Postblogging Technology, October 1954, I: Brain Child in Long Pants

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

It seems as though I will be writing a fairly short note this week with very little to say about exciting family news or world events. I would like to blame the press of very important business, but in fact everything has screeched to a halt as we wait for the results of the Congressional elections. If Knowland isn't the Senate Majority Leader this time next month, we can start winding things down. If he is, you probably need to buy a bomb shelter and a Geiger counter. (Or just move house to Nakusp or Campbell River. That works, too!)

Oh? My excuse! I was doing very important things that didn't involve dandling around the house, sleeping in and then playing with my children. Very important things indeed! 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Economist, 2 October 1954

Leaders

"Scarborough's Alarm Signal" The close vote for Labour leadership at the convention in Scarborough probably shows that Bevanite leftists are about to take over the party any minute. (A Note later explains how the German Socialists are also ad because Erich Ollenhauer said something about disarmament while the Conference was going on, so they're connected.) Also the only reason that the world isn't disarming is that the Reds are bad, and the new Housing Repairs and Rent Act is also too socialist and bad, especially because "the population is rapidly approaching stability," so any new building is just going to push down rents on old ones that won't be repaired.

"Recruit for Seato?" Now that Burma knows that Communism is bad, maybe it'll join Seato! 

Notes of the Week

"Britain Accepts"  Britain's decision to extend the commitment of four divisions and a tactical air force to Europe is incredibly big of Britain and everyone should be very grateful and everyone who says that if Britain could have just got off the wall and done it a few months ago, then the EDC might have been saved, should just shut up. Also this whole thing would seem to have both Nato and the United States of Europe at the same time!!! Also some more about the Scarborough vote and then a discussion of where Bevan goes from here. 

"Go-Slow for Sterling" Sterling will not be convertible next spring and it is all Labour's fault for not promising not to unconvert it if they win the general election, since there will be mass conversion before the election and that would be bad. Instead we will continue to "press forward" with "liberalisation" and convertibility will be part of the "general theme" and not the "denouement." Unless there is an economic crisis, in which case the Bank would go to a floating exchange rate, and a floating exchange rate without convertibility will end sterling's reign as an international currency, and that needs to be discussed now. An entire Note explains why good crowds during Mendes-Frances' recent speaking tour shows that he might win an election he might call. The Economist throws over the tedious job of explaining the Dides spy scandal in favour of speculating about what it might mean for the Mendes-France government. Which, to be fair, it is hard to imagine a reader of fifty years from now caring about the Dides spy scandal, whereas they might ask themselves, "Whatever became of that Mendes-France fellow?"  The current strike in the London shipyards may well spread because the unions have a point, and, more importantly, the Electrical Trades Union is red and terrible. Exciting news about the rail wages negotiations being ongoing, which is that they are ongoing! The appointment of General Kirkman as chief of civil defence increases the number of people who care about civil defence a million percent. Talks about Cyprus at the Uno are very embarrassing for everybody who wishes that Cyprus would just go away. (But not the air bases!) Intellectual French people like Jean-Paul Sartre and Picasso and Joliot-Curie, so just about everyone, are terrible because they're too pro-Communist. The fact that the Danish bacon pact was renewed for 1954 on the same terms is surprising, so here's three paragraphs, mainly about how terrible British pigs are. 

"The Fate of the Temple" The recent discovery of a Roman temple of Mithras in Walbrook has ignited controversy because it would cost £100,000 to bridge the site and £400,000 to compensate the site owners for reducing the size of their planned office tower block from seven to two stories (which might be a good thing because no-one likes the design), but now everyone is complaining that a  half million pounds is just the cost of a single V-bomber and are we so cheap about history? The Economist explains that we are, considering that we're only spending £600,000 on ancient monuments in total and there are ever so many more important ruins to preserve and probably everyone will stop caring about it and visiting the site soon.

"Tokyo, Luxembourg, and Cartels," and "Japan Promises to Pay" Japan is sending a permanent delegation to the ECSC, and has reached a war compensation agreement with Burma, which all goes to show something or other about Japan's return to world trade and also the ECSC. 

The Economist of 1854 has "What is a Crime?" I know, I know, it's wasting time blathering on about things I already know to pad out single sentence news stories! No, on further reading, it isn't. It's about . . . I don't know. I haven't a single clue unless it's like that old Geoffrey Crowther Leader about how it is rude to be rude to people with bad breath on the Tube, which was obviously about Crowther. The problem is that I don't even want to know about the crime that shouldn't be a crime and the punishment for the crime that isn't a crime that is too mild. 

Report on Emigration" The Overseas Migration Board has existed for a year, and is now reporting. It has found that migration schemes can't possibly affect the size of the United Kingdom population, since any feasible rate of emigration is too low. "Mass migration at the panic tempo advocated by prophets of famine or of atomic destruction are another matter," but are politically impractical. As long as any actual schemes are to be considered, they should be family emigration schemes so the recipient countries don't get all the workers. 

