Postblogging Technology, July 1955, II: Cherry Time

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Mon only looks drawn because it's a 25 hour day keeping
the kids from knocking all that kitsch over. 

I am pleased to report that my husband, children, and I are enjoying an idyllic Arrows Lake summer, and that the Nelson Public Library carries The Economist and Newsweek, but that Notre Dame's collection of thinly-disguised advertorial collections is woefully deficient, and wherever in the postal universe my magazines are, they aren't here. I am sure that they will turn up shortly, but everything in life is short except deadlines, however self-imposed, so I am going with what I have got and am then off to contemplate what to do with even more fresh cherries than we can eat raw. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: Upside Down Cake!

The Economist, 16 July 1955

Leaders

I don't know if you've heard about it, but there'll be a Big Four Summit in Geneva next week, and they will talk about lots of super important stuff, like what to order in when they break for lunch, and world peace. 

"By Hard Money Alone" "Mr. Butler's system of economic management is entering a period of trial." I think that this translates into the little people's English as, "We cut taxes to win the election and now that it's obvious that there's too much money out there, we all need to work together find a way to avoid the consequences without raising taxes back up to where they were, because I like money." And since that sounds almost as selfish as the proposed solution of starting a business recession to stop inflation, in tried and true Economist fashion, we emit a two-page word cloud about how controls won't work to make it a bit less obvious that we're just not going to talk about taxes at all.

"Glimpse of a French Commonwealth" The French Assembly vote for home rule for Tunisia was 538 to 44, so much for that. Now there is just Algeria, where a multi-party report for the Ministry of Defence says that the revolt is too national and too deeply rooted to be ended by simple repression, and Morocco, where it is increasingly clear that France is still there because French reactionaries will kill to keep them there. It is thought possible that Tunisia might be willing to stay in the French Union if it became more like the Commonwealth, and maybe that will make the reactionaries happy, The Economist says, because it was born last Saturday. 

Rental clothes are worth as much ink as Butler's interest rate increases because renting the Editor is renting his Ascot duds and probably also his skiing clothes, which you might think was a bit low class, and so see above, "word cloud."

"Deadline in Vietnam" You darn Communists better get in line right now! Or we'll back Diem! Stop laughing! We mean it! Show 'em, France? Hey, where are you going? Get right back here right now! 

Notes

It's time to tell you more about the Monopolies Bill, and you will sit right there in your chair while we do it, and you will like it! It's so nice that the right honourable member for speedboats is on the case. The Economist is warming to Bertrand Russell's pacifism now that it seems to mean that the Soviets have to give up their H-bombs, which they're obviously not going to do, as see Pierrre Joliot-Curie's statement to the World Peace Council. Russia, you see, believes that the world won't end if atomic bombs are used, which is a bad opinion. It also believes that a world war would cause enormous destruction and suffering, which is a bad opinion. I'm a bit bewildered, but as often thee are the same opinions regarding different things (Britain not having to pay for H-bombs; a future united Germany not joining Nato because it would be devastated by a world war) Britain, Harold Macmillan thinks, might be one of various "neutrals" (like Russia) that might kind of join up with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg without conceding that it might be in, or adjacent to, Europe.  Which is fine, The Economist thinks, as long as they're not really in the Council. The "overdue increase in the price of coal" led to a solid win for Labour in the house, where it argued that coal prices are still too low, and that there should be supports for poor people. 

"Mopping Up Mau-Maus" The amnesty for surrendered Mau-Maus has expired and it is a grim day, even though "it brought the submission of nearly 1000 savages." The Emergency will be over by the fall, but that just means that most British troops can go on. The partisan war will continue, and The Economist thinks that the 70,000 Emergency detainees can't be released, for obvious reasons, and that the colony hasn't done enough to arrange convict slave labour for them. In other prison-related opinions, The Economist thinks that the two Sinn Fein members elected in the General should continue to be the recognised MPs even though they are in jail and it is illegal for them to sit. It doesn't make enough of the horrible implications of sitting the defeated Unionist candidates in their place, but good enough. 

The Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet Union has been called for February, which is early. The Economist wonders what Khrushchev will get up to in his first Congress. Will he run it like Stalin did? Will it reduce planning emphasis on heavy industry and armaments in favour of consumer goods? 

Nothing to see here. 

South Korea and Japan are fighting over Japanese ouvertures to North Korea, where Premier Nam Il says that the country is open to trade with Japan. They are also fighting over the Rhee Line, which the magazine thought it should mention even though the connection with the main story is tenuous. The annual conference of the Transport and General Workers' Union will feature another gigantic struggle with the left wing, including the naive fools who think that all Communists shouldn't be taken out and shot, no hard feelings, just to be sure, really. The latest case where it has to be argued that a convicted murderess ought not have been hung involves a woman who shot her abusive lover and it is all horrible, The Economist rightly thinks. 

Reader discretion is advised with the Wiki link above to the Ruth Ellis case. Ellis had an uncredited role in the Rank film, Lady Godiva Rides Again rather than having anything to do with the Godiva Day parade they had in Coventry back in the day. Still a time capsule. 

A discussion of where we stand right now with the GCSE examination in schools follows. Should it be universal? Should there be other external examinations? Should you be able to substitute one for the other? Ho Chi Minh is enjoying a victory tour, including a generous foreign aid grant from Moscow that, unfortunately for the North, doesn't include food aid when the region has an annual rice deficit of 100,000 tons. Meanwhile Communist insurgents are still fighting in Laos, which is bad. Canada is selling wheat to the Soviet Union and butter to Czechoslovakia, the latter at below the Canadian support price, which means that Canada is "subsidising" the Reds, which the Americans have recently decided to stop doing, although I'm not sure I understand the title of the Note, "Canada's Gamble." The Economist is pleased with the way they break newspaper strikes down in Sydney. A Colonial Office visit to Mauritius finds that it is a long way from self-government due to religious and ethnic divides and also incipient communism. 

From The Economist of 1855 we have a corker about "Reform of the Civil Service," in which it argues that the Civil Service needs lots of stupid people for routine jobs and should be allowed to get on with hiring them. I vaguely recall the magazine being against the civil service exam, which must have been a new thing at the time that I am not going to inquire into further lest the librarians in Nelson decide that I deserve a cot in the storage room. So perhaps this is another example of Wilson being an idiot. Or perhaps he is being reasonable. I don't know! 

Letters

"Rear Admiral" thinks that if the western allies just had more guns, they would be able to tell the Russians to shove off without having to destroy the world, which they might decide is some kind of bluff. The British Standards Institution writes to explain why standards for the textile industry are hard to arrange, so The Economist can kindly stop complaining. Irving Brown of the AFL and The Economist have a vigorous argument about who said what about international trade unionism and world socialism. George Thomson,  Singapore's Public Relations Officer, writes to explain why they are not as authoritarian as all that, down Singapore way, a few indefinite detentions without trial notwithstanding. "West End Solicitor" is in high dudgeon about misrepresentations of the Country Courts Bill, to which The Editor makes no reply. Oops! 

Books

Eli F. Hecksher's An Economic History of Sweden is a very worthy book, reviewed at length. Boris Simon's Abbe Pierre and the Rag Pickers is a slightly more esoteric essay in the same vein, as just last year, anyone following current affairs  would read that title and say to him or herself, "Ah, yes. That Abbe Pierre." In  the cold winter of 1953--4, and the the charity worker who relieved the distress of Paris' poorest was famous, but that was now almost two years ago, and he has receded into the background as some kind of left wing moral scold in a foreign and distant land of which we care to know nothing, unless its government is teetering and about to fall, as it usually is; and perhaps we need reminding that left wing moral scolds are often actually very useful people, and right about what they are scolding us about. Michael Lindsay's China and the Cold War is a good book because it is in the middle. Seymour B. Harris'

Lord Keynes: Economist and Policy Maker is "a disappointing book." W. J. Murison and J. P. Lamb have complementary books on public libraries and "commercial and technical" libraries. Libraries, it turns out, are good. Hallam Tennyson's Saint on the March is a good, but not great, look at the Bhoodan Movement, which needs no introduction. John C. Harper's Profit Sharing in Practice and Law explains the practice that the Prime Minister thinks might be a good alternative to communism. Rudolf Cooper has the column's last long review, of his Failure of a Revolution, about how Germany didn't go communist or democratic in 1918, but Erwin Griswold (The Fifth Amendment Today) and Derrick Sherwin Bradley (Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition) get notices. 

American Survey

No-one who wears a bow tie could blow a dog whistle!
(Also against motor racing.)

"Taking Off for Geneva" The Economist's American office has a great explanation of how the Geneva talks are a great excuse to take July off. Or, uhm, something. Look, I'm not reading another two pages about what the Big Four could disagree about. The Treasury is tightening credit, because Eisenhower is going to win in '56 and what would the new term be without a Republican recession? GM is doing pretty okay by its latest financials, which is definitely a story. New York State is already fighting about who will get the current from the St. Lawrence Seaway and the completed Niagara works, and through whom. The House is on about the school construction bill still, with all the usual considerations of using it as a lever to pry southern states out of desegregation, and legislative delays playing into Stevenson's hands in '56. It is also fighting over television and political campaigning. The FCC is supposed to regulate it, but largely has no idea how. Does the bill banning Communist thoughts also ban Communist candidates from going on TV and talking about Communism? It doesn't know! (Cue TV being a vast wasteland jokes.) How much coverage should be allowed? What should we make of Senator Neuberger's campaign for a bill preventing politicians from wearing makeup on TV on the grounds that if they can be deceptive about appearances, they can be deceptive about anything, which you know what Uncle George would say about that! The Fund for the Republic, a Ford Foundation offshoot, has commissioned a study of tolerance in the United States, for which Samuel Stouffer has produced a "Tolerance Scale" that The Economist thinks is pretty silly, mainly because it seems to show that the average American is pretty intolerant except when it comes to anyone they actually know. 

The World Overseas

"Austria Braces Up to Freedom" A convenient inset map shows us where Austria is, while the magazine explains Europe's newest neutral state, which, it seems, thanks to investments in industry, hydroelectric power, and oil, is in a much better state than it was before the war, but has to deal with all the state enterprises that it has inherited from the Russians. The French steel industry, which is large and healthy, might be in trouble for the usual French reasons, while on the other hand the economies of Asia made substantial progress in 1954, unlike the Italian south, which is still poor and struggling. The Swedes are fighting over who should own and run their iron fields, while Mexico has resolved that the state will not own the Yucatan sisal industry. 

Since the special section on the British insurance industry requires no comment here, it is on to

The Business World, except that it is on about how gasing interest rates and raising the price of coal will solve all ills, and there's nothing more I need to say about that, either, so on to Business Notes, which is on about finances (including the steel denationalisation issues, which is sort of a technological story, and related to the story about how industry got steel out during the rail strike) until it finally gets to an interesting bit about the furniture industry, which follows up on the last surviving remnants of the Board of Trade's attempt to industrialise the industry during the war, so that all the chairs in Britain would be made in chair factories for maximum productivity of the Austerity Chair, a project that seems to be a crashing failure, much to The Economist's disappointment. 

"Questions on the Javelin" De Havilland supporters are lighting a fire under the Ministry of Supply because the 1952 decision to go with the Javelin all-weather fighter because it was newer and more advanced than the DH110, which is now in service with the Royal Navy. The Javelin, on the other hand, is now to be purchased mostly as the Mark II because the design proved unexpectedly difficult to produce as a "straight off the drawing board" design, just like all the other ones which various air forces have tried to hurry into service. Deficiency payments to grain farmers have now been in effect for a year and the foretold crisis hasn't happened due to it all being fear-mongering, especially the bit about a "miller's ring." 

From Newsweek for 18 July 1955

Science, Medicine, and Education

"Those Elusive Hoses" If 1947 had UFOs, and 1954 had exploding windshields, 1955 has burrowing hoses, a phenomena in which ordinary garden hoses that burrow into the ground, nozzle first. 

"Science With Frosting" Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us hit so big that now everyone is writing popular science books. A roundup includes Pierre de Latil's The Underwater Naturalist, Georges Blond's The Great Story of Whales, John Crompton's The Hunting Wasp, Austin Rand's Stray Feathers: From a Bird Man's Desk, and John Stewart Collis' The Moving Waters. Nice of Newsweek to break the blacklist on Blond. Communists, no, Fascists, yes! 

"Food and Drug Letdown" Oveta Culp Hobby's Citizens' Advisory Committee on the FDA finds that cuts in funding at the FDA since 1952 need to be urgently reversed. Also, the Salk vaccine has been released for general inoculations by the Public Health Service. 

Lots of American exchange students are going to Europe this summer, and now the American Field Service is involved for some reason. Maybe they can take in a peace summit while they're there! The U.S. Public Health Service admonishes American schools for not doing nearly enough for campus health. 

The Economist, 23 July 1955

Leaders

"Fixed or Floating" Will or should the pound exchange at a fixed or a floating rate? The latest hiccup in the currency markets occasions another two pages of deathless prose, which at least shoves the talking about talking at Geneva onto the back pages. I would be a bit more impressed by the "world peace now" talk if it weren't so obvious that the governments of the world weren't trying to find a way of backing out of Korea-era defence spending, especially the kind that sends guns to would-be allies overseas. The Malayan elections get several pages, and controlled circulation," that is, all-advertorial magazines, get another page-and-a-half because they are much more important to the kind of magazine which has to sell itself to readers than they are to the rest of us. (Those who have to make their way through Aviation Week aside.)

Notes of the Week

If you can pull of a mustache like that, you will be 
remembered for some harmless gutter racism and not for
trying to blow up England that one time. 

Since it would be unbearably tedious to only talk about Geneva in the Leaders, the first three Notes are about it, too. Clement Attlee's decision to form a full "shadow government" within his caucus, which is different from a "shadow government" in very important ways which are briefly explained, is parsed as relates the leadership contest that will follow his imminent retirement. The Minister of Fuel fended off his critics in spite of Gerald Nabarro's resignation from the Fuel and Power Board because no-one except what is politely described as the Conservative Party's "right wing" wants to bring up coal de-nationalisation. Everyone agrees that it would be nice if Britain had atom bomb shelters and strategic stockpiles for civil defence, but no-one wants to pay for it, which makes it an ideal subject for Labour posturing. Italian politics are on the verge of a crisis, no, I mean a real crisis, or maybe not. We haven't talked about German politics for a while, and we really should just to be complete, and to be fir we actually care about the way that the German army is to be managed. The French Army is being sent into Casablanca because the French police there have "taken sides" in the riots and counter-riots which have killed at least 32 people. But the French army doesn't want to go into Morocco because look at Dien Bien Phu, and The Economist gives a measured explanation of how the natives wanting to be independent of colonial control somehow reflects badly on the natives, but has to be conceded anyway now that it is patently obvious that all those fellows who went out to take up the white man's burden are fascist thugs. Except that you shouldn't say that in Paris, because you will be accused of undermining the mission civilisatrice. Gold Coast is probably going to be a democracy after independence no matter what his critics say about Nkrumah. An architectural exhibit "protesting against the low standards in the rebuilding of London" is getting a lot of press and support. The coming of the United States of Europe is currently being impeded by various difficulties related to the Messina decisions, Jugoslavia is to be praised for "realistically" raising the price of groceries because the subsidies were too much to be borne, one must weigh with an equal hand government and critics on the subject of Remploy, the agency that finds jobs for disabled Britons. Chins are stroked over the question of  just how many colonial universities there should be, and about the future of the London Library and its archaic catalogue system. Notes underline that the Soviet atomic conference and their attempt to revive the International Trade Organisation were diplomatic failures. Fancy the Russians trying to arrange more foreign trade! (Because on this swing of the conversational metronome, that would be a bad thing.)

Books

H. Duncan Hall's North American Supply is the latest volumen in the Civil (sub-)Series of the History of the Second World War series, and is a very worthy book that gets almost a full page, only half a column being snipped by Harrison Salisbury's Stalin's Russia and After, which is pictures and anecdotes, most unflattering to the Soviet state. Angus Maude and Enoch Powell have Biography of a Nation: A Short History of Britain, which is much to short, and limited to political history because "all else is chronicle," while occasionally "lapsing" from sobriety, for example in indulging conspiracy theories about the Princes in the Tower and Joan of Arc, while the last chapters have a "pleasantly acidulated flavour." G. L. S. Shackle offers Uncertainty in Economics and Other Reflections, which is a collection of the author's essays, and "stimulatingly fresh." John MacCormick's The Flag in the Wind is a contribution to the Scottish "Whether Scotland should be independent, which I am just saying, because I will concede that it shouldn't be, but" question. Willard Thorpe explains Trade, Aid, or Wha?, and Lillian Haddakin The Poetry of Crabbe. About which two I will say that at least in twenty years there will be a study of the poetry of George Crabbe to take in hand, while Americans will still be arguing about if and when they should trade with foreigners, and, if not, whether they should aid them. 

The portrait of Willard Long Thorpe that Wikipedia chose says it all.

American Survey

Imagine what this would look like if there were such a thing as "non-skeds"
and they were responsible for most of the big crashes!

"Dixon-Yates for 'Fifty-Six?" Sure. Whatever. Ike is going to win because everyone's got a job and a new car. And when they lose them in the spring of '56, they'll elect another Democratic caucus and it will all happen again except that Ike can't run again so someone else can win  in '60. Oh, right. Important stuff. Sure. Private power operators really want there to not be public power, and will keep on pushing politicians to get rid of public competition even though everyone would rather that private power just went away. Only in America! The Economist is much more sanguine about the departure of Ovetta Culp Hobby than Newsweek, pointing out that a Southern Democrat who joined the Eisenhower cabinet because he promised to check government interference in private affairs was really not the woman to run Health, Education, and Welfare to start with, and certainly not through a national polio vaccination campaign. General Ridgeway's statement on his retirement that the army has been cut much too far and that too much is being spent on air power is the most unexpected thing to ever happen in Washington since his successor said the exact same thing the next day, which might seem like a violation of the laws of cause and effect, but isn't because anyone on this planet could have written either statement. Nevertheless, he said it, so it's news. The United States Tariff Commission has endorsed the President's decision to put a tariff on bicycles because it supports free trade, but not like that. Louis Wolfson is in trouble for raiding the Capital Transit Company's investment reserve to restore full dividend payments at the expense of giving up on new streetcars, with the result that D.C. isn't upset at the summer strike because it is too busy being upset at Wolfson. Wolfson points out that in a capitalist system, a director's responsibility is to the shareholders, and their interests are obviously best served by taking the money and running. As a result, stuck on Capitol Hill with nowhere to go in the sticky, sticky heat, Congress has gone madder than usual and is trying to unpass all the appropriations bills on suspicion of extravagance in matters like the administration of the AEC and the building of an Air Force academy. (Its architecture is too modern.) A Federal court ruling that municipalities have to butt out of airport regulation elicits a  huge sigh of relief around the country because now they can't shut down airports just because of all the crashes, which are going down anyway. Yes, The Economist says, but what about the noise? Los Angeles "School Politics" gets almost a full page because if you don't laugh, you'd cry. The board made the city give up a $350,000 grant for teacher training from the Ford Foundation because it, like the UN, Unesco, fluoridation, mental hygiene, health and sex education, and anything pertaining to Jewishness are Red conspiracies. The fact that in the recent board elections one dissident was elected against the unified opposition of incumbents and "the majority of the press" is deemed a hopeful sign. 

 "Atomic Energy in Harness: Britain's Opportunity" Since they're talking about atomic things at Geneva, so this is a good time to talk about atomic energy. Not only is it a good idea that can run in parallel with building up an atomic arsenal, the latter eventually starts piling up surplus plutonium, which can be burned for power in specially-adapted reactors, and it would be ridiculous to export it from Britain, so there should be at least one plutonium reactor in Britain, anyway, and if the Americans are willing to give away plutonium to power American-built reactors abroad, British exports could hardly compete. Perhaps British engineers could get into building reactors in foreign parts, something they are probably good at. The Economist goes on to briefly discuss the basics of atomic power before moving on to the much more problematic question of the likely price of atomic power. Ironically, the United States and Russia don't need cheap electricity, because they have so much untapped hydroelectric power. It is powers with declining coal reserves, like Britain, which need to look at it. Radiation chemistry is interesting, atomic engineering raises difficult questions since atomic reactors will be, well, atomic, and face neutron-caused corrosion while having to take damping effects into account. We then survey European developments, including in the Soviet Union, but especially France, which is embracing atomic power for the same reason as Britain. Finally, the special report assesses a range of atomic shares. 

The World Overseas 

Wikipedia identifies this as flood waters exiting the 
Yarmuk reservoir in 1933.

"Indians in Russia" The Indian correspondents who accompanied Nehru in his visit to Russia have observations! Russia isn't that great, and probably Nehru noticed that, too. At this point I have breaking news: There is a Big Four summit beginning just now in Geneva, and so far everyone has been nice to each other! China is having a Stalinist-style purge of the "Hu Feng" clique. Israel is opening the first of a pair of irrigation pipes taking the water of the Yarkon River in Galilee down below Fort Beersheba to irrigate "enough land for 8000 families." Paid for by $40 million in aid from American Jewish communities, its value will depend on the value of the crops the immigrants to be settled on the land are "taught to grow." They're North African Jews, you see, so obviously they have no idea how to figure these things out for themselves. The Economist then lays out the state of play with respect to irrigation diversions in the highlands, dancing around the fact that Israel has refused to sign on with the water sharing plan worked out by Eric Johnston in his visit, and is likely to start violating it soon, on the grounds that the Arab powers aren't doing enough with their water. The Russians are still fighting over the heavy versus consumer balance of industrial production. There are too many Communists in that international college students' association meeting in Birmingham. Russia is secretly deporting about half the Rumanian population of Bessarabia to Siberia to balance out the ethnic population of the contentious border province. If you are wondering how we know about it when it is secret, it is because the Moldavian S.S.R. has announced a voluntary scheme for people to move to the Virgin Lands, which is obviously cover for mass deportation. 

The Business World

Profits up, silver up.

Business Notes

De Havilland Gyron
By Nimbus227 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122073542

Inflation up, stocks up, tea up, imports up, freight rates up, heating oil up, gas up, experimental dollar stock issues on the LSE up. It's like the market has been flooded with money by some ill-advised tax cuts, or something! Barley and corn are down, though, bad news for North American farmers. The Economist can hardly contain its joy at increasing indications of a bad winter for coal, revealed in the ongoing Commons "coal inquiry." British Road Services won't be denationalised because no-one wants it.  Convertibility, which might happen someday, and is somewhat happening a little bit right now in various places if you look at it right, can't stop being fascinating. BEA is starting its postponed helicopter service from London to the South Bank next week, eight flights a day for 35s each, competitive with a cab ride. "This service . . seems to be an experiment," the magazine perceptively realises. The Westland-Sikorsky machines to be used have been equipped with floats in case of forced landings in the Thames, which makes me feel safer, but reduces carriage from a theoretical twelve passengers to five plus baggage.  "[T]he tortuous nature of the experiment must raise questions about whether this is the best use of public money . . . " Well, yes, I think so, too! Trial runs by the Gnat and the Gyron reveal opposite approaches to the future of jet fighters, either very small and simple, or giant supersonic monsters. 

From Newsweek for 25 July 1955

Science, Medicine, and Education

"Inside Los Alamos" Newsweek visits Los Alamos for local colour. 

Periscoping Science (Oh, I'll bet this'll be good) reports that "Skyhook" cosmic-ray research and rocket launching balloons are already flying to 14 miles high, and are set to beat the current rocket record of 250 miles elevation. Uhm, don't balloons need air to fly? Germany is getting into this whole atomic power/atomic reactor business. 

"Busy Petitioners" Scientists like Bertrand Russell who are against war are just pathetic loser idealists. Look at the way that famous scientists won't sign their petitions! 

"Nose-and-Beak Count" UN demographers believe that the world population exceeded 2.5 billion this year, and that "4 billion by 1980 seemed a disquietingly accurate forecast," whereas ornithologists are excited that they counted 25 whooping cranes this year, up from 21 last year. 

California is going to start giving state scholarships to students at private schools, a revolutionary departure that in effect means state support for private schools. Nathaniel LaMar is a very smart young man. 

The Economist, 30 July 1955

Leaders

"On Top of the World" I don't think I've mentioned it, but there's a Big Four Summit going on in Geneva right now. The Commons are talking about tightening up money as summer gives way to fall, and, coincidentally, the election is in the rear view mirror. 

From The Economist of 1855 comes "Adulteration of Food," a meditation on the fact that food is being adulterated, and that it's bad, but not bad enough for "Parliament" or "Government" to do anything, because, really, they shouldn't do anything, and a little bit of poison in one's food never  heard anyone. 

"Australia's Anti-Cyclone" Australia is sending troops to Malaya, which is a major departure in Australian policy, leading one to meditate on Australian politics, where Menzies is safe because good times win him the "floating voter," and Labour is unlikely to recover any time soon, so what was the point of this? Oh, right, two battalions of Australians (and planes and ships to show willing) swanning around Malaya doing whatever it is troops do there now that the Emergency is over. Lip service to tedious world news given, there is time to talk about something interesting before Notes has to start. What about the Old Masters painting market? Isn't it scandalous? I know it haunts my waking hours!

Notes of the Week

The Commons has been prorogued after the economics debate, in which Hugh Gaitskell tore Butler to shreds over buying the general election. The Economist stoutly denied that it had any effect, but given that Eden is probably only a year away from his breakdown, it is time to buy Harold Macmillan futures. (Especially after the PM refused to consider increasing the pay of junior ministers because he was busy with important things. Oh! Did I mention that there's a summit just finished in Geneva? It led to Bulganin giving a speech, a motley array of German "neutralists" showing up, and violent "anti-Geneva" riots in Saigon so that Diem could remind everyone that he is a terrible leader who is being boosted by the Americans, mainly meaning Dulles, for no good reason, just in time for Dulles to be the lemon-sucker at Geneva. Which is more of a contribution than Pastor Niemoller or Bogislav von Bonin made! The Economist is pleased that the Clean Air Act isn't being too tough on household heating grates, because what if the Clean Air Act led to clean air, and some housewives, and by "housewives" I mean "factories with their own boilers," were inconvenienced? Conversion to oil will probably fix the problem, anyway. The Kabaka of Buganda is back because the whole thing was almost as stupid as Britain for some reason running Uganda. Now that the French colonial police have opened fire on a crowd in Meknes for the crime of waiting to greet Gilbert Grandval, it is occurring to the French that they can't stay in Morocco without some "final solution to the Moroccan" problem. Over at Time, the rioting French colons are being described as "half-breeds of mixed Italian, Spanish, and Moroccan blood, and Morocco's equivalent of the South's 'poor whites,' who hate the native Moroccans with a fury based on economic insecurity." Well, sure. But the ones who give the police their orders are rich colons who seem to own all the farmland in Morocco. Speaking of, a very un-Economist box story in Notes looks at "Remedies for Strikes." The general elections in Israel have hardly changed the makeup of parliament, but there has been a notable increase in votes for the hard right. 

There have been "delays" over Cyprus because the British government, it says here, refuses to take it seriously, but some progress in the Copperbelt over racial integration in the mines, and in Britain over "national diplomas" for technical college studies. The Governor of Singapore is fighting with the new premier, even though it has only been a colony for two months, which is some kind of record. Even Kwame Nkrumah is "counselling patience!" Indonesia is having some kid of army crisis that sounds important even though the names sort of swim by me. Communism is no doubt involved. The Russian base at Porkala has become an issue in Finnish politics, with the Finnish opposition suggesting that, if the Russians are serious about removing foreign military bases in Europe, they could start with it, and the Finnish government urging the opposition not to provoke the Russians at a delicate time. There's a Dentists Bill before the Commons, where there is a fight over creating a new class of dental assistants to make up for the shortage of dentists. 

Letters

J. E. S. Simon writes from his Commons office on the Monopolies Bill, which is either good or bad, my eyes having gone like he was talking about Indonesian army politics. R. H. Veysey writes from AEI to say that he was very interested in the atomic power supplement, but that it failed to mention that, besides working on zirconium-uranium alloys, it also had research reactors for sale. Martin Brooks of State Mutual in Worcester, Mass., thinks that The Economist is worrying too much about the details of the Road Traffic Bill. G. R. Fowler does not believe that dry cleaning is as harmless as people say.
 

Books

P. W. S. Andrews and Elisabeth Brunner have The Life of Lord Nuffield, which is a serviceable biography of an important reason, leading to one of those reviews that is a potted summary, meaning a potted summary of the life of the "commercial visionary." Alastair Horne's Back Into Power is about how Germany is basically fine, unless Prussian conservatives, army officers, and neo-Nazis ally with the Communists to go pro-Moscow. Oh, those rascally Germans! William Irvine's Apes, Angels, and Victorians explains a different lot of rascals. Victorians! Or, mainly Darwin and Huxley. Harry Hodgkinson explains communist and other assorted leftist Doubletalk in an entertaining book. Lady Hartog's India: New Pattern is a pretty good look at modern India. Rupert Emerson and James Ingram have books about political and economic developments in Southeast Asia generally, and Siam specifically for the Institute of Pacific Relations. M. P. Banton's The Coloured Quarter: Negro Immigrants in an English City confirms the worst fears of anti-immigration English. Rupert Furneaux's Myth and Mystery is about all those crazy ideas people have, like a lost tribe of Israel founding England, or Sherlock Holmes being real. His conclusion is that crazy people hold crazy ideas that are easy to refute but impossible to disabuse them of. Short Notices is usually about worthy books, for some reason Eric Robson's quite good history of the American Revolution (The American Revolution, 1763--1783) gets a mini-review. 

American Survey

"Back from the Summit" Now that the Summit is seen as a great success for the President by everyone except the Republican leadership in Congress, there is momentum for a foreign ministers' conference with China, since it seems that the Chinese have achieved air superiority over the Formosa Straits, and India warns that it means to use it unless the United States takes up Chou En Lai's offer of a meeting to resolve the "American privateers" issue and other matters. (That is, the Peking fliers.) A short piece explicates just how deep the current American economic boom is. Eisenhower's Defence Department's conflicts of interest are not going away as an issue, especially with Harold Talbott in trouble for allegedly steering contracts to his companies. The Russian delegation visiting Des Moines to see American agriculture first hand is finding itself more seen than seeing, because Russians are about as exciting and exotic as a three-headed calf in these parts. The South, in breaking news, is still fighting segregation, and the President's militia bill is still going nowhere. Jones Beach in New York City is a victim of its own success, which is definitely news of global importance, or just seems like it in a New York heat wave. The tariffs that Congress has just imposed on the Philippines are actually for the Philippines' own good. Texas conservatives feel that they are in danger of losing control of the state Democratic party because of corruption scandals.

The World Overseas

This is your semi-monthly reminded that while the United States and Britain want Japan armed to the teeth to fight Communist aggression, the Japanese are quite enjoying this whole "pacifist constitution" situation. Those who do want to re-arm are divided between the Japanese general staff, such as it is, which wants a large army to resist invasion, and the unreconstricted militarists, led by Colonel Tsuji of wartime notoriety, who want a large and sophisticated air force and navy, as an army can always be conjured up at need. The Russians really enjoyed Geneva, too. It still looks like Peron is on his way out in Argentina, but, if so, it is going to take forever. India's five year plan is far too socialistic. Ten years of price stability has led the Dutch to boast that they have solved the problem of full employment without inflation, all the more necessary in a country with one of the highest rates of population growth in the world. We look at how it was achieved. (Wage and price controls.) Canada's agricultural export deals with Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union get a stern stare over the bifocals. 

The Business World

We look again, at the Chancellor's Statement and the various forms of tightening he is implementing or simply exhorting. The section finishes off with a look at the rising price of steel. 

Business Notes is all finances and commodities this week, except for more navel gazing at the ailing Lancashire textiles industry and boom times for distillers.