better job of keeping these things under their hat, everything that is out and about right now was conceived under Attlee, and he does not strike me as a "going to the Moon" type. So don't be surprised if the pinkos spread their Communist revolution to the Moon at the same time as Thailand!
No comments:
Post a Comment