Letters 

J. A. Clarence-Smith writest from Asmara to tell The Economist to calm down about European unity. Milton Gilbert of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation writes to defend OEEC statistics as being new and improved, and not recycled, like The Economist suggested recently. O. N. Dawson asks how the Gold Coast can possibly acquire a politically dominant class of bourgeois if the price of cocoa is limited to the point that they can't get rich. G. N. P. Davies writes from Glasgow that accepting a ratio of one doctor per 2500 inhabitants "of the industrial areas" can't possibly be a good idea for anyone except doctors, or at least their wallets. C. W. M. Gell points out that the difference between Abadan and Suez on the one hand, and Cyprus on the other, isn't that Britain has sovereignty over Cyprus. It's a trick question. There is no difference. If the locals don't want to be ruled from London, it's not a good idea to force them to be ruled from London! 

 Books

Charles Wilson's The History of Unilever is "a biography of an industry." I'm a bit more interested in the idea of building a company providing a commodity (soap) at regular and constant prices when it is made of raw materials "vulnerable to violent price changes." That sounds like a great story, but I am going to go out on a limb and suggest it might not be a good one. J. D'E. Firth's Rendall of Winchester is a life of an "Eminent Edwardian," by which is meant here a principal of Winchester College, to which I offer a hearty obscene gesture in the direction of the Editor. The fact that Toynbee, some Asquiths, Wavell and Kenneth Clark were among his students doesn't make him interesting. Viscount Maugham's The End of the Day is about the old days, before the war with some chapters about the Chamberlain government between Munich and WWII in the middle, which is the interesting bit.  (He is Somerset's brother, not father.) A. Temple Patterson's Radical Leicester is much too long for a political history of Leicester in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills' Character and Social Structure is a very worthy book. (I am being dismissive based on the review, not the title, for a change!) Frank A. Love's The Heron is about herons, and isn't nearly as interesting as you would think. Geoffrey Grigson and Charles Gibb-Smith's People, Places and Things, Volumes I and II is an anthology of commissioned works about peoples, places, and things, commissioned on the basis of an actual plan for the work that you wouldn't think would exist considering the nature of the project. 

American Survey

"Labour's Political Stake" The American labour movement is on the defensive a little bit, but still winning good contracts. The release of the Flanders Committee report on McCarthy is exactly what everyone said it would be, but since it's out, we have to tell you about it again, before explaining that we have to wait until November to get on with it, again.
 

"President in the Lion's Den" McCarran's sudden death is good news because McCarran was an awful person, and increases the Republican majority, but that doesn't mean that the President can stop campaigning for the 1954 election. Unfortunately, the President doesn't want to campaign, and no-one can question his excuses for not campaigning without bringing up his health, so instead we have to end with his poorly-received speech to the AFL and his well-received speech at the dedication of the McNary Dam where he promised more Federal water projects in the future where they were called for. Also, the Administration is not going to go through with its talked-about plan for "long-term borrowing," which means longer-term Treasuries, which is important because its effect would have been dearer money, and the economic recovery is still tentative. What a complete disaster the Republican turn to "fiscal responsibility" in 1946 and 1952 was! 

"Television Without Advertising" The eighth American public educational television station started up in St. Louis this month, mainly thanks to the Ford Foundation, since funding isn't forthcoming otherwise. Some of the shows are pretty good, The Economist thinks. 

"Clearing the Air" Controlling air pollution has so far been left to the cities, 350 of which have passed ordinances, with Pittsburgh, New York, and Los Angeles are taking the lead. Pleas for Federal action have not been successful, but there are some interesting changes technologically. For one thing, not burning coal is an improvement in itself. However, burning petroleum has its own problems, notably with the Los Angeles smog. Oil refineries are a problem too. Regulations are forcing refineries to adopt "smog traps" on storage tanks, at a cost of $7 million in Southern California alone. 

"Car Dealers Under Pressure" The automakers are putting pressure on their dealer networs to sell all the cars that are backing up. Meanwhile, the dealers are playing with the freight charges on car prices to "bootleg" cars to associated dealers to sell new cars as "used" ones and making lots of money, which the FTC says that it could ban if everyone wants it to. 

The World Overseas

"Red Flags at the Pole" Whereas the North American glaciers produce ice islands that are perfect for floating Arctic bases, Siberia doesn't, and the Russians must be sad about that, because their new bases at the North Pole have to be on long, thin plates that break up too quickly, so that their first floating base broke up in only nine months, and they tend to be too wrinkled for proper airfields. The Russians have got around this by building airfields on adjacent ice floes, which they are doing to explore the underwater mountain range they've discovered, unless the mountain range is a Red plot, which position The Economist clearly contemplates landing on before realising how silly it sounds. In the future this might all turn out to be important due to atomic submarines and atomic bombers. Or maybe not. A look at Canada's (and everyone else's) position on the upcoming Gatt talks follows. 

