Arcadia,
Santa Clara, California
Dear Father:
Thank you very much for your kindness during my too-soon-done trip to San Francisco. Dr. Rivers had the kindness to do up a full report that followed me back across the Pacific so quickly that I have it before me, which ought to be a lesson to some subscription services. It says, at more length and with some X-ray negatives, that everything is proceeding quite satisfactorily and that he sees no problems if I choose to give birth in Formosa, although as a practical matter I will be "couched," to be archaic and dramatic, in Macao and attended by some of your great-grandfather's intimate aides.
You can see perhaps some anxiety leaking through in my comments about air safety below. Reggie said, anyway. I prefer to think that instead of succumbing to the anxieties of the young mother-to-be, the scales are falling off my eyes due to the latest Air France and Northwestern fiascos. But maybe when I am delivered I will look back on these as just silly vapours!
Ronnie
The first few minutes are awful, but Grable's athleticism is amazing.
Time, 2 February 1951
Letters
Eugene Bauer of Seattle thinks that "war war is better than jaw jaw." Robert Lee Boyd points out that being Man of the Year can be a bit ephemeral, as he can't remember 1928 (Walter Chrysler), 1929 (Owen Young), 1931 (Pierre Laval), or 1938 (Hitler). The editor adds that other readers were stumped by 1933 (Hugh Johnson), 1935 (Haile Selassie), and 1936 (Wallis Simpson.) So, two things: First, that picture of Hitler was very misleading. I didn't recognise him, either. Second, I do not want to hear jokes about Wallis Simpson being "Man of the Year." I've heard them and I don't think they're very polite. I know, I know. Ronnie being against snide comments about another woman's looks? I'M TRYING TO DO BETTER!!!!!
P. H. Gore-Booth, the Director General of British Information in Washington, writes to point out that the British contribution to Korea is not 6000 men, but, including the 12,000 man garrison of Hong Kong and the Royal Navy, RAF and Commando contingents, a total of 22,500 men. James Trimble reminds Time that Montana has banned slot machines, too. Lots of people are worried about financial support for symphonic orchestras. Richard Macmillan writes to say that as soon as the Navy finally learned who took that picture of USS Franklin, they flew Photographer William Bates right off the Philippine Sea to Pearl Harbour and gave him the US Navy Photographic Institute's "citation for exceptionally meritorious photography." Several people wrote in because they were just happy for the "Giant in a Snare" article as a break from "Armageddon propaganda." Our Publisher wants us to know that it gets plenty of letters from our servicemen, and also that Time doesn't just print news about things that have happened. It also likes articles about news that hasn't happened yet, which is why we have "Iran: Land of Insecurity" in this one. So Iran is going to be news soon because it is going to fall to Communism any day now. Golly gee, thanks, Time! You truly are the Armageddon Rag!
National Affairs
"Destiny Comes on Wednesday"
Big news! The President is going to hold a National Security Council meeting on Wednesday. I don't get it? So the story allows Time to remind us that the NSC exists, and name members old and new, because the last group are Truman cronies, so there's that. Time points out that the NSC will talk about Korea, which, I mean, come on, and also about the wage and price freeze, which doesn't seem like it would be the NSC's business, except that controls only make sense in a "policy of all-out mobilisation for all-out struggle," so maybe the NSC could decide whether we're going to do that and buy lots of bombers and fighters and radar stations crammed full of electronics. Also in boxes Time covers a statement from General MacArthur (his pants are cold and wet and he can't remember where he left his car keys), and General Ridgeway ("We're going to kill Commies!") No, actually, he said that "It is not a question of this or that Korean town . . . the real issues are whether the power of Western civilisation as God has permitted it to flower in our own beloved lands shall defy and defeat Communism. . ." Actually, maybe my summary was right! I hope you now have more faith in my summary of Mr. Bauer's letter, too! After telling us that he is fighting for Western Civililsation by trying to stop the Marxists from taking over the Buddha-blessed Land of Morning Calm, Ridgeway goes on to point out that the UN is fighting to prevent "men who shoot their prisoners" from ruling Korea. Maybe it's a question of how many prisoners they shoot? Because I sure hope he's not saying that only American prisoners count! Also, the President had a news conference, and appointed a Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights to look into subversion under Admiral Nimitz. Senator Vandenberg is back in Washington. In breaking news, Robert Taft is running for President. Senator McCarthy doesn't like Margaret Chase Smith, and now that he has the GOP Congressional delegation wrapped around his finger, he has ousted her from the Senate investigating subcommittee that was doing useful and 100% liberal work by investigating five percenters and State Department homosexuals. Senator Richard Nixon gets the seat, instead.
"Finding Fighters" The current state of play is that General Marshall is pushing a bill reducing the draft age for the draft down to 18 and take up pretty much everybody. This has provoked two lines of criticism. One is from Senators who were reluctantly on board with universal military training and now see it as a straw horse for universal service, especially considering that Marshal is talking about paying them $30/month; and from assorted people who think that 4Fs are getting too good a deal. Anna Rosenberg was left to defend the categorisation of 700,000 4Fs, pointing out that the criteria have already been tightened up since WWII, which is not good enough for some, who think that mentally disturbed morons with flat feet are probably still some use to the Army. The Marines are also going to be expanded, to 4 divisions and four air wings, with the commandant being made a full-fledged member of the Joint Chiefs. Then there's a long story about wage and price stabilisation, effective as from 15 January. Time says the freeze won't actually stop inflation, because they don't address the root cause of too much spending, but they're better than nothing until a full system of controls are brought in, which can bring inflation under control by directing spending where it is needed. The upcoming coal contract will be the first test of "controls" versus "freeze," but it is not much of a test, since the Wage Stabilisation Board is not going to roll back the 20 cents an hour raise already negotiated. Other unions that feel the need for catch-up raises are also complaining to the WSB. Price ceilings, as a first step to price controls, will follow soon.
At the Pentagon, employment is at 28,750, compared with a WWII peak of 27,000. In Colorado, some people say the new Governor looks stupid.
"A Kinda Flash" So Robert Roy Orr of Pioche, a "dusty minning town snuggled in the Nevada hills" describes the bright light, followed by the bang that was heard at breakfast time at Pioche one day last week. On Friday, the AEC came out and admitted that it had carried out an atomic explosion on the new testing range, after warning of a dry run earlier in the week. There will be other explosions in the coming weeks, as the AEC is testing new weapons, in the form of "baby atom bombs to be used by bombers smaller than the B-29s," missile warheads, and even atomic artillery shells. You may remember that we've been sort of down this road before when the Navy was looking for an A-bomb that could be dropped by the P2V and landed on the "gun-type" uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but these ones will be plutonium bombs, which means that they have to be "fat." So this will be some progress in the field of Armageddon studies. Although some nervous Nevada housewives wonder if they're going to end up "clicking like Geiger counters."
"Wonderful to Play In" Time checks in with the craze for atomic bomb shelters in Los Angeles. Why, Ruth Colhoun is getting one (it will be a great place for the kids to play in, if nothing else), and many others besides. The city is looking into three underground bombproof garages in the downtown that might shelter 90,000 from attack, and a smaller shelter for its records, all microfilmed. Also in news of the last days, William Remington's perjury trial continues, while Alger Hiss is appealing his conviction again.
"Smoke and Mire" The New York Fire Department has broken out in scandal, as it turns out that its "Major Disaster Squad" was actually just in charge of pushing tickets for the Fireman's Ball, which is a bit questionable even before it turned out that the chief of the squad (and financial secretary of the union) had misplaced $138,000 in ticket money --that's some Ball! Also in New York scandals, a gambler was convicted of being a very bad person this week.
(Madelyn Russell, Teri Stevens and Toni Arden all dated Purcell. Nice work if you can get it.)
The Treasury banned Russian crabmeat because it was produced by "forced, convict and indentured labour" this week, the first Russian product barred from the United States since FDR recognised the Soviet government.
International
The General Assembly is considering resolutions to label Communist China the aggressor in Korea on the one hand, and on the other to open up a peace conference, which Time says will "inevitably" lead to the recognition of Communist China and is all the Administration's fault for not being tough enough on Communism. Since if the US just cracked down, all those foreign Lebanese and Indian diplomats would get themselves on the right side of history in jig time. There's more --two pages more-- but I think I have the gist of it.
Speaking of stories I can skip, US Ambassador to the UN Warren Austin is this week's cover story, as Time devotes a long story to an audience of one: Don't give up on Formosa, Ambassador Austin! Or else! Ike, meanwhile, is still touring Europe looking for the first green shoots of the United States of Europe.
War in Asia
"Limited Objective" Ridgeway's first offensive in Korea is a "limited objective attack" towards Seoul with the intention of feeling out Chinese capabilities and intentions. An armoured column faced Chinese battalion-strength counterattacks south of Seoul, but all eyes were on the Turkish brigade, because Turks are romantic, and the US Army now knows how to bake Turkish bread.
"Brawl in the Alley" This week saw the first clashes between MiG-15s and F-84 Thunderjets as the US planes hit a "bridge halfway between Sinuiju and Sinanju," and then, later in the week, fought running battles with more MiGs on their way back to the bridges. Currently US claims stand at 20 MiGs, admitted losses at 5, but even the pilots think that the MiG-15 is better than the F-84.
"Background for War" The promised article on Iran, the "Land of Instability" The Russians are apparently about to launch an invasion in all directions because the Iranians are fecklessly trying to use the Russians against us Americans, even though they should be grateful for all the good things America is doing for them. The British, on the other hand . . .As for why the Russians would do this, they want the oil. And the Bosphorus strait so that their navy can get in to the Mediterranean. And India . . . for some reason. And Kashmir. Because it's strategic. And a brickyard near Isfahan --actually, even Time won't try to sell that one. It's just a nice picture from its files.
Whatever you think of the article, there's enough beautiful pictures to make a whole National Geographic. You should really pick up a copy, because I am not cutting out all the pictures and shipping them across the ocean for you!
More on Iran: It has pretty girls, bad landlords, poor peasants, corrupt politicians and a poor army. America should send more money, and then everything would be fine. Otherwise, it will all go communist somehow, either by being invaded or by succumbing to the siren song of Russian trade.
Foreign News
"Damned Old Thing to Do" The Honourable John Denzil Fox-Strangways assaulted Aneurin Bevan this week for dining at Whites with Air Chief Marshal Slessor. But he apologised and resigned from the club, so we can forget about a little thing like a minister of the crown being kicked from behind by the second son of the Earl of Ilchester for getting above his station[!]. In the Commons (and in Time), Attlee is in trouble for not being nice enough to America, and the Archbishop of York is for rearmament, so that makes it unanimous. In concrete terms, defence spending will go up $13 billion over the next three years instead of $10 billion; arms production will be doubled next year and quadrupled the next; the army and air force reserves will call up 245,000 for two weeks of training this summer, and the navy 6600, to commission more ships. The 20% cut in the meat ration has Britain a bit testy, and is due to a dickering with Argentina, which Time deems a Socialist folly since if the British weren't bulk buying meat centrally, private buyers would probably just capitulate and buy Argentinian meat at Argentinian prices and everything would be fine. The avalanches continue in Switzerland, German trade unions have made some major gains , John Foster Dulles is in Japan to negotiate the final peace treaty, and promises to treat Japan as "a party to be consulted and not a vanquished nation to be dictated to by the victors." Things are looking up since Japan decided to be anti-communist!
A volcano erupted in New Guinea last week, killing hundreds of natives and destroying dozens of villages, although evidently it is only news which is news because it killed some "white people." And, perhaps, because local officials ignored early warnings that an eruption was coming.
In this hemisphere, Peron is a hypocrite for using the army to crush a railroad union, Time reminds us who President Vargas is, and Time gives us a very short tour of a continent getting ready to celebrate Carnivale.
Business
Charles Nessler, he of the permanent wave, has died.
"Open Floodgates" Marriner Eccles says that wage and price controls can't stop inflation as long as the Treasury keeps running a cheap money policy. Everyone except John Snyder thinks that the Federal Reserve interest rate has to go up to reduce the credit fuelling the boom, says Time.
The National Production Authority has cut the supply of base metals to industry again; US steel production exceeded 2 million tons a week last week, and could soon go higher. Reynolds Metals president, Richard S. Reynolds, says that America is repeating its WWII error by increasing aluminum production too little and too late again. The NPA says that Reynolds' proposed expansion was too ambitious, but was cautious about saying just how much aluminum production should be increased. Eight US banks have teamed up to "lend money to Africa," which turns out to mean South Africa. Time catches up with a cattle baron who says that he has just made the last, and biggest sale of his career and can now retire with millions in the bank clear, and then it is over to Chesterfields to find out how the tobacco business is going. Pretty well!
Science, Medicine, Education
The AMA Journal reports that between 70 and 72 million Americans now have health insurance.
"The Criminal's Track" A melodramatic title for a story that brings us word of Columbia researcher Alvan Barach, who has come up with a "complete" artificial lung that helps patients cough as well as breathe, and thereby expel mucus accumulating in their lungs, and, since that isn't very much news, catches us up with polio research. Science is pretty sure that polio does all its damage by attacking the nerves, hasn't found a way of curing it directly, but is making good progress with physiotherapy, orthopedic surgery, and various rehabilitation gadgets.
"Son and Nephew" Robert E. Bunker, who died at 85 last week near Mount Airy, North Carolina, was the last of twelve children of Eng, half of the legendary Siamese twins. That is some history, right there. Time catches us up with the state of the art for Siamese twin separation surgery (it's not very good), before telling us about the long and fruitful lives of the Eng twins, who retired from show business in 1840 with a $60,000 nest egg, adopted the last name "Bunker," and died there in 1874.
"Light on Leukemia" Leukemia is a cancer in which white blood cells accumulate in the blood and overload it. For a century doctors have been working on the assumption that it kills by forcing the overproduction of white blood cells, but researchers at the University of California had an alternate theory, that a body mechanism, perhaps in the lung, regulated the quantity of white blood cells, and that it was this mechanism that was failing. So they injected some healthy patients with leukemic blood, then withdrew it again after it after it had passed through the lung, and found that many of the white blood cells were gone. I'm sure glad leukemia is for sure not infectious!
Universities and colleges across America are accelerating their courses to get the boys out before they are drafted. Cornell has hired Deane Waldo Malott as its new president. Reed College in Portland, Oregon, is quite the place. The Denver School Board, after administering a battery of diagnostic tests, has determined that its high school students all need remedial math, English and US history classes. Minneapolis schools, on the other hand, are shut down by a janitors' strike, with students watching to classes on television, and Gerhard Eisler is a big hypocrite for getting upset at being pelted by snowballs during a campus visit to Ann Arbor in 1947, but allowing a student activist to be condemned to death for putting up a poster in 1950. (The student, one Herman Flade, has had his sentence commuted to fifteen years.)
Art, Radio and Television, Press, People
"Eyestrain and Bunk" US educators are determined to have a dedicated educational channel in all television markets, and to get closer to that worthy goal for some reason a bunch of them locked themselves in a room to watch commercial television for a week, emerging with eyestrain and a low opinion of same. As I read it, and none too closely as I am very tired of teachers complaining about television, their martyrdom is supposed to persuade the FCC? Speaking for the networks, Kenneth H. Baker suggested that educational television would be even duller than regulars, because we are talking about teachers, come on! (Or because they don't know how to make tv shows.) Remember how Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House managed to be funny without any sex? And how in the movie they put in a little sex, anyway? Well, now in the radio show there is even more sex! In conclusion, radio is awful. Because who wants to hear about sex? What, everybody? Well, that just goes to show! (More importantly, it is Cary Grant's first radio show, so there's a lot riding on it.)
The New York World-Telegram is having a spat with Eleanor Roosevelt about her being too nice to Communists; Claudia Cassidy is in trouble for being much too tough on travelling productions in her column as the Chicago Tribune, which is as good a reason as any to give her a capsule biography. Did you know that she got her start writing music reviews for the Chicago Journal of Commerce? Did you even know the Journal had a music column? Drew Pearson has won his ninth libel suit, defending against a California gambler, and Newsweek has sold its new stablemate, People Today to Pageant for a cool $150,000. I had no idea that Vincent Astor was chairman of the board at Newsweek!
Ogden Nash, Jacqueline Auriol, Claudette Colbert, Gloria Stewart, Teresa Wright, Winston Churchill, Lord Craigavon, David Bruce, Alain de Rothschild, Jacques Fath, Susan Hayward, Groucho Marx, Maurice Evans, Margaret Bryan, Arthur Murray, Helen Hayes, the President's cousin, Rolland, Rudy Vallee, and William O'Dwyer are in the paper for being famous. Famous, that is, with the exception of Cousin Rolland and Lord Craigavon, whom Time would dearly like to be famous because he is a British "anticommunist leader" who recently led a pilgrimage to Canterbury to pray for God to smite those Communist heathen down. Also, even though it is Mayor O'Dwyer who gets his name in bold, it is Sloan Simpson's picture on the page. Stands to reason, honestly.
James Farley, Jr, has had a son, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, and Margaret Hughes Wright (Howard's sister) are divorced. Captain Don Gentile, Sergei Vasilov, and Baron von Mannerheim have died.
The New Pictures
Call Me Mister is a tired musical set in the Japanese occupation and not fighting in Korea. Time liked the dancing and the spoof on Air Force life. The Blue Lamp is another "touted [British] import" that is just bland and melodramatic and not very funny. Face to the Wind is a charming French comedy without enough material to fill out its running time. A good thing that Time saw one movie it liked: Operation Disaster is a tense, matter-of-fact, well acted submarine disaster movie.
Books
John Masters' Nightrunners of Bengal is a formulaic novel about the days of the Mutiny, with nightrunners carrying word of the conspiracy from village to village, a tiger hunt and a cholera epidemic to warm up, and then a rising, a massacre and your obligatory "nubile native queen."
Aviation Week, 5 February 1951
News Digest reports 249 private planes shipping in December, a 30 hour nonstop return flight from Britain to Carswell AFB, Texas by 6 B-36s, another visit by British experts to learn the secrets of American industry, and a CGA installation at Sao Paolo's airport.
Sidelights reports that the post of chief, Air Force Division, National Guard Bureau, won't be filled any time soon because there is a fight on between the Air Force and the Bureau. Kaiser-Frazer is moving offices in Washington and has hired Ralph Isbrandtsen to head their new air division (which is News Digest material, but belongs more here), and the Aeo Club of New England has asked the Air Force to reopen its flying saucer inquiry after the latest reports from the Midwest, Larry Vinther's sighting of some giant winged saucers, also seen by co-pilot and eleven passengers on January 20th near Sioux City.
Industry Observer reports that the new Westinghouse J-40 is one of the most important powerplants in forthcoming procurement plans and is being watched closely. Fairchild's C-119C will be the C-47 of the new emergency, it says here to the massed groans of the aviation industry for a generation yet to come. The Hughes XH-17 jet-powered helicopter is almost better from its June crackup and is ready to get out there and crack up again. More navy orders for the Vought F4U-5 show that the Navy isn't putting all its eggs in the jet fighter basket yet. Avro Canada will deliver Orendas from the end of next year. British sources say that the B-36D, with its turbojet assist, can get off a short field faster than a B-29, and that there is a trick to flying a Banshee F2H-2 out of a carrier catapult launch that makes it less likely to crash. Which isn't what Industry Observer said, but is what it means.
Washington Roundup reports that if war doesn't come by the end of 1952, the Air Force will be swamped with surplus hardware and be even further behind on research and development compared with anyone who might not have pitched into total mobilisation. The Navy now has 3 45,000 ton Midways and 11 upgraded Essex-class carriers in service as the backbone of the fleet, and is in the middle of converting another Essex. The new supplemental budget adds money for 6 more conversions, bringing almost all the Essexes into service, a total of 18. Pat McCarren is pushing for airline subsidies, the Navy is not pleased with the idea of expanding the Marine Corps to 4 divisions and 24 squadrons, but does want the Marine Corps commandant on the Joint Chiefs, since the Navy is tired of not getting its way just because the Army and the Air Force are opposed, and the "emergency" defence buildup is here deemed to still be in the paper-and-talk stage.
"New C-119 Changes Engines and Props" The lastest C-119 gets Wright engines (3350s), which is not the kiss of death you would expect, because Wright isn't building them.
Rudolf Modley, "New Yardstick for Transportation Safety" I don't know if you remember the fuss about how the "million mile fatalities" favourably distorted the safety record of the aviation industry, but Aviation Week evidently took the concerns seriously enough to look into a better method, total passenger life years lost per hundred million total and passenger miles, which is a better way of "indicating loss of productive life," says Modley. The main improvement is that it provides a way of measuring injuries along with deaths, and, more importantly, generates a number that is lower than the railroad number. Finally! In shorter news, the Air Force has finally committed all of its 1951 funds, Congress has legislatively authorised three air commands, so that SAC is legal ahead of Armageddon.
Aeronautical Engineering jas "Avionics Highlights IAS Annual Meet" although session reports for this issue are from the Rotating Wing Aircraft, Flight Propulsion, General Aerodynamics and Supersonic Aerodynamics sessions, and, no, I am not going to blurb blurbs. (I do notice a lot of talk about jet turbines in normal commercial operation covering ongoing concerns about whether they will run out of gas and fall out of the sky or not.)
George L. Christian, "EAL's Ideals: Safety, Simplicity" George checks in at the Rickenbacker shop to find out what's going on. As usual, there are a lot of shop level improvements on everything from reducing brake maintenance by putting in better rivets to an insert that strengthens the wing of the DC-4 so that you don't have to remove the outer wing panels to get zero fuel weight down to 59,000lbs as called for in the latest Douglas service bulletin.
Pacific Airmotive wants everyone to know that it is jumping into aviation pneumatics.
New Aviation Products has a portable fire extinguisher using methylbromide, approved by the Air Force, from Stop-Fire, Incorporated, and a new blinker for the L-19 from Van Dusen Aircraft Supplies that is lighter and smaller than its predecessor. I'm going to mention the new electronic recorder for electrical generators from the Brown instruments Division of Honeywell because it is electrics-y, even though it is in the Also on the Market section.
Letters hashes out club insurance confusion with a letter from an insurance broker and an equally exhaustive editorial reply. M. V. Kiebert, the manager of the Telemetering Division at Raymond Rosen Engineering Products writes about the recent article on telemetering equipment recently installed to "ascertain the pilot's reaction to high altitude ejection seat bail-out," noting that, as interesting as the equipment installed in the plane is, the article misses a trick by not mentioning the ground link between the transceiver and the ground, the AN/GKR-2 telemetering[?] ground receiving equipment, which [abbreviations, gibberish] is [superlatively excellent]. Well, it does say "manager," not "lead technical writer."
No Editorial this week because he was busy replying to letters that present misleading views of Club Insurance.
Time, 12 February 1951
Letters
National Affairs
"The Man with the Answers" is Ike, the subject of this week's cover story, which brings us up to date on the General's journey to find the United States of Europe. It is in European hearts, Ike says. Soon, very soon, there will be a large European army and a large American army over there, and everything will be fine. (Except that the Europeans tend not to anti-Communist enough, and even those that are, like Belgian, are "shot through with the ambiguities of socialistic policies.") Also, the kids are jiving to Good Night, Irene this month, and 613 casualties in Korea brought the US total to 7739 dead, 29819 wounded, 9,256 missing. (South Korea reports 435,000 noncombatant casualties.)
The President met with Premier Pleven, in town to do his wishy-washy not-anti-Communist enough best to strengthen NATO, and then gave a speech in Philadelphia about the Four Chaplains because they were chaplains and very brave and patriotic, and then headed back to Washington to call for $10 billion in new taxes now, $16.5 billion later, which would raise the total levy to $65 billion, "the largest in history," but I am less impressed considering that the national product is also the biggest in history! Also the Senate approved 200,000 tons of grain aid, which Time reports in a way that makes me hate it even more. US diplomats are restricted to Budapest, so Hungarian diplomats are restricted to Washington. The US strategic stockpile is up to $8.9 billion in assorted materials.
"Everyone Should Go" General Eisenhower supported Marshall's draft plan before Senator Lyndon Johnson's Armed Services Subcommittee this week. So, to review, that's drafting 18 year-olds, a 27 month draft period, and deferments for "75,000 bright young men until they get college training." The Subcommittee, fighting the extension of the draft, asked for another comb-out of 4Fs and married men instead, but Eisenhower pointed out that the point was to get the young men in early for training, more than actual manpower.
"Second Melon" The VA will be handing out $85 dividends to the 8 million holders of National Service Life Insurance policies in April. Also, Time visits a branch of the American Legion that voted to support the Hoover Plan to reorganise the Federal government, except for the recommendations for the VA, because that would affect them. Also, the railway unions are holding work stoppages under the guise of mass sick calls because they haven't had a raise in almost three years. Passenger services and parcel mail are already almost nonexistent, and freight deliveries are starting to suffer. The unions want the President to intervene, but he doesn't want to get involved. Federal courts in Chicago are getting ready to hold the union in contempt, so maybe fines and jail time for the leadership will help.
"The Way of the Dupe" Americans who support peace, a withdrawal from Korea, and recognition of Communist China aren't just Communist dupes, they're vaguely unmanly, too, especially Thomas Mann.
Catching up with corruption in high places, we hear about New York's special Grand Jury that has been investigating corruption in general, and E. Merl Young, a Presidential crony who has been directing RFC money to Administration favourites like Lustron and F. L. Jacobs.
Idaho has ratified the 22nd Amendment, and Governor Talmadge has banned wearing Klan masks, burning crosses, and "intimidating people" in Georgia. Well. It's illegal to intimidate people in Georgia now. Good to hear! Alabama has retired its whips, and will no longer sentence people to public floggings.
International
"Forward or Back?" I think it is safe to say that we are launching a new feature in Time: "Talking About Korean Peace Talks" The question appears to be condemning China and then negotiating an armistice without either more sanctions on the one hand, or recognising it on the other. This observation leads into an extended condemnation of Britain for being all wet and socialistic, on the grounds that G. D. H. Cole said one thing, and The Economist said another thing. Also various countries had the nerve to either vote against the General Assembly condemning China as the aggressor in Korea, or abstained.
War in Asia
"Night Into Day" US night bombers, particularly A-26s, drop a lot of flares and napalm.
"Any More?" New UN contingents from France, Canada, Belgium and Greece are in action, while British casualties were announced as 139 killed, 416 wounded and 258 missing so far. Colombians, Cubans and Ethiopians are all awaited. The North Koreans are using guerilla tactics to attack in the south, just like Americans did back in the old Revolutionary Civil War days. 
"Human Sea" Time reviews the state of the Chinese Red Army: Lots of men, not a lot of equipment. But Time strikes a note of reason: "Military manpower is always limited by what the economy of a country can support, and by the number of trained cadre available." The more casualties the Chinese take in Korea, the less able they will be to mobilise what they have left.
Foreign News
"Keep Right On Sitting" Time visits Hong Kong, visibly prospering in current circumstances. (I'll say!)Time is "undeceived" by the "appearance of normality." The Communists are coming. Soon.
"The Bug is Boss" Another confidence vote routed 64 flu-struck British MPs from their beds to vote in a 300 to 289 vote party line vote that the government isn't responsible for the coal shortage. Polls show Labour at 38%, the Tories at 51%.
"Toby or Tom?" This is completely irrelevant, but I can't not tell you about it! So the eighth Earl of Fitzwilliam died in an air crash two years ago. His successor, the 9th Earl, is 67 and childless. The heir will be Thomas George Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, unless the High Court decides that his cousin, Toby Wentworth-Fitzwilliam is legitimate. Toby's parents were married in Scotland without benefit of clergy, which is legal in Scotland, and then remarried in Britain after his birth. Once the High Court sorts out marriage law for them, we will know who inherited the two-million dollar estate and the largest country house in England.
"I Kiss Your Hand, Madam" Time takes advantage of some etiquette advice from France to reprint that picture of General MacArthur kissing Madam Chiang's hand because not enough people were upset by it first time. Also, Alfred Krupp is out of jail and a top Bulgarian civil servant who fled the country nailed up in a crate on a freighter has been rescued by the French police, which just goes to show. Something. Vladimir Clementis has also gone missing, in Czechoslovakia. Has he fled to the West, too? Russia is trying to export cars, the Russian propaganda campaign against the United States is picking up steam, A story about sordid crime in Italy (an army lieutenant seduces the wife of a bootmaker and casts her aside; so the bootmaker presents him with boots with hollow heels full of nitroglycerine that explode the first time the lieutenant clicks his heels), followed by a tediously long and impenetrable one about Communists doing each other wrong. In the Philippines, the President suspends habeas corpus so he can arrest more communists.
"Bank Breakers" In Argentina, a syndicate of gamblers who were betting on bad roulette wheels at the Mar del Plata casino somehow consistently made money even as their gang kept expanding and management tried to solve the problem by shifting the bad roulette wheels around, until finally the casino asked the police to arrest all the gamblers and ban them from casinos. Which doesn't make sense to me, since if you can't fix the problem by fixing the roulette wheels, why do casinos even have roulette? Something else is going on. It seems to me!
Business
Business closes with a biographical piece about Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who is a big name in South African gold and diamonds, and not just someone to confuse with an atomic scientist.
Science, Medicine
"Audible Illusion" GE, (the jet aeroengine people), have done a study and established that jet engines only seem louder than prop engines because the noise "strikes the ear more abruptly," and because the shriek of a jet engine is a new noise and attracts more attention.
"The Unhappy Bee" Those recent articles about the secret language of bees and such make socialistic bee life sound attractive. Can't have that, so out with a study that shows that bees live "sad" lives, with most queens being killed before they reach maturity, most males being useless drones who are starved by the workers before winter without ever impregnating a queen, while the workers work themselves to death, wearing their wings to rags flying to and from the salt mines, excuse me, I mean, flower gardens. Their only joy in life is looking after baby bees, but now C. R. Ribbands, of the Bee Research Department at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, the very existence of which gives me joy, but then I am a mature queen, says that when you gas worker bees with carbon dioxide and let them recover, they become proper little jerks and refuse to have anything to do with the babies, or, in fact, anything but gathering more and more nectar. "Beeman Ribbands is well pleased with his discovery," and well he should be. When he first learned that he wasn't allowed to gas people, it must have seemed like all the joy in a young Ribbands' life had died; but now that he has learned that he is allowed to gas bees to his heart's content as long as it proves that socialism is wrong, he is the happiest scientist in all Rothamsted. Although, to be clear, he has a good husbandry-related reason to be happy, which is that he hopes that if whole hives are given regular gassings, they will dispense with the useless labour of raising a new generation of bees in favour of gathering more and more nectar to fertilise more and more plants and make more and more honey for those who deserve it, namely us.
So I think there are some lessons to be learned here.
"Nothing Like Blood" So you've heard that if America is hit by an atomic attack, many people would die who could be saved if there were just enough blood to transfuse them against wounds, burns, radiation poisoning and perhaps other awful things, too. We can't make new blood, this being beyond our science, and blood transfusion, it turns out, is a treatment for radiation sickness, since one of the factors in same is the death of the cells that create new blood cells.
It hasn't much to do with radiation sickness directly, but one of the causes of death in all of these cases is loss of fluids, transfusing a saline or glucose solution will help for a short time. Blood plasma is better, because it contains red blood-cell shaped things that plug red blood cell-shaped holes in the blood vessels and prevent the fluid from seeping out. That's an oblique way of saying "dead red blood cells," because no-one wants to hear that they are being injected with zombie cells. An even better substitute would contain molecules with the right shape but nothing harmful as well. Gelatin, Dexatrin (a sugar compound) and a plastic (PVP, or polyvinyl pyrrolidone) are all somewhat effective, but are hard to come by and otherwise not completely unsatisfactory. Well, now Dr. Hiram B. Benjamin of Marguette Medical School, has discovered that okra extract, which he was testing out as an ulcer cure, can be injected into the veins without doing immediate damage to the dogs he was using. Gumbo coats the walls satisfactorily, keeps well, and is cheap. Meanwhile, Dr. Max Strumia of Bryn Mawr thinks that he has found a way of preserving actual human blood for up to 9 weeks by carefully controlling for sugar and acid content.
"Whittling Away" Dr. Charles S. Cameron of the American Cancer Society says that there won't be any one cure for cancer, and that the best we can hope for its to whittle away at the disease. Future historians will never be able to point to a single moment when we cured cancer. But maybe Parke, Davis and Company have found a cure for peptic ulcers, a drug named Kutrol. Pregnancy, for some unknown reason," gives "almost certain relief" to women with peptic ulcers. Men can't get pregnant (probably news to many Time readers who wonder what good icky girls are for in the first place), and for them there is Kutrol, which from the sounds of things is just female sex hormone (I want to say estrogen?) with a brand name. Parke and Davis haven't actually done any studies that prove that Kutrol works, but at 50 cents a capsule there's no reason not to sell it and put an advertorial in Time. Right? I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
"For Longer Legs" Some children who survive polio end up with one leg longer than the other. Orthopedic surgeons have been fixing it with staples in the good leg, but many parents have an unreasonable fear of the experimental manias of the medical sciences for no reason I could possibly guess if I hadn't just written the last bit, and won't let doctors fiddle with their child's "good" leg. Well, now Dr. Charles N. Pease of Chicago's memorial Hospital has discovered a surgery they can do on the bad leg. Working from the knowledge that a foreign object causes irritation which causes increased blood circulation in the affected area, he has been boring into the bone of the stunted leg and inserting a screw to cause the irritation to cause the circulation to cause faster growth over several months. It has worked on the eighteen children he has treated so far, so that's practically scientific proof!
Press, Radio and Television, Art, People
If you thought "Argentina is bad" stories only belonged in Hemisphere, you're wrong, because Buenos Aire's La Prensa has been shut down again, and you don't do that to an "independent conservative newspaper" without getting on Time's naughty boys list! Time explains what the publisher thinks is the matter at length. (The union is bad.)
"The Constitution Wins" The Atlanta Constitution has been waging a war on the KKK for years now, so now that Governor Talmadge has declared intimidation to be illegal in Georgia, the paper has won, the Klan has lost, yay no more racism forever!
"Eyewitness" Mrs. Sophie Eisenberg of New York just became the first person in the world to testify as an eyewitness in a personal injury suit based on her watching television just when her friend, Jonas Walvisch, sitting in a front row seat at Madison Square Garden, was clouted by Canadiens player Emile Bouchard with a hockey stick. It was to no avail, as Walvisch lost his suit for $75,000 in damages.
The Philadelphia Museum just got some nice donations from the Arensbergs: Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase and Brancusi's Bird in Space, while the Cleveland Museum just plain went out on a buying spree and picked up some nice Renaissance Venetians, and Niilo Kalervo Kallio is the Finnish-American sculptor who just did a nice one of John L. Lewis, a man born to be sculpted. Thomas Hart Benton may be a famous artist who is named after a famous Senator (I know you don't care about American history, but the original was Fremont's father-in-law), but he is also a boor.
Madame Paul Reynaud, [The Showa Emperor], Joe Louis, Bennett E. Meyers, eleven generals along with some of the fifty generals' sons fighting (or killed) in Korea, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Cardinal Tien, Houston Harte, Guy Rowe, Henry Knox Sherrill, Maude Royden, Sam Rayburn, Charles Blair, Stafford Cripps, and Beatrice Webb got into the column because they are famous, except for the generals, who are there for the stated reason, and Charles Blair, a TWA pilot who just set a new LA-New York record in his private P-51. Dwight Eisenhower, General MacArthur, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Herbert Hoover, Robert Taft, Bernard Baruch, Pope Pius, Ralph Bunche and Thomas E. Dewey are in the paper because they made the Gallup poll list of the nation's "most admired men," which, seems like a suspiciously weighted list to me, especially considering that there's not a single athlete on it, but maybe it is because I can't credit Hoover being on it. Jo Davidson makes the page for the usual reason.
The New Pictures
September Affair is a "slick" Paramount product "cynically" aimed at a "ready market." Of women. Women, you see, have illegitimate interests in formulaic romance movies involving attractive people in doomed affairs. The Enforcer has Humphrey Bogart on the side of the law as an assitant district attorney versus the rackets, with an able assistance from ice picks, razors, butcher knives and pistols. It is "skillful" and "suspenseful," and there is no icky girl stuff to get in the way. No double standard here, no sir!
Books
John Crowe Ransom is the kind of poet who teaches at Kenyon College and smokes a pipe, and gets a big prize for his contribution to poetry, so naturally he gets the lead in Books, even if there are no books, as such, in sight. Speaking of poets, a famous old Scottish poet, who you will probably remember for Uncle George's smirking obsession with celebrating a "Robbie Burns Day" as a too-sly-by-half way of commemorating the Lunar New Year like it is clue for a particularly slow Sax Rohmer fan is . . . Okay, I muffed the intro. David Daiches has a new biography of the man. Time doesn't like Faith Baldwin very much, so no wonder it doesn't like her latest novel, The Whole Armour. Algernon Blackwood's Tale of the Uncanny and Supernatural is Blackwood returning to the kind of stories he used to write thirty years ago when he was a big name in the field. This one is much better than his old ones, though, so maybe he will finally win fame as a writer to match his long-forgotten popular reputation.
Aviation Week, 12 February 1951
For reasons beyond my ken, the long-since euthanised B-49 gets on the front cover. News Digest provides no further clues, although it does take a moment to cover the latest carnage along the airways, because they are Air France and an Icelandic Airlines crashes and not American. And Air France has just had six safe months since its last DC-4 crashes! Sidelights says that the Oklahoma Aviation Commission has moved into its new digs in Hangar 3, out behind the fuel dump and just over from the soda jerk, across the Nielsen's hayfield, over the rail track and through the hole in the back fence (I may have made most of this up). Industry Observer reports that the Air Fore has just turned its F-93A prototype over to NACA, indicating that it is not going into production. The new USAF air-droppable metal troop container developed by Stanley Aviation Corporation does not, repeat not, come with actual droppable troops. Oh, wait, silly me, that is exactly what it is for: Dropping twelve fully equipped ground troops or 6000lbs of cargo beneath two 100ft diameter chutes. That does not sound entirely practical to me. Fairchild C119 blah blah. Doman helicopters has given up on its CW-40 rescue helicopter and is now developing a new, seven-place machine of "different design." The Allison Turboliner will make a flight out to Wright Field for evaluation just as soon as it works right, but no worries the latest problem is just a tiny tiny matter of propeller imbalance. C-119 Blah! Canada is testing anew guided missile at Valcartier, near Quebec City, while the RCAF will receive its first Orenda-powered CF-100s very soon.
Alexander McSurely, "Helicopters Will Star in Show and Study" There's going to be a helicopter air show in Washington on April 28 and 29th that will acquaint the public with all the exotic things that helicopters do taht no-one outside of a few experts and everyone else knows, like their ability to land and takeoff vertically. No, really, it says right here.
Ben S. Lee, "Is USAF Troop Support Adequate" Since it is a day ending in a "Y," it must be time to worry that the Air Force isn't supporting the troops enough and to have a Congressional investigation, mainly because the Air Force didn't buy the Chase XC-123, which is definitely not fair to Chase shareholders and possibly also the Army, which has a preferred solution, its own air force.
"First MDAP F-84Es En Route to Europe" They are! Also it is official that the RAF will take 500 F-86s to carry it over for "eighteen months" until the latest British fighters, still on the Secret List show up. These are presumably in no way related to any Hawker or Supermarine planes that might have shown up at Farnborough last fall, because those aren't secret! The airlines are gleeful over the rail slowdown, the Aero Commander will deliver in 1951, for sure, Hughes is going to have a new electronics manufacturing plant near Tucson specifically for avionics, and the AF is looking at a convertaplane again.
Aeronautical Engineering has Jerome Lederer, "Safety Need Not Cut Down Performance"Lederer is the Director of the Flight Safety Foundation, and this is a precise of a paper he gave to the SAE in January. It's actually a fairly wide ranging look at safety initiatives and not a defence of the idea of air safety, and Aviation Week needs to be more careful with its copy-editing for suggesting it's the other way round, I think.
More IAS session paper blurbs follow.
"France Starts Jet Transport Study" The French are flying an SO-30 airframe with Nene engines to find out about jet transport operations.
Air Transport has "Avionics Navigation Work Spurred," which explains how mobilisation has stepped up the development of present and new all-weather aid projects. This is unsigned, so advertorial, apparently from the Air Navigation Development Board, which I hadn't even heard of, and wants us to know that it is going ahead with miniature airborne DME, airborne transponders, new ILS systems evaluation, and new traffic control aids. Most of the ILS stuff falls under the header of "fixes for things that no-one would admit were problems before the fixes were in," like reflections from water and other terrain features, so, perversely enough, all the announced improvements just make me more anxious. It is good to know that the Air Force is working on an "automatic landing flare-out altimeter," because now planes won't fly into the ground even when the altimeter can see it. As Reggie points out, on the other hand there are stalls when the altimeter thinks it can see the ground, so, you know, work on that, too.
The Military Air Transport Service sees "greater use of flying ambulances." You don't say! I thought we were fine doing emergency surgery at the front when there was a possibility of doing it in Tokyo or Honolulu! Northwestern has shaken up its top operations, inspections and maintenance personnel for, oh, no reason at all, doesn't every airline crash the same make of airplane five times in less than two years? Okay, Air France. And KLM, if DC-3s count, since they held their Connie streak to three. But most don't! Speaking of airlines that hardly ever crash most months, Capital Airlines is buying two more Connies. Tahiti-Hawaii Airlines is pleased to report that Tahiti-Hawaii runs are feasible. Well, good, then, because they would have had to change the letterhead!
Editorial is very upset at the UAW strike against Fairchild, which is very unpatriotic, and now that Senator Taft has been reelected Washington should understand that it can break those damn unions. On the other hand, it is Woods is very happy with the way that the Secretary of the Air Force quashed an investigation into the loyalty of Captain Charles A. Hill, a coloured Air Force Reserve officer who was accused of being a Communist by Continental Air Command on the grounds that he read The Daily Worker once and that his father and sister had belonged to suspicious organisations once. Another military investigation is into the source of the story about a year-old proposal for a Douglas swept-wing turboprop bomber. Aviation Week points out that it lifted the story from the AP, which got it from the LA papers, and if the Inspector General wants to know who is letting out vital state secrets about paper airplanes, that is where he should look. Except that, to be honest, Aviation Week also has a Douglas brochure that it picked up somewhere along the way that wasn't for general consumption, so technically it was publishing secret information. Oops! Also, Editorial asks why the President said that aircraft production will increase five-fold in the coming year when this is not, actually true, per se? The answer is that no-one knows, but the Air Force valiantly points out that since the exact production numbers are secret, it could be true. (Even if it isn't.) Aviation Week goes with the position that the President has been told that industry will fill all the contact orders, so he has just been badly advised.
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