Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
Newsweek's profile of Spain gets a lot of critics, who want us to know that, while they really don't like Communism, they're not as hot for the Nationalists as Newsweek, which is admittedly a low bar. Readers are also divided on Seaman First Class (he was demoted a rank) Hopping's protest against chow hall food, although again most seem in favour. For Your Information apologises for letting Raymond Moley come back from Tennessee, after getting rid of him on the excuse of sending him to cover the annual Governor's conference. It also explains that Premier Mossadegh's fainting spell on the floor of the United Nations was probably faked because he's a fanatic, you see, and the cover picture, which is of the Dean of Barnard College, who really impressed Newsweek as part of its feature on girls' colleges.
Washington Trends reports that the US is going to put more emphasis on atomic energy from now on although that doesn't mean giving up on conventional arms. It will mean much quicker use of nuclear energy in civilian life. If the USAF does hit 140 wings, it will include a substantial tactical air force of 15 to 25 wings. "Top officials" think that the situation in Korea is getting better and that General Van Fleet's men can see off any Communist offensive. There will be new chairmen at the RNC and the DNC because of the scandal over loans to (Taftite) Guy Gabrielson and (Trumanite) Bill Boyle. Joe McCarthy's stock has fallen in Washington even with Republicans because he has gone after Eisenhower and, more importantly, Tom Hennings, because everyone likes Hennings. Truman's new campaign against leaks and security breaches isn't expected to change anything because the Washington press is the Washington press.
National Affairs
Stories about Guy Gabrielson's murky involvement with the RFC, as revealed to the Senate Investigating Subcommittee, and the Ways and Means subcommittee investigation of graft at the IRS, follow, and, thanks to a "wise guy" getting "rubbed out," a picture of a bloody corpse, which should sell some copies.
Raymond Moley pays for his trip to Tennessee with a long story about what America's Governors think about the election. Nothing, it turns out. They know nothing!
"China Policy (Continued)" Yes, it's a continuation of the previous story about the Administration's China policy. You might remember it. It's the one that ran on 10 November 1932, and in every issue since. It's about how the Administration is terrible for not listening to the church ladies more. (Uncle George says I shouldn't include Henry Luce as a "church lady," but I want to, I want to!) This one is about how Philip Jessup might have thought Communist thoughts in 1941 or 1946 or 1948. Newsweek's story about the President's rant about the newspapers ignoring secrecy follows that, and is as unsympathetic as all the other stories about it. Since that's not repetitive enough, following that is another story about 140 wings, if, when, soon, whenever.
International
"Drama at the UN: Mossadegh vs the British"; and "Diplomacy by Emotion; Or Why Mossadegh Faints" The British are upset at the US and Mossadegh, Mossadegh is upset at the British, the British are also upset with each other. The British think that since the Iranians can't lay hands on tankers or technicians, they can't run Abadan, so that in the long run the Iranians will have to fold.
Newsweek's story about the ambush of the Governor of Malaya last week has more details of the ambush and a roundup of the costs of the insurgency, which is currently employing 25,000 troops and 100,000 police as well as numerous air squadrons.
"Machine Man" An alarming story from West Germany about how the official duplicator operator at the legislature was making three copies of every document sent him by the cabinet, and selling one to French intelligence and giving the other to Kurt Schumacher's office. Russia has a giant digging machine, a silly story about Italian taxes, and King George's lung resection, follow.
"Labour's Platform" Labour is running more against war and Bevan than for socialism, although the rank and file seems to have quite a soft spot for Nye Bevan. The Tory lead is at 7% in the latest poll, which, if you draw a line through the last one I heard about (11%), shows that their lead is shrinking. Here's hoping, I say, although I would never treat opinion polls like that if I were betting money on it! And who is that around the door with the cold water the doctor ordered but Professors Kendall and Stuart of the LSE, who have a brand-new statistical model showing that the Tories are going to win a 165 seat majority. Newsweek then profiles Bevan, whom it really does not like.
In this hemisphere, Ottawa has a lady mayor, which is hilarious because a lady is a mayor! And she met Princess Elizabeth and Whatsisname! Canada is going along with the IMF concession allowing gold miners to sell gold on the premium market, but on the condition that any gold sold for premium prices won't qualify for the Canadian gold-subsidy scheme.
Business
"Twilight Zone" People had predicted both inflationary and deflationary trends by the fall, but neither have materialised, points out the National City Bank of New York. It's almost as if the current business market is just plain showing prosperity.
"Curtiss-Wright Shift" Finally, someone at the Glenn Curtiss-Wright Brothers "We have all the patents so you'll have to just give us your money while we do nothing" shop is paying for all the stuff and nonsense they've been foisting on the American taxpayer! Specifically, investment banker Paul Shields, brought in just two-and-a-half years ago in response to a shareholder's revolt, is out already. Replacing him and serving as both president and Chairman of the Board, is Curtiss-Wright insider Roy Hurley. That should do it!
"Crossley's Two Million" Avco Manufacturing, which somehow owns the Bendix home appliances name and Farm Equipment Company, has hired Powell Crosley (of Crosley Motors but also the Cincinnati Reds, which I did not know), to put on a floor show on "the American Way of Life," which will travel America and charge people money to look at the things that Avco makes and be amazed at how much better they are than Communist stuff. No, really. That's the point.
This Week in Business, GE averted a walkout with a pay raise, Howard Stores announced a price cut on boys' and men's wear, RCA announced that its Victor division was entering the air conditioning market, Technicolor announced a major expansion, the Department of Commerce reported that dividents were up 12% this year through August. GE's Charles Wilson thinks that the rearmament drive has been exorbitant and wasteful.
Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides has "To a Mitigated Socialism," which is a down-at-mouth prediction that, while the Conservatives have promised to denationalise steel, they have promised not to denationalise coal, and have no plans at all to denationalise rail, gas and electricity, or the Bank of England(!), much less dismantle the National Health Scheme. They are also not going to get rid of food subsidies or agricultural protection. So they are not free enterprisers like good old Americans and are actually just bad old Socialists, only "mitigated." But the British will still vote for them, probably because they think that, once elected, the Tories will rip up all those promises and denationalise everything under the sun.