"Orontes Shoals and Rapids" The Syrian parliamentary elections have been very exciting but The Economist is skeptical that they will stick. The recent purge of Kao Kang, the former "fifth man" of the Chinese Communist Party, and his supportes, has been bloodles so far, but the disappearance of Li Li-san is not a good sign for the over-powerful local Communist functionaries in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia that Beijing seems to want to call to order. A Correspondent, and "A Correspondent in Mexico City" catch us up with the Moslem Brotherhood and Mexico, where the "bad old days" might be back. 

The Business World

"Planning More Power" The BEA can look back at two straight years of adding 1.4 MkW a year and avoiding power cuts during the winter as it projects a six year, £1.25 billion capital investment programme. It assures everyone that it is getting ever better at projecting future demand and specifically future peak winter demand based on its national statistical base going back to 1920. The projection is that Britain's annual demand in 1959-60 will be 22 MkWh in normal weather, peaking at 23.4 in bad weather. Taken together, it thinks that it will need 25.45 MkWh by the end of 1960, and will have taken 1.2 MkWh of overage generating equipment out of service. The Economist then turns to the French "time of day" tariffs that might reduce British peak demand if adopted here and reduce the immediate need for capital investment. Investment in power generation is never wasted, since usage catches up, but it can be postponed, which is a gain "in the year we live in." On the other hand, having some room in hand will help BEA as it contemplates the inevitable future after coal. A long Leader follows about the Ministry of Works' efforts to regulate builder contract tenders. 

Business Notes 

Finance, finance, Butler telling everyone that there will be no convertible pound sterling any time soon, industrial output and earnings are up, but that doesn't mean that British labour costs aren't becoming uncompetitive again. Americans are criticising Canadian tariffs on farm products, especially milk, even more finance!

"Selling Wheels to Armies" The Ministry of Supply's demonstration at the Fighting Vehicle Research and Development centre at Chertsey is intended to sell British military vehicles abroad. All the ones demonstrated are already in service, so there are no particular security issues involved. The hope is that large foreign orders will mean big and economical production orders. They are the "A echelon" supply vehicles that were ordered in large numbers at the beginning of the rearmament drive and which were cut back as "luxuries" later, since the price for their remarkable mobility in forward positions and beach head sand such was a truck that cost £6000 each, which is a bit much for a supply lorry. The unquestioned star of the show was the gas turbine-powered tank demonstrator built by Parsons. "[F]ew of the visitors who watched it whining around the test track at 20mph doubted that the work done on it will have a profound effect on the future design of military vehicles." 

British rod makers are suddenly unable to keep up with demand from the drawing plants that make steel wire as demand shifts suddenly from soft to vigorous. The Cunards board is divided on how to properly value its stock, the drive to increase the number of British private savers may be working, BOAC has had a good year but should do a round of employee reductions anyway, just to be sure. The first AEA formal training course for industry at Harwell has been very well attended, especially by engineers from Rolls Royce. Are they working on atomic aero-engines, The Economist wonders? Austin has restyled the A 40 with a new 1500 cubic centimeter engine that might mark a step towards a "squarer" British engine.

Leaders

"Helicopters Down to Earth" Everyone is talking about helicopters and they are everywhere doing everything. But you can over-egg the cake, Flight says. For example, "There has . . . been much talk about helicopter taxis or helibusses to  link airports to city centres; yet this seems likely to prove one of the least economical and least satisfactory applications for many years to come." Maybe the Rotodyne, but the magazine does say that "civil" helicopters should be "seen and not heard."

From All Quarters reports the Britannia's first overseas flight, summarises a talk by D. Keith-Lucas of Short on bomber design, looking forward to low-flying, supersonic, and pilotless bombers. Long-range rockets will have outstanding penetrating power, but he supposes won't be of much use over ranges of greater than 750 miles, where conventional bombers would be preferred. I think there is a problem with the transcription here, as perhaps he means aircraft with rocket engines, and not the intercontinental missiles of our push-button doomsday future. The verdict on the Victor crash is that it was a difficult-to-foresee failure of a complex structure. Some more details of the Rolls Royce "flying bedstead" VTO confirm that it is powered by two Nenes mounted horizontally with baffles to deflect the thrust down. Four compressed air jets supplied with air bled off the compressor, provide control. 

"Albion at Work" HMS Albion is at sea with an angled deck and a mirrored landing aid and sonic booms to be heard indicating hot ships on deck. To a point, as it operates Sea Hawks and Skyraiders, the boom-producing DH110 being strictly a visitor.

"BATTLE ROYALE"    Flight covers the exercise in much more detail than The Economist. so I can report that Harry Broadhurst has turned into an old man with an old man's face in his progress to Air Vice-Marshal. Apart from that, all I can tell you is that Broadhurst thinks this will be a bit silly if H-bombs ever get used, and that Flight seems to think that "Atomic Annie" is also a bit silly, although it can't say that out loud. 

Here and There reports that the Dutch Air Force is expanding but is falling short of recruiting goals, that The Manchester Guardian suggests calling the "flying bedstead" the "Vertijet," as the alternative is just too silly, that everyone thinks the Beverley will be a tremendous asset, that the RCAF is getting some Piasecki flying bananas, which isn't news, but the latest lurching step in the process needs to be reported. New Zealand is having a searching look at helicopters. An article on French ultra-lights runs sort, so The Aeronautical Bookshelf returns to review Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, Welman Shrader's Fifty Years of Flight, A Selection of Graphs for Use in Calculations of Compressible Airflow Prepared on Behalf of the Aeronautical Research Council by the Compressible Flow Tables Panel, and K. I. T. Richardson's The Gyroscope Applied. My goodness what a range to deal with in half a page! A science fiction novel, a contribution to the "years ago, before the war" genre,  a potentially fearsomely mathematical and gruellingly technical treatment, and a book of calculation aids! In the editor's defence, Clark is very active in the British Interplanetary Society, so  he's not just a novelist. The other books are pretty much what the title says. The editor thinks that books of calculation aids should not be bound, for obvious reasons. 

"Sino-Soviet Tour: In Mr. Atlee's Wake Through Russia and China by Il-12" What was it like to fly East bloc services? Eh, what are you going to say in a page and a half? Some company in Louisiana is offering a crop duster that is better than all the other crop dusters because it was designed to be a crop duster by someone who knows what farmers want, not like all the other designers. 

"'Collision Course Interception: Rocket Attacks from Abeam: New U.S. Technique" Since bombers still have tail guns, fighters might attack from abeam instead, which isn't hopeless impractical because rocket salvos put so much metal in the air. Do  you want to know how such a high speed interception is computed? Too bad, we're not going to tell you. This concludes this urgent bulletin from 1950. 

You know what would go down well right now? A beautiful pictorial spread of new airliners. 

"M.o.S Technical Contributions" The Ministry had a nice table at Farnborough where they handed out pamphlets to people trying to get in out of the rain about how they are working on wind tunnels and parachute harnesses and fuel atomisation and radar reliability and so many other worthy things. 

"Operation 'Elba Isles': A Naval Officer's Story of the Salving of Comet G-ALYP: Precis of An Article for Blackwoods by Gerald Forsberg" Pardon the lack of proper capitalisation, as the recovery of a disintegrated airliner from the waters off Elba wasn't strictly an operation. It was hard work, but it was basically fishing, and we know how fishing goes. 

Arthur Scholes, "Antarctic Air Exploration: Pioneer Flights and Discoveries of Wilkins, Byrd and Their Companions" So years ago, before the war, but for the South Pole. Four pages, so if you are interested in Antarctic exploration, look it up! 

Correspondence

Noel Jackson scolds people complaining about noise from low flying at Croydon since it was all done by irresponsible, unidentified third parties, so really there's no-one to blame. Malcom Lawrie runs down the surviving DC-2s for us in way of correcting an offhand comment in Flight, Patricia Stroud brings a women's touch to the "years ago before the war" genre that "Ex-Corporal" plays straight, M. C. Hall suggests testing surviving older aircraft to get a better grip on fatigue, John Ford, who is the President, BOAC Speedbird Philatelist Club, quite likes the new KLM cards. 

"Airline Assembly" Flight reports from the IATA meeting in Paris, which talked about rates, ticket policies, and pilot training. We get a summary of BOAC's annual report, which coverage I will leave to the more bracing mainstream eyes of The Economist, and The Industry boosts the economical new "Unimax" construction system being used to put up BEA's cargo  unit and customs shed at London Airport, and the excellent new Aviok blind nut now licensed in Britain by Aviation Developments, Ltd. 


 The Economist, 9 October 1954

Leaders

"Europe After London" The London conference on "There should be a United States of Europe and Britain Should Be Its Canada" was a jolly good time because Anthony Eden was a great host and agreed to keep an entire British army in place and buying bratwurst and a stein of beer at the local of a Friday night, so let's forget that whole EDC thing and get back on the road to we-know-not-where! 

Derick Heathcote-Amory was the son of a baronet and was raised
to the peerage as Viscount Amory. He went to Ludgrove, Eton, and 
Oxford. He married the daughter of Vice-Admiral Seymour, was in
the Territorial artillery in WWII, was wounded in Holland in '44,
he took in Food from Lloyd George, Jr, was Chancellor in 1958--60, is
 remembered for the 6% ratethat "cooled down the economy" after the
election spending binge. He had a nice yacht and no children.  

"Tory Reform of Trade?" Britain isn't going convertible because who knows what tomorrow will bring, and, anyway, we can blame Labour. We'll agree to Gatt because everyone is going to give up on import licenses and will let Britain keep as much imperial preference as the cabinet requires to sell Tory voters on another term, which isn't much.

"China's Road to Socialism" Runs through private enterprise, which will be "gradually strangulated," as opposed to Moscow, unless the Russians can provide the expertise that China needs.

"Food into Agriculture?" The Ministry of Food will probably be wound up in the next cabinet shuffle because rationing is gone and the Minister is tired of his office so what's the point? Farm price regulation will go to Agriculture, which seems obvious, but you have got to get to a pagelong jeremiad against current agricultural policy somehow.  

Notes

I'd like to say that the cropping is significant. 

Molotov is on about disarmament again and will no doubt fool some Germans. No-one cares about Trieste because making nice to Jugoslavia is important and the Italians can be bought off. Conservative delegates will probably sleep through Blackpool because the East Croydon byelection shows they won't lose the next General, after all, and everyone wants to be fresh for Winston's closing speech in case he finally says he's going to go, in which case Eden will probably  have to leave the Foreign Office because someone's got to run the country, and the Prime Minister is elected. It can now be admitted that Attlee did a pretty good job of getting the Party Conference through German rearmament without conceding a vote to the Bevanites. Andrei Vyshinsky is also talking about disarmament. Don't listen! Meanwhile, the Latin American delegates have had it up to here with Dulles and are making it clear. I'm sure that the American response will be perfectly reasonable, Ronnie said, with a meaningful glance at Guatemala. 

"The Last Days of Hanoi" The French are being kicked out of Hanoi because no-one wants them there and they can't hold on, and it is very sad and melancholy, and the Viet Minh got to dictate terms, so there won't even be any rioting and looting. The French won't leave Haiphong until May, and now that the Americans and French have agreed that Diem is their man in Saigon, it seems that they'll be leaving the South by March of 1956, four months before the general election that will settle everything, which the Americans think is a bit reckless, because in spite of the  265,000 man South Vietnamese army that will exist by then, and all the direct American aid, who seriously expects the South Vietnamese to fight? You know, I think I see a problem with this whole "stick around in the bit the Viet Minh haven't got around to kicking  you out of yet" scheme. 

Zsa Zsa straddling a statue, which was the really offensive
one, seems to  have been expunged from image search,
but here's another photo from the same spread. 

"Future of Conscription" Given Britain is keeping four divisions and a tactical air force in Germany. Does this mean that "[S]ome form of peacetime conscription is bound to continue in this country throughout the present century?" Possibly, probably. But will it allow cutting the current national service period below two years? Probably not. Pulling back a few thousand men from Suez, Trieste, and Kenya isn't going to allow the promised strategic reserve. Also, recent news stories about problems at the Tate Gallery are just the "venomous airing of personal antipathies."

"Between Fellaga and Colon" Franco-Tunisian negotiations on getting the colonists out of the country before terrorist bullets chase them out are not going too well because there are too many terrorist bullets flying, which seems a bit provocative when Mendes-France seems inclined to give the Tunisians what they want. Which raises the question of whether the terrorists and the colonists are actually united in wanting a civil war. Saudi Arabia is talking about rebuilding the Mecca railway that T. E. Lawrence blew up, and although it is a pretty uneconomic bit of rail, it might make sense from the point of view of Saudi prestige and the pilgrimage, so let's see. The Arts Council says it needs more money because art is getting too expensive. A really boring educational administration  reform is very worthy but actually there are snags. Probably one day the UN embargo on China trade will have to be "reconsidered." Is the time right to push the Americans on this? Maybe, considering how eager the Latin American delegations are to stick America in the eye right now. New Hall is a good thing for women, and so is the decision to give them a Cambridge entrance exam more like the men's. 

From The Economist of 1854 comes "War Rumours" Specifically, rumours about the outcome of the Battle of Alma and the fall of Sebastopol had everyone excited this week, which goes to show that you can't trust the electric telegraph, because it isn't reliable even though it is the latest thing.

Books

Viscount Templewood's Nine Troubled Years is by Samuel Hoare, if that helps, and is the latest contribution to the "You don't understand about Munich" genre, which the reviewer seems very sympathetic towards.  George Kirk's Survey of International Affairs: The Middle East, 1945--50, is about "filling the Middle East Vacuum," the subtitle proclaims, but not with tons of wood pulp tastefully dressed with linen sideboards, as you might expect, but with Britain, or America, or, Heaven forbid, Communism, and in general everyone except Middle Easterners. It has not been well-received by zionists, and has too little to say about the fad for planning and development, now thankfully past, or about the new era of "have" and "have not" states, but that's just grubby economics. The Memoirs of the Aga Khan gets a long review because he's in the club somehow. (Money!) Alan Burns' The History of the British West Indies must have been a hard book to write, and as the reviewer, who may or may not be Alan Burns' best friend says, it sure is a good one! Lesley Blanch's The Wilder Shores of Love is a "spicy, rococo book" about some very bad girls. I guess someone said, "The Economist would never review that." On the other hand it would absolutely review J. D. B. Mitchell's The Contracts of Public Authorities.

Letters

Spencer Soper writes to explain why he voted against German rearmament at Scarborough. F. C. Gilman explains that BOAC's freight services will get back on track when the Britannia enters service, as it is designed to carry a set volume of freight even when fully booked. Gordon Evans of the United Nations Association writes to explain why Britain should participate in the United Nations Expanded Technical Assistance Programme even though the Americans aren't, pointing out that it won't just be Britain and a few eccentric Scandinavian countries, but, in fact, pretty much everyone but the Americans.  

American Survey

"Plain Speaking on Trade" Everyone at the International Bank/IMF meeting in Washington spent a lot of time explaining why liberalising international trade was a good idea. Nothing like being lectured all week by fancy foreigners to change the minds of men like Sinclair Weeks! (Who is described by The Economist as an "enlightened protectionist." Them is fighting words!) 

"Segregation on Strike" The South is up in arms over desegregation. In slightly related news, Herb Brownell has actually said no to a merger. The Economist explains why antitrust action is good in principle but in any specific actual case just leads to the end of America. No one knows for sure what Senator McCarran's death means to the Democrats' ability to hold their Nevada Senate seats in the future. New York longshoremen unions are still fighting. Some people are saying that America is building too many houses and it will end in tears due to all that mortgage debt.  

"Fighting Form for the Army" The active US Army is going to get larger even as its troop strength falls with the changeover of four training to combat divisions, which will now be included in overseas rotations. This marks a victory of General Ridgeway's efforts to promote the Army's role in America's defence, while also signalling a new conscription policy.  Corporal Batchelor, the third American soldier convicted of collaborating with his North Korean captors, has been sentenced to life. Approximately 250 more to go, while the Air Force is now running special anti-brainwashing courses. New England's decision to extend daylight savings time for an extra hour at the behest of the recreation industry will sow anarchy and disaster. 

The World Overseas

"Britain Was An Island" Time for a new more pages about the decision to extend the British garrison in Germany indefinitely, with historical commentary that lights on Mr. Fulton and the steam engine, Newfoundland, and Aneurin Bevin along the way. 

"The Cult of the French Beet" Mendes-France's drive to modernise the French economy runs into the subsidised beet crop. (Beetroots are the best source of sugar you can grow in places like France, and used to be subsidised widely to save hard currency. I am vaguely recalling from the days when Fortune still ran agriculture articles that it is also a very efficient crop to grow in a rotation, but never mind that, it is time to ridicule French bureaucrats for being concerned with something as silly as beetroot.

"Ethiopian Outlook" On closer analysis, Ethiopia appears to be a country in Africa with a King, who is visiting Britain this week. This requires some commentary to the effect that it is actually a very large country full of diverse peoples, regions and languages, as perplexing as this is when you look at it on very largescale maps. It appears to be developing, progressing, and moving, if not surging, towards the future. Many foreigners work there, giving helpful advice, and some of them take the paper. Commodity prices are up, so the country is prosperous just now, but the locals are strangely unwilling to invest that money, giving as an excuse the perfectly correct but unacceptable fact that coffee prices tend to fluctuate. A Correspondent Recently in Spain writes to note that the country is building this and that, and altogether is not nearly as much a dark continent as it seems, unless you take into account the people living there, who seem strangely repressed for citizens of a not-at-all fascist country. In South Africa, some silly judge has ruled the Prime Minister awful in a court of law, which is sure to cause South Africa to reverse course. BATTLE ROYAL, the recent British army-air exercise along the Rhine was lots of fun, and The Economist wants to be invited to the next one, so here's a story about it. It simulated atomic attacks, and so involved dispersing units, bringing to light the fact that the Army has lots of vehicles, and that 2nd Division has only two brigade headquarters, which isn't enough. Instead of land reforms, Bolivia is encouraging the peasants of the highlands to go away to the tropics and stop bothering the landlords, in exchange for which the government will build a road or two, subsidise fertiliser prices, and shoot all the Indians, although quiet about the last part because no-one likes thinking about that. 

The Business World
 
"Shops Under the Microscope" The third volume of data from the (first-ever) 1951 "census of distribution," that is, of shops, is fascinating if you are The Economist. There are a half million shops in the country that employ 2.26 million people and pay £7 million in wages each week, of which 435,000 are working proprietors and another 121,000 people work without part time without pay. Britain has 29,000 barrows and market stalls. Stores range in size from the 66,500 that do less than £1000/year to the 922 with a turnover of more than £250,000. Roughly half lie between £1000 and £2500, and account for about a quarter of the £5 billion annual retail turnover. Twenty-nine percent of stores belong to chains, with cooperatives having 29,000 locations and 129,000 belonging to multiple chains. Grocery stores owned by the largest chains have a turnover of £17,000 on average. The Economist would like to know more about credit.

"A Plan for Rubber" Everyone agrees that rubber plantations should replant with modern, high-producing breeds of rubber trees, but the devil is in the details of financing. 

Business Notes

"Plan for Industrial Investment" Machine tool sales are £1.5 million below their £33 million pace this time last year, mainly due to lower exports to Canada and South Africa, and it is obviously time to panic and not just write it off to the end of the defence programme, but may rise, because many new factories are being started, perhaps because of budget concessions on depreciation. Dollar reserves fell over the summer, but it was seasonal. The best source of offshore dollars is still the MDAP. The deficit is shrinking, workers are b buying more shares these days, Australia is tightening currency restrictions, Rootes has a cheap car at the Paris show, a cut down Hillman Minx, plus the Husky, claimed to be for hard going even though it doesn't have four-wheel or front-wheel drive. Cotton wages are up, which is bad, Hollywood will be able to take $17 million of its $40 million earnings out of Britain next year under the renewed Anglo-American film agreement, just like last year. Vauxhall has announced a £36 million, five year capital investment plan. 

TRIDAC is an awfully big thing to fall through the memory hole! 

"Air Combat on the Ground" The Economist was very impressed by the "simulator" demonstrated at Farnborough this week, a building-sized "three dimensional computer" that takes into account all the features of aircraft and missiles to draw a complete picture of a pursuit and interception in the time the actual operation takes to happen. This will greatly ease the design of new missiles. Three retailers showed off mobile shops at the Commercial Vehicles Show this week, tanker rates are up slightly, and the Council of Industrial Design and the British Federation of Master Printers are having a catalogue show to tell business how to do it better. 

  

Leaders

"The Art of Reconnaissance" and "In BATTLE ROYALE" The first Leader is one of those intolerable "years ago before the war" blurbs taking us from 1794 to 1918, before getting to reconnaissance during the exercise, where the main point is how effective Belgian Thunderjets and British Meteors were in locating the American atomic howitzers, although the Americans groused a bit, and, to be sure, howitzers can fire when recon jets are grounded by the weather, but Broadhurst says that by next year new gadgets will greatly reduce this weather protection. 

From All Quarters reports that some new MDAP contracts have been signed, that No. 43 Squadron will soon be the first to receive Hunters, that Frederick Sykes is dead, that Air Commodore Banks is joining Bristol, and that the USAF has a codename system for naming Russian planes, according to which its new bombers are the Badger and Bison, respectively. Handley Page is looking into building a factory in Australia. 

"Training Carrier" HMS Illustrious has been demoted to training carrier and may soon be scrapped. We run down its history. 

"Silencing the Swift: Supermarine Install Their First Ground-Running Muffler" Loud noise, it turns out, is bad, so we're sure glad that this one  muffler has been installed!

Here and There

GAPAN is twenty-fiver years old, Pest Control, Ltd. is off to spray in Sudan. Canadair has laid off about half of its 14,000 workers after the cancellation of its T33 trainer contract, but may call them back when Britannia production begins. Hanna Reitsch may have been hired as a test pilot in Germany, and RAF pilots are picking up the service's first Thunderstreaks. 

"'Available Jones' On Duty: With the KC-97Gs of the 43rd Air Refuelling Squadron, Strategic Air Command" The Squadron travels the world more than bombers, but doesn't seek publicity, except when it does, and it called up Flight from Lakenheath in Suffolk, and asked for a reporter, because other than entertaining someone from Flight there's not much else to do there. It is obviously very hard to fly, navigate, station keep, and make rendezvous in these planes, but all the details are classified, so let's talk about the flight deck layout and the crews' clothes, instead. 

"Low-Speed Aerodynamics: And Model Aircraft Techniques: The First LRSARA Conference" The major research presentations were on various kinds of hydroskis,so I assume this is some kind of Saro promotion.

"Radio and Economics in Aircraft Operation: America's Stanford Research Institution Studies Installation Penalties" SRI is particularly interested in flush antennae and radio reliability. Also, Australia is very interested in keeping the RAAF up to world standards says the Australian minister currently junketing around the world to see cutting edge aeronautical research wherever it happens, whether at ski hills, beaches, night clubs, or a simple golf course! 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that foreigners are saying that the English Electric P.1 will have reheat, and that the all up weights of the Wyvern and Canberra are 24,000 and 45,000lbs respectively, and that the "prospective English Electric twin engine transport" with Double Mamba engines will have a remarkable payload of 10,000lbs on 32,000lbs all up weight. The Bell submission to the United States Navy's VTO competition will have turboprops pivoting on the wings rather than taking off on its tail. The prototype is almost fully skinned. The Boeing 717, the version of the 707 being produced for the Air Force, is in development. It will be heavier and have a greater payload than the 707.   Cessna is working on a turboprop light aircraft. 

"BATTLE ROYALE: Part Two" After all the fuss about reconnaissance, maybe some actual information (that is not about the first reconnaissance flight over the BEF in 1914) might help! The article is about the photographic unit that accompanied 83 Group to disseminate results more quickly. It has 100 WRAF personnel and an impressive motor pool and support equipment, and multiple copy printers. The Keith-Lucas presentation on the bombers of the future is discussed a bit further, and, yes, he was talking about robot bombers like the Martin Matador and not missiles like the V-2.

Correspondence

E. V. Hammond and L. A. Postle provide this week's "years ago, before the war," while E. R. Bonner of Decca Navigator, Co., Ltd corrects the mistaken impression that Decca sets might not be perfect for helicopters. Decca sets are perfect for everything! Honestly, have you tried them in your laundry? With hot mustard? For regular commuting? They're certainly better than the VOR systems that are supposed to be standard in Europe but which have in fact only barely begun to be rolled out. 

"Fuel For A Floating Airfield" A US Navy picture of fleet oiler Chemung refuelling Philippine Sea   illustrates that this is a really neat photo that we're going to use any excuse to print. Speaking of bulletins from 1950, as I was last week, the Rover gas turbine was on show at the SBAC Exhibition.

The Industry reports that Hunting Geophysics has a new camera for magnetometer work. (It shoots a strip synchronised with the magnetometer's.) Aviation and Engineering is looking for work, and we have received a nice brochure from Cable Covers, Ltd about their "Talurit" wire-rope splice for Bowden cables, no photos, unfortunately. 

Civil Aviation reports that your dangerous lack of Silver City Airways coverage is hereby remedied with some fluff about their airfield, that India is buying some De Havilland Herons, that Sabena made a loss last year due to tourist tickets not being made up for by increased passenger traffic. United is definitely adopting C-band weather radar on most of its fleet. BOAC livestock pilots are getting a pay rise because the work is tough. Airwork's trooping contract has begun.

 

Fortune's Wheel lets us know well in advance that the January issue will be the 25th anniversary number. For the next twenty-five, hopefully even more second-rate politicla reporting, profiles of businessmen, articles about managing management, profiles of companies, and glorious spreads about golf (the business game.)

So we're not going to be long about this issue, is what I am saying! 

Business Roundup focusses on the lagging recovery, and for very good reason we'll see when we read the only really substantial article this month, about the GOP's chances of holding Congress. They're not very good, guys, whistle in the dark all you like. 

 What a shame considering that "most executives think that the Republican Administration has succeeded in providing a better climate for business." Notably, capital good spending on machinery is still "easing." 

Business Notes From Abroad is pretty positive about Mendes-France, notes that the Mexicans are pretty frosty about Guatemala, which might affect exploratory drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, that the Austrian economy is recovering, and that the Scandinavian countries are exploring a customs union. 

Leaders begin with an attack on businessmen for not doing their best to campaign for the GOP in '54 before looking at the current fight against price discounting, Dr. Irving Lodge of Columbia's attack on "committeeism," and makes fun of Dog World's claim that Communists and socialists don't like dogs, although that doesn't stop it from plugging The New Leader. 

"Can the Republicans Hold Congress?" This is a classic example of the way that the story becomes the news. 

"The Mighty Multiplier" Fortune looks at the extent to which new technology expands the capital goods market, and asks just how much monopoly innovators should get. (Lots, but not all. No-one is arguing for perpetual monopolies on new patents, Fortune points out loudly and nervously.) The article is disappointingly untheoretical compared to last month. Which is a pity, if there is a philosopher/economist out there asking themselves "What actually is technology," I've never heard of them! There is a brief treatment of the economists who have looked at it in the past, notably Joseph Schumpeter. There's actually a pretty good discussion of how corporate research is expanding, and where new technology is most used (computers and power generating seem to be the big examples), and a discussion of what "real automation" might mean, whenever it comes, but I guess when I squint I wonder to what extent "research" is "investment," and that doesn't seem like a question anyone is comfortable asking. What is the return on a dollar of research compared with a dollar of machine tools? 

"The Churning in Middle Eastern Oil" Fortune reviews the Iran oil settlement; Iran owns the oil, a consortium of eight foreign companies runs the fields for twenty years, Anglo-Iranian gets a big payoff to go away, the return of Iranian oil to world markets is hopefully absorbed by growing European demand, so nothing better happen to the European economies! Why do we need to be told all of this again? Because there is new news, which is that Aristotle Onassis has put together an oil fleet and has signed a contract to ship Saudi Arabia's oil, and might squeeze into even more business by offering favourable terms to oil exporting countries, which his competitors are agreed is completely unfair. However, it looks like they won't be able to get rid of him by good old underhanded tactics, so they might end up competing with him! 

The only other article that isn't about golf or a profile is "Making Synthesis Safe," which is about du Pont de Nemours' new Haskell Laboratory for Toxicology and Industrial Medicine, which tests new materials for hidden health hazards by testing them on laboratory animals before they are released to the public and discovered to be harmful later, perhaps by harming a person, rather than a laboratory rat. The article's a bit marred by the tone that implies that testing its products for toxicity before marketing them is a favour that du Pont is doing us, it is still interesting to hear about the lengths the researchers are going to. There is also a short exploration of the development of consumer protection law.