I'm just going to go sit down for a second and contemplate the fact that the man who got rich by writing Economics in One Lesson thinks that "denationalising" the Bank of England is a good idea.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Whales in the Sky" Speaking of flying saucers, here's a story about the Air Force weather balloon programme, under Brigadier General Donald Yates, which aims to learn about weather conditions above 50,000ft. They are launching as many as 20 "Moby Dick" balloons (because they're big and white) in the United States every day, so if you've seen one, it's because there are a lot of them, and only some of them are being flown by little green men from Venus.
"Men and Mesons" Scientists at Columbia are using their year-old, 385 million electron volt cyclotron to produce beams of mesons, by shooting atoms with high energy protons and collecting the fragments. So far they've measured the weight of the negative "pi" meson and positive "mu" meson, measured the very short half-life of the pi meson, and established that it doesn't often decay into mu mesons. They're also learning more about the precise way that large atomic nucleii break up.
"The Blind Remembered" Newsweek checks in with the Special Services Department of the American Foundation for the Blind, which offers various aids for the sightless.
"Cheaper Miracles" No, the Vatican is not running short of cash. The price of some antibiotics and some forms of ACTH powder have been cut.
"Dean McIntosh Proves Point: Women's Colleges Come of Age" That's what it says here!
Press, Radio and Television, People
Columbia electromechanical colour-television system televisions have been on sale for a week now, but no-one is buying them because they are expensive gadgets and there are no shows to watch. Various stations are putting even more play anthology shows on. Did you know that Celanese has Celanese Theatre? I bet you didn't!
Congressman Pat Sutton, Henry Townley Heald, James Curley, Geneva Mae Pollum, Sheppard King, 3rd, Humphrey Bogart, Wilbur Paul, Paul Smeltzer, Sam Hedrick, "two teenage boys," Cal Farley and Bertrand Russell get into the column. With apologies to Russell and Bogart, that is just a terrible job of giving us news about the stars! Although Mr. the Third of Texas was engaged to an Egyptian movie star (Samia Gamal) for a few minutes, so he kind of counts. Pollum was in the papers, being the 20 year old who married a 76-year-old millionaire and then got divorced, but not many, and the Congressman is in the news for a story he tells about punching out a stick-up artist. That's it. I'm returning my copy.
Tyrone Power has had a baby, Cordell Hull and Senator Green (D) of Rhode Island have had birthdays, Katharine Grayson is divorced and Robert Dix is (very scandalously) married. Representative Karl Stefan (R) of Nebraska, Brigadier General Hugh Drum, Sir Henry Gurney, the High Commissioner, and not Governor of Malaya, I apologise, and Will Keith Kellogg have died. That is the Kellogg of Corn Flakes fame, and I have to admit being amazed that he was still alive.
Movies/The New Pictures
We can be brief here because Newsweek really, really liked Huston's version of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage and gives it a lot of space, although you'd think that casting Audie Murphy and Bill Maudlin would be a very bad sign. Nevertheless, it's a triumph, says so here. Newsweek still has to review Twentieth Century Fox's Journey into Light and A Millionaire for Christy, United Artist's Mr. Peek-a-Boo, Italian import, Under the Olive Tree, French import, Ma Pomme, but they're all movies with plans to get out of the way of the juggernaut somehow, and it shows. Journey is a low-budget, high-drama exercise in piety, Millionaire is a slight comedy, although with Fred MacMurray, and the import projects are low-budget attempts to squeeze a few American dollars out of southern Italian scenery and Maurice Chevalier, respectively. Mr. Peek-a-boo at least tries to be funny as well as French, but not very well. Unfortunately for all this planning to get out of the way in advance, it looks like Red Badge is going to be a disaster.
Books
Aviation Week, 15 October 1951
Industry Observer reports that "the most widely known secret in British aviation circles" is that the new Supermarine and Hawker fighters are being armed with four 30mm cannon developed from the German Mk108, mainly improved with a higher rate of fire.
Alexander McSurely reports that "Unrealistic Aircraft Schedules Face Cuts" More airplanes are promised than engines, and anyway if present schedukles are met, civilian production would be pinched. Allison and GE are on schedule, but Wright, Pratt and Whitney, and Westinghouse are all lagging behind targets. Westinghouse is suffering from the Kanasas City floods, but its J40 is reported to be behind schedule. Wright's R-3350 and smaller piston engines are also behind production schedules due to the strike there. Wright says that the strike also affected the J65, but it will be ready when the planes are ready. No relief from the auto industry's engine making scheme is expected. The latest is that Chevrolet will build plants at Flint and near Buffalo to produce parts for the Wright R-3350 and assemble them.) Aircraft with the J33, J35, J47 and J48 are reportedly fine, and the USAF is talking about accelerated deliveries of the F-86, F-94, F-89 and B-36, which use these engines. The whole thing is egg in the face for Air Force Undersecretary, John McCone, who promised that the schedules would be made up. This puts him up against DPA Administrator Manly Fleischmann and Defence mobiliser Charles Wilson, who regard them as unrealistic. (The next story is a bit more up to date and reports McCone's resignation and replacement by Roswell Gilpatric.)
"Probers Eye AMC Procurement" I am shocked to report that several "key personnel" at Air Materiel Command have resigned in the "face of" "irregularities" in "procurement practices"! The Air Force says that their might be millions of dollars worth of irregularities involved. Senator Kefauver might be put on a Senate subcommittee to investigate. Meanwhile, morale is plummeting over something to do with naming names, which is odd when seven case have been named, all civilian employees, buyers, or manufacturer's representatives. The appointment of J. Carlton Ward to the Air Force's $210 million heavy press project signals a speedup in this programme to produce 20 heavy forging and extrusion presses, five of which have already been contracted.
Production Engineering has a precis of Arthur Reynold's 39th Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society. Raymond is the vice president, engineering, at Douglas, and spoke on "The Well Tempered Aircraft," explaining the "Eight 'Musts' for Production." It's a bunch of "Blah-blah, thanks for the excuse to expense a trip to London" until we get to Douglas' "Limitation Analysis," which is a way of assessing the technical feasibility of preliminary designs by pushing out weights and wing areas to determine if the plane is actually practical. It sounds like common sense, but there's a lot of giant one-off prototype planes flying around to show that it isn't! Unfortunately, not a lot of detail about how this is accomplished.
The "AF's First Missile in Service Use" gets a nice pictorial when Aviation Week visits the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Banana River, Florida (now the Air Force Missile Test Centre). The range has a "1000 mile limit," which I think might mean the range of the radars and monitoring stations downwind? They're having a blast firing off Matadors, even if they don't have anything like a 1000 mile range. Boeing, which will be testing antiaircraft missiles, needs even less of the range. It turns out that the range does include "eight operating subdivisions," at Cape Canaveral, Point Jupiter, Grand Bahamas Bank, Eleuthera, San Salvador, Mayaguana, the Grand Turk Islands, and the "west coast of Puerto Rico." The launching site is Cape Canaveral, about 18 miles north of Banana River station, a closely guarded 12000 acres of palmetto scrub. Currently, the AF's main job is persuading locals that they won't be bombarded by a constant succession of malfunctioning missiles.
NACA Reports have heard the anguished cry of the not-bored and have swung into action! Barney Little and a regular posse of NACA men have done some "turbulence intensity measurements" on a jet of air from a long tube, discovering that turbulence is non-isotropic and that there was no systemic variation of the ratio of radial turbulence velocity to pipe exit velocity with different Reynolds numbers. M. H. Lee Wu didn't need any assistance to come up with an account of the general plastic behavour of a rotating disc (such as turbines) in strain-hardening range and work out some approximate solutions!
New Aviation Products has the Thompson "Extra-Landings tread," a tire that holds up better, a VHF receiver from Radio Apparatus corporation, and a plane cover fabric from Flexfirm products, Aeron 26.
Air Transport returns to what I thought was a settled issue, the CAB's proposal for a "stick shaker" stall warning indicator after four recent airliner stalls in landing approaches. It turns out that manufacturers don't like the additional expense. A brief blurb labels the Martin 4-0-4 and Convair 340 as America's first "postwar twin engined airliners" and says that there is progress in getting them into service.
Captain R. C. Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint tackles "The Noise Nuisance," without offering any easy solutions. What's New is digging into A. W. A. Brown, Insect Control by Chemicals and two reports on airport finance by the University of Chicago. Professor Brown worked for the Canadian Forest Insect Survey and the Directorate for Chemical Warfare! Robert C. Wood's Editorial is a full pager on excessive government secrecy.
Letters
Newsweek readers are evenly divided between those who want Robert Taft for President and those who like Ike. President Truman does not get a single supporting letter. The closest anyone comes, (in a pro-Taft letter!) is Mrs. Helen Buckwater of Omaha, hoping that he runs on the Democratic ticket because he is really a Democrat. Several readers write in to point out that General Norstad has his jacket open at the bottom in his official portrait, and this is a uniform offence punishable by a demerit slip. Reader D. H. Wood is confused about the difference between the Geer colour picture tube and the RCA one. Newsweek sets him straight. They are different tubes, and RCA has no ongoing connection with the Geer tube, which is being developed by Technicolor. Three people write in to say how much they liked the article about Walter Reed Hospital that I basically ignored. There's no justice! For Your Information's story about Raymond Moley's summer travels was so popular that it returns to the well to tell us about other Newsweek readers who went to Montevideo, Istanbul, Britain, France, and other places, with more to come. Even Henry Hazlitt got on a plane and went places. It must be hard to sit on your head for so long! Someone gave Newsweek a lot of plane tickets, sounds like. Was it John Huston's agent, maybe?
"President, Scarred by Scandal, Discards a Couple of Friends" Bill Boyle and James Finnegan, former Collector of Internal Revenue in St. Louis are both gone, Newsweek goes on at length. And if that wasn't repetitive enough, there's an honest-to-Heaven story about whether or not Taft is running in '52.
"Jessup Backfire" Everyone was hoping that the Jessup nomination would be the moment when McCarthy being McCarthy backfired on, well, McCarthy, but it wasn't, and mainly because of Harold Stassen. On the other hand, the Administration did sneak Chester Bowles' nomination through.
"Atomic Artillery Tests" To be clear, what is happening is that a battalion of Airborne are going to prepare a position at Frenchman Flats, then withdraw from it. Then, an atom bomb will be dropped on it, and then, inspectors will go forward and figure out what would have happened to the battalion if it had stayed. "If this is a preliminary to a tactical use of an atom bomb in Korea, none can say."
Newsweek then rounds up the Congressional session, which was weak on the President's financial and price and control initiatives and did not take up civil rights at all, but did do a lot of investigating.
A "Special Report" tells the tale of "The Untold Thriller: How 14 Czechs Fled Uranium Mine" Fourteen of the 30,000 convict labourers at Czechoslovakia's Jachymov Mines escaped, reached Munich, and were taken in hand by General Spaatz's International Rescue Committee, an organisation devoted to sending the right kind of refugees, like these ones, to nice places like Canada, and then drumming up some publicity in Newsweek to keep the donations coming.
The Korean War
"U.N. Troops Push On at Front as Leaders Strive for a Truce" Talks will continue at Panmunjom, so I guess the morale is that we weren't tough enough! Not much detail about the "pushing" at the front, perhaps because French and Dutch troops aren't involved, so the reporting is easier to control. Various people hopefully suggest that the European countries currently contributing contingents might send more, so that America can send less.
International
"Spotlight on Churchill Tories as Britain Nears the Election" Did you know that the Independent Nationalist, Plaid Cymru, Scottish Nationalist Party, British Empire Party, Anti-Partition Party and United Socialist parties are all contesting the British election? But they don't get the spotlight. The Tories get the spotlight! News! Or, more exactly, David Eccles is in the spotlight. (He's the one that thinks that the British worker will be so happy to see the back of Labour that he will start working again and fix up the balance of payments deficit. Which, I guess, maybe, depending on how much of it is buying silver in London and selling it in New York.) Aneurin Bevan is also in the spotlight, although he is trying not to be, because he is the voice of defence expenditure cuts, up with which the Tories will not put. The Tories are very in favour of defence expenditures. But not war! Those days are over. Unless some cheeky Iranian blighter gets ideas above his station, in which case. Er, I mean, let's just forget about that, because it happened under Labour. Peace. That's it! We're for it! And less socialism. But not as much less socialism as that David Eccles. Isn't he a card?
Also, Attlee souvenirs are on sale cheap in London, while the British Automobile Association reminds everyone that diplomatic plates reading "SR" stand for "Southern Rhodesia" and not "Soviet Russia," so could everyone please stop smashing their windows.
"Wise Men's Work" It turns out that the "Twelve Wise Men" are the same as Averill Harriman's committee, and they are in charge of talking until they find a 50 division NATO army as of c. 1953. That seems like it would take more than wise talking?
"Secret Plans for Peace" Italy may get a revision of its original peace deal if it is a good child and works very hard to be a good NATO member. The United States promises to bring it up at the UN in the next session. The Czechs are trying to attract American tourists, which is awful because Communism is bad, negotiations continue over the Abadan crisis, and Sir Stafford Cripps is back in Britain after completing his convalescence in Switzerland.
"Out with Britain" Newsweek catches us up with the ongoing Suez crisis, and, in a box, notes other potential trouble spots. (Iraq is apparently giving some thought to following in Egypt's footsteps.)
Canadian Affairs goes gaga over Princess Elizabeth and Whatsisname. There's a nice bit about her hats, but I have a feeling that you're not interested.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that talk of a rising cost of living is just that. The recent uptick in inflation is due to speculative buying of commodities ahead of a possible devaluation of the British pound after the election. There is, however, one inflationary driver in the cards. The shortage of metals means that producers will have to cut back on production, leading to the "too much money chasing too few goods" story. This brings Periscope to the observation that, between reduced output and the excess profits tax, many businesses that thought that a defence contract had put them on Easy Street will find themselves mistaken. The next likely consequence of the metals shortage unfinished buildings curtailed by lack of metals. Although the one area where there isn't a shortage is flat carbon steel, where the NPA overestimated demand. Also, it seems likely that Chile isn't going to be increasing its copper shipments to America by the promised 27%, as there is more money to be made selling it to Germany.
"How Congress' New Tax Law Hits the Nation's Pocketbooks" The next two weeks (at least) see Newsweek throwing one long tantrum over the excess profits tax and income tax rate increase. Short bits follow about a lobbyist pushing the chewing tobacco(!) interest and mobilisation this and that, followed by a profile of the Maisel restaurant chain.
"Cutbacks and Cars" There are rumours that the Defence Production Authority will knock car output back to 800,000 in the first three months of 1952, so Marty Fleischmann's promise that they would receive enough to produce at least 930,000 cars depending on size, and could build more if they wanted to raid their stockpiles, was a relief. Unemployment is expected to continue to rise as the assembly lines slow, and an interesting question not yet answered is how far the makers want to cut car size to increase numbers. The only company that has so far announced changes in body size is Studebaker.
Week in Business reports that the American Kenaf Fibre Corporation of Palm Beach is cutting America's first commercial crop of kenaf fibre this week. Frank Menches, "widely credited as" the inventor of the hamburger, has died at 86. The Colorado State Industrial Commission has "thrown a bomb" into collegiate sports by ruling that an injured student athlete, Ernest Nemeth, is entitled to disability pay.
What's New has a plastic storm window from United Industries of Pittsburgh, a Diaper Diary from Constance Bannister Enterprises, consisting of a book weekly calendar with 52 baby photographs, Pepsodent Products of Lever Brothers has a one step permanent wave treatment. Boehm Brothers of Detroit has "fragrant matches" that smell nice (in three flavours) when lit. Arthur Barnett of Chicago has a phonograph that is guaranteed to teach a parakeet to talk.
Business Tides has Henry Hazlitt explaining "Britain's Third Crisis." Are we going to have an investigation of the balance of trade figures? An inquiry into the Bank of England's "easy money" policy? A look at Bretton Woods, or the flight of silver? No, that would be work. Colin Clark has an opinion article in the Manchester Guardian, and ol'Hank will summarise it for us. First, British taxes are too high and won't fight inflation any more because they are just too darn high. Second, the British think that they'll be able to get cheap commodities again soon when the crush passes, but they're wrong. Third, productivity isn't increasing quickly like the official statistics say, but slowly, like Colin Clark says. Therefore, Britain is about to see runaway inflation and needs to drastically cut taxes to prevent it.
Yes, author of Economics in One Lesson here.
Science, Medicine, Education
Science Notes of the Week reports that this week, Englewood, New Jersey, will join thirteen other cities that will be able to dire-dial long distance calls by dialling a ten-digit number, while the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland will soon have the world's most powerful wind tunnel.
"Joe's Masterpiece" At the eve of the last war, Joe Simons of Pennsylvania created hydroflourocarbons, a colourless liquid that was, in theory, the basis for the best lubricating oils ever. The only drawback was that flourine is a very exciting element, so mashing it together with hydrocarbons was very dangerous. In the war, he produced fluorocarbons, which are also superior lubricants, but even more dangerous to produce, so the hydro- part is a major breakthrough which will lead to the mass production of hydrofluorocarbon lubricants for the betterment of man and womankind. (This news brought to you by major advertising account, 3M.) Also, the latest edition of the Oxford University Atlas is pretty good!
"Safer Soporific" The Schering Corporation of Bloomfield, NY, has Dormison (3-methyl-pentyne-ol-3), a liquid in capsule form that puts most people to sleep in about thirty minutes and contains no opium or barbiturates and does not depress pulse rate.
"BCG Babies" Tubercular meningitis is a dangerous disease of infancy, and is easily picked up from an actively tubercular parent, of which there are 1.4 million in the United Kingdom. Streptomycin is making a good inroad into that population, but infants can't go on this antibiotic. What they can go on, it turns out, is the Bacille-Calmette-Guerin tuberculosis vaccine. In a recent trial at St. Mary's Maternity Hospital, Liverpool, 1500 babies received the vaccine, and 1000 achieved immunity, so certainly a very worthwhile treatment.
"The Flexing Fingers" At a conference for military surgeons in Chicago this week, the combined medical staff (Generals Armstrong of both the Army and Air Force and Admiral Lawrence of the Navy) introduced a device designed by Lt. D. J. Dennehy of the Air Force which is basically an air bladder for an artificial limb, blown directly from the lung by a flapped tube made out of the patient's own skin. The inflation causes some movement, so that the patient can manipulate things, at least a bit. (The two General Armstrongs do not seem to be related, although they were both named after General Custer, which must have been confusing.)
William and Mary University and the Stevens Institute of Technology got new presidents this week, with the difference that Admiral Duke Chandler rides in to save America's second oldest university from the ongoing scandal over sports recruiting that is still making waves there, while the only reason Newsweek covers the Stevens story is that it owes the new president a favour.
Well, here's a name from the past! That insufferable young man that Uncle George dug up for your neighbour's daughter has written a book. Well, I mean, of course he's written a book. He talks in books. But someone has published it! Even though it is, as you might expect, dreary politics mixed in with biting the hand that feeds. He's come to the breathtakingly original conclusion that American universities, and in this case specifically Yale, are bastions of liberalism. Or, more specifically, it is "secular and collectivist." He also thinks that "some professors" should be fired, although he doesn't volunteer any names. Although he might if his younger brother doesn't get enough credits to graduate Class of '52!
Press, Radio and Television, People
"Crime Busters" Newsweek profiles U. S. Crime, then has a report from the Inter-American Press Conference in Montevideo before looking at the press while it looks at Princess Elizabeth and Whatsisname. The New York Post has more columnists than columns, but that didn't stop the publisher from taking out her own column this week, while a small paper in Georgia hilariously printed all the alternate, suggested margin corrections on an article that came in over linotype.
There's talk that General Tire is trying to turn its purchase of the Yankee local radio network in New England into the basis of a fifth national radio and television network, if the FCC approves. We check in with three new television shows. Sarah Churchill Presents is an off-beat version of the popular "on-beat" interview show, Frank Sinatra's highly musical show, up opposite Milton Berle, and Herb Shriner Time, a comedy programme.
Valentina Cortesa has had a baby, Eleanor Roosevelt has had a birthday, Sumner Welles is engaged, Nancy Chaffee is married, Elizabeth Donner Hanson is getting divorced. Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin, president of the WCTU, has "slipped" and broken her arm. Leon Errol, Clifford Fischer and William Earl Essick have died.
The New Movies
Books
This week's middlebrow reader of choice is the western historian, so perhaps I shouldn't say anything too judgmental about Herbert Bolton, of the University of California, and his Escalante's Trail. Douglas Southall Freeman's biography of George Washington is now in its third and fourth volumes and is "sparing in its praise." Reading as though the author is punishing himself for having so much fun with his life of Lee. Mia Watari, he of The Egyptian, has another historical novel out, The Wanderer, featuring adventure against the background of the European Peasant's War. Richmond Hobson, "son of the great popular hero of the Spanish War," it says here, has a book out about ranching in the great "unexplored" wilds west of Quesnel, British Columbia, Grass Beyond the Mountains. A sub-heading introduces a series of review of birding books and poetry. Thank you for the warning, subheading! And speaking of waste of time, Raymond Moley reviews Jesse Jones' memoirs of his time with the RFC to us.
Aviation Week, 22 October 1951
News Digest reports that Continental has ordered two more DC-6Bs, Eastern has received its first Martin 4-0-4 for personnel training, that a MATS C-97 is missing over the Azores. The Power Jets patent settlement is reported again. Newspapers report another "flying saucer," this time one chased by USAF fighters on the East Coast. The pilots say that it was definitely not a balloon! The Air Force says that the recent Time article on Russian planes was inaccurate.
Katherine Johnsen's Washingon Roundup reports in on the knockdown battle between defence mobiliser Charles Wilson and Charles Sawyer, the Secretary of Commerce. It is over jurisdiction over controls. Fascinating! Congress has written new rules on business lunches to get to the bottom of this whole "lobbying" business. There will be more "bars to officers taking higher-paying jobs in industry." They won't get their pensions until they hit retirement age, and that will show them! Also, everyone is worried tht commercial aircraft production is being hurt by mobilisation, part one million billion.
Ben S. Lee reports that "AF Reveals Shifts in Aircraft Schedules" The biggest change is that production is being shifted to North American from Republic as the swept-wing version of the F-84 is delayed due to a shortage of heavy forgings. Design specifications for the F-84F's wing spar would have required the entire output of the Wyman-Gordon forging press facilities "without regard to its commitments to Boeing and other manufacturers." The incoming Under-Secretary makes it clear that engine outoup is "critically low" and that there are too many spares in the inventory pipeline. The shortage of machine tools, caused in part by the revolutionary designs now in development, is the most important shortage.
"Dean Says Tactical A-Weapons Are Here" AEC chairman Gordon Dean says that America has so many A-bombs that it can use them on "tactical" targets. This is not an announcement that they have "baby" A-bombs working yet.
Harvey Aluminum has installed a new heating furnace for extruded materials at its LA plant. It is vertical instead of horizontal, because that makes for good heating.
Part II of the precis (I know, I know!) of Arthur Raymond's Wright Memorial Lecture follows. The reason that it is so long is that it really isn't a precis so much as great gobs of direct quotations gussied up for the magazine. It's certainly not because he has anything useful to say.
"Giant Wing Section in One Piece?" Lockheed wants to show off a giant piece of wing skinning produced on nits brand new Gidding and Lewis skin mill, a self-stiffened 323lb alloy strip cut from a 3340lb slab, replacing a complex assembly of 1500 parts.
New Aviation Products is tired of Bendix and Boeing sparkplugs, so it is time to talk about the Safir B-57, which will be a "boon to the lightplane owner" because it minimises radio interference while saving the expense of a true, shield system. Bishop Mfg's self-bonding electrical insulation tape is the best ever, depending on its "memory" rather than adhesive to stay in place. Production Products has a new, improved version of the AN 741 clamp, because it is manufactured to a higher tolerance.
The British Army is going to test the Auster B4 lightplane "flying boxcar" in upcoming manoeuvres, and if you were wondering about the shortage of non-sked news, don't worry, it's here. I'm just not reporting it.
Letters has Goodyear's lawyer writing to remind everyone that "Airfoam" is a Goodyear trade mark, and so should be capitalised. J. Kenneth Craver of Monsanto is a bit flummoxed by the controversy he set loose by criticising the claim that Hollingshead H-2 hydraulic fluid won't burn. Because it will burn! He explains at length. S. P. Saint of the Air Navigation Traffic Control Division Air Transport Association of America thought that the article "Toward Automatic Message Transmission" was "gritty but good." Also assorted on nonskeds, pilot's insurance and . . nonskeds.
Robert Wood's Editorial starts out on the subject of "Those 'Fantastic' Weapons." The current epidemic of speculation about fantastic new weapons might include artificial satellites or missiles waging "pushbutton warfare." It's not true, folks! We didn't have an intercontinental missile in 1950, and we don't have one now. We don't even have one with a 1500 mile range! We're working on it, but this stuff is hard, and fantastic weapons are not just around the corner. Also, the airlines should get out of the way of air coach and stop worrying about pie-in-the-sky proposals for better service and greater safety.
Letters
Walter Edmonds has a book coming out about the Air Force in the Philippines in the early days of the war, while Bernard de Voto's next will be on the pleasures of social drinking. Hollywood's "Movietime" promotional campaign has petered out, while James Cagney, Dan Daily and Corinne Calvet will star in a remake of What Price Glory, retitled Charmaine. Perry Mason is going to be a television show, one third of the members of the Screen Directors Guild are now working in television, Irvin Allen has bought the rights to the mystery stories of Edgar Wallace and Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons will both have television shows this winter.
The DeVoto book, by the way, inspired by an earlier essay on the joy of martinis. I think maybe Mr. DeVoto's life insurance company should have a look at his file.
Washington Trends reports that Washington is gearing up for a major price/wage hike battle in steel. Mike DiSalle desperately wants to avoid a steel price hike, but is short of allies, as Eric Johnston is retiring, and knowing the man, probably already has, in the privacy of his own head. Charles Wilson will probably replace Johnston, which probably means something, but I have no idea what, except that all the price stabilisers and controllers are fighting. Everyone agrees that a break in the price of steel would be an inflationary trigger, but the "best guess" is that the pressure behind it is too great. Truman will come back to Congress with resumed demands for higher taxes and changes in the Defence Production Act, but Congress will be no easier to convince. Meanwhile, Washington expects London to take the lead in dealing with Moscow, because it has enough on its plate already with the election. That's my country, clocking out of the rest of the planet for two years in every four!
In other right-of-Attila-the-Hun news, a complicated series of manoeuvres in the Senate ensure that most of the US UN delegation to the next session goes through, while Philip Jessup is confirmed as ambassador but not as delegate, and can go as an interim appointment, which the President is set to make. His final sin, pointed out by Harold Stassen, was favouring the recognition of Red China in 1949. In other developments, William Alsop and Henry Wallace destroyed Louis Budenz's credibility by establishing that after his 1944 China mission, Wallace recommended that the President dismiss Stilwell and replace him with Chennault. You see, General Stillwell is now deemed "pro-Communist," and you certainly can't argue that Chennault isn't anti-Communist! On the one hand, it's news to me that Louis Budenz had any credibility left to lose. On the other, seeing Alsop and Wallace gang up on him, speak ill of the dead, and congratulate each other for promoting the career of the irredeemable Claire Chennault actually makes feel a bit of sympathy for the little weasel. Follows a story about the developing IRS investigation and another about the lengthy report of the Senate subcommittee on ethics in government authored by Paul Douglas before his recent breakdown, another about General Mark Clark's appointment as envoy to the Vatican, and more last-minute manoeuvres that saved the new tax bill after the unexpected defeat of the first draft. My country, etc!
Washington Tides has Ernest K. Lindley on "Progress in Europe" says that the NATO armies are shaping up rapidly and should be a real fighting force by the end of next year, and meanwhile the Russians are showing no signs of planning to invade any time soon. The air forces are even further behind, but they are shaping up rapidly, too. The cost of rearmament may be too much to bear even for the continental countries, even though they are well behind the British, and some "easing off" might be required if military aid is not increased.
The Korean War
International
"Pyramiding Crisis in the East Backdrop for British Election" The tricky part is that America, or at least the American press (that I read; I should really stop punishing myself and take The New Republic instead), really don't want Labour to win. But if America gets in the way of Britain over Egypt the way that it has over Iran, Labour can run against American "interference." That seems a bit tricky when it is also running against Churchill as a modern-day Palmerston sure to start a war with Egypt, but "the world trusts Labour to solve problems without war." And so far, except for Palestine, Malaya, Greece, and Korea, that's been true! So television is here, you've heard, and Anthony Eden and Hartley Shawcross are both very handsome men, so they were on television to have an election debate. Now, if I were a Tory I would put Anthony Eden in a box and nail it shut with many nails and then be all, "Air holes? I knew I forgot something!" But I am not a Tory, and perhaps a pretty face is what you want to succeed, when the time comes, Churchill. He is, you might have heard, "plainly showing the effects of age and fatigue." (Glug glug, although I don't know what Attlee's excuse is, then.) Attlee says that a re-elected Labour would restrain the lunatics across the pond, while Churchill says that even with lunatics, you get more flies with honey. Tories are worried that the British like their welfare state too much to vote Tory, and the Beaverbrook press says that the solution for rising prices and the high cost of the meat ration is abolishing the purchase tax and replacing it with even more taxes on dividends, capital gains and excess profits.
Meanwhile, the new Red Army marching song is "The Soviet Atom Bomb," and the Russians have promised to return the two icebreakers they got under Lend Lease by November at the latest, six years late.
"The Seething Moslem World" Britain has increased the strength of its (treaty-limited) 10,000 man Suez garrison from 25,000 to 30,000 men to resist any attempt by the Egyptians to expel them from the Canal Zone for alleged treaty infractions. Which is a lot, but the Canal Zone stretches 104 miles and is practically on the doorstep of Cairo, and there are plenty of Egyptians in the Canal Zone. For example, the mob recently machine gunned by British troops for attacking British civilians, killing 8 and wounding 74. This has the Egyptian premier upset, but that's probably just a cynical gesture on his part to avoid assassination, because what kind of a national leader cares about foreign troops gunning down your nationals in the street? They also have a parachute brigade in Cyprus, standing by for an intervention at Abadan, and have alerted the 19th Brigade at home for possible deployment to the Middle East.
On this continent, Evita Peron has risen from her sickbed to rally the people to her husband, and someone or other has received the official endorsement of the Mexican ruling party to be the next President. George Pack, famous cancer surgeon and radiologist, has been summoned to Buenos Aires to treat a "very famous person," either Peron or, more likely, Evita.
Business
Periscope Business Trends reports that the economy is "spotty." Controls are biting some, not others. Inflation is up, down, and sideways. Banks have given up opposing easier loan terms to fight inflation and is now in favour of them to promote investment. The aluminum stockpile is low, not high, mainly due to the "false start" in aircraft production (held up, we're reminded, by the shortage of engines and machine tools), which led manufacturers to stockpile aluminum. Which means that the aluminum stockpile is low because everyone has been stockpiling it? This magazine! In concrete news, it is reported that the two-year long outflow of gold has reversed itself.
"Meat Black Market Mushrooms: Control Muddle Nears Climax" A full page article nicely illustrated by a picture of Mike DiSalle, who might as well be saying, " I told you so." DiSalle still wants to control slaughterhouses, while the industry wants price deregulation.
The Week in Business reports that corporate taxes are impacting earnings with the example of Du Pont showing a 24% increase in sales but a decline in profits per share from $4.67 to $3.45. GE, also reporting this week, showed a similar trend. GE and Cornell have announced a new electronics centre on campus. The American Toy Council says that $330 million were sold in toys last year, up 10% on the year before. W. W. Wachtel of Calvert Distilleries received the Washington Carver gold award for promoting inter-racial understanding.
A longer story explains why the railroads think they need a fare increase.
Following, Newsweek goes nuts about how taxes and debt and all that stuff will be the death of rearmament, business, the American way, motherhood and apple pie. Like I said, it's going a bit nuts over the new tax bill.
Business Tides has Henry Hazlitt, "This is Where We Came In," which is about how the meat shortage is due to all that controlling and stuff.
Science, Medicine
"Bringing Up Baby" Cathy Hayes has written a "delightful" book about bringing up a chimpanzee like a human baby, The Ape in Our House, up to, and including, spanking it when it misbehaves and dressing it up in human clothes. It seems like when there's already a movie, you don't need another book, but what do I know? I'm only the mother of a people baby!
(Science) Notes of the Week reports that the firsts World Metallurgical Conference heard about chromium carbide, which is almost as hard as tungsten carbide and much cheaper, and a paper by four University of Florida chemists, given at the Southwide Chemical Conference in Wilson Dam, Alabama, describing how to make mushroom soup from fruit-cannery waste. Yummy!
Max Theiler has won this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine for his yellow fever vaccine.
"Anti-Binge Drug" Newsweek reports on tetraethyliuram disulfide, or "Antabuse," the anti-alcohol drug discovered four years ago by Copenhagen scientists Jens Hald and Erik Jacobsen, which sensitises patients against alcohol. Dr. Hald emphasises that it is not a cure for alcoholism. It just compels the patient to remain sober as long as they are taking the drug. It has been trialled on more than 5000 patients in 100 clinics in the United States and Canada in the last two years, and this week was cleared for general use. That does not, however, mean general use by anyone except prescribing physicians, as overdose is very possible.
"Inside Brain Cells" A profile of Texas University School of Medicine, Galveston, professor, Dr. C. M. Pomerat, one of the leading experts on brain cells, who has devised a way of keeping extracted brain cells alive in vivo, allowing him to dose them with everything from cobra venom to, presumably, alcohol, and see what happens, but also observe what happens when he puts them together, which is that they link up with long tendrils and form networks. He isn't sure what is going on in microscopic terms, but the possibilities are exciting.
Making it an occasional feature doesn't necessarily make Newsweek's Art coverage better, but the late Kathe Kollwitz does get ample space. The impetus to the story is the usual, a special exhibition of his work in New York last week, at Gallerie St. Etienne, and the body of the article is a very short biography of the controversial artist and sculptor who identified with the working class and was criticised at different times by the Kaiser and Hitler.
"Collier's Goes to war" Collier's has a special issue out about the "Russo-American War of 195_," your humble reporter's coinage. Collier's conceit is a look back at the defeat and occupation of Russia from 1960. On the other hand, what about left-leaning news? I have good tidings on that, because the completely unbiassed Business Week has looked at labour news coverage in the American press and found it to be as fair and unbiassed as Business Week itself.
The Hellbox feature seems to be sticking around so I will stop ignoring it, like the press is ignoring the President's silly worries about security. Corliss Lamont makes the feature for being a pro-Communist millionaire, which is something they have in New York, where he writes for The Daily Compass. Scandalously, Counterattack reveals that he also subsidises it! The Chicago Sun-Times' campaign to have a Chicago patrolman indicted for murder after shooting two men in obscure circumstances has finally resulted in charges.
"Curtailed Colour" Charlie Wilson has asked CBS to stop making televisions because it is getting in the way of fighting communism. To be fair, this will also mean a moratorium on other manufacturers' colour television efforts. Which, after the terrible response to the first CBS sets, almost seems like doing the network a favour.
General Eisenhower, Admiral Carney, Josephine Baker, Sherman Billingsley, Kenneth Wilson of Seattle, daughter Paige, and tabby cat Pansy Rose, Joe DiMaggio, Lefty O'Doule, Lucky Luciano, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, a bizarre love quadrangle in Illinois, Robert the Gorilla, William F. Knowland, Nicky Hilton, Lillian Ross and Ernest Hemingway are in the column.
To explain: The Seattle family won a photo contest because cats are cute, Bergman and Rossellini are reportedly split, and the Partisan Review has lit into Lillian Ross, who published a devastating profile of Hemingway a year ago in The New Yorker. Another magazine I could be taking instead of this one!
William Clay Ford has had a baby, Yale University and John Dewey have has had birthdays, H. Earl Hoover has married his housekeeper, Thomas Beck and A. J. McCarthy have died.
The New Pictures
Newsweek is not impressed with the "vivid, but finally unsatisfying" Desert Fox, a movie about German Field Marshal Rommel, based on Desmond Young's biography, Rommel: The Desert Fox. It thinks that the movie, and biography, should have given a bit more consideration to the possibility that Rommel was a bad person who supported a criminal regime. The Man with a Cloak is a thriller based on a vignette about Edgar Allan Poe which has been turned into a not-very suspenseful movie with a fictional Poe as the protagonist and Barbara Stanwyck and Leslie Caron being "delightful." Thunder on the Hill features Claudette Colbert being a nun during a flood who solves a mystery. That's three plots in one! The Mob is a Columbia crime thriller with more than its share of action and suspense.
Books
Someone named Ignatius Roy Campbell "may be England's finest poet," and is also a bullfighter. (Ronnie rolls her eyes). Eudocio Ravines used to be a Communist and has now written an anti-Communist book about the Chinese Reds, and also the South American ones, The Yenan Way. Newsweek loved it and gives it ample space. Vina Delmar started her literary career at 23 with The Bad Girl, and has been going down that road ever since, most lately with The Marcaboth Women.
Raymond Moley is very impressed with British politics and British elections.
Aviation Week, 29 October 1951
News Digest reports that the Argentinian Air Force has received a C-47 modified for Antarctic reconnaissance. McDonnell test pilot Edwin Schoch has died in a crash of his F2H Banshee. Dr. Allen Astin has succeeded Dr. Edward Condon at the Bureau of Standards. Avro Canada reports (again) that Jetliner production has been halted so that it can focus on the CF100.
Industry Observer reports that the GE J35-GE23 will be renamed the J73 to be less confusing, that Boeing and Goodrich have developed a "surge boot" that protects the Boeing flying boom refuelling system from hydraulic ram when high speed flow is cut off. Navy pilots disagree with Air Force about just how stable a jet firing platform actually is. The Royal New Zealand Air Force is having corrosion troubles with the Vampires it bought. The Dodge division of Chrysler will make steel four-blade propellers for Hamilton Standard for the C-97. GM prefers to build "dual use" plants for war contracts and future automobile production. From the industry side, the concern is that they receive a smaller accelerated amortisation payment. On the government side, the sheer size of the future tax liability on accelerated amortisation is becoming alarming. NACA's trick for reducing engine vibration by lubricating the roots of compressor blades is impressive. Boeing is tired of no-one else mentioning that it has a low-power gas turbine too, and puts a bit in the paper about it. The Air Force announcement that Wright J65s, the license-built version of the Sapphire, will definitely be used in the Martin B-57 is probably another reason for the delay in the swept-wing version of the Republic F-84.
F. Lee Moore reports that "Ocean Coach Costs Shown" US carriers are expected to propose a $250 one-way New York-London fare, but Pan Am is ready to go it alone in April at $225, or $405 round trip, and is expecting 75% loads. IATA is expected to take the higher fare, $450 round trip on a basis of a 65% average load factor. Air Materiel Command has apologised to Don Bridges, of Introductory Services, Ltd., and restored his full status at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As part of Air Force procurement shifts, two new models of the F-86, the -F and -H,have been ordered. The -H has power boost controls and gets rid of the tailplane dihedrall, while the -F has a new model of the GE J47 engine.
"AF Gives Nod to McDonnell 'Voodoo' The XF-88 is to be built after all as the Lockheed F-94D has been cancelled because of "producibility" issues. It is, if you've forgotten, the big bomber escort fighter, although the Army is enthralled with its potential to lift bombs with all that wing area made available for (not nearly) enough gas to fly to Moscow.
"US Mission Orders Italian Tools" Says here. Damn good idea!
The Helicopter Association of great Britain is having a contest for new helicopter designs, and the Swedes have a new trainer. Ford is putting the biggest overhead material-handling monorail yet at its Chicago plant, while Street-Ameet Corporation says that its electronic scale is the best yet. It is very accurate, and can display or print the results out remotely, because it is electronic.
"Use New Technique in Engine Assembly" Wright is speeding production of its J65 by assembling them in a big pit surrounded by a dolly and lifts. Details of the Armstrong Siddeley Snarler have been revealed. It is a "hot"-type rocket, using liquid oxygen and water-methanol to develop 2000lbs thrust at sea level, about 12% more at 50,000ft. It weights 215lb dry and fits in a space of 3x6 ft. The motor has on-off control and has enough fuel for three minutes of flight.
"Thompson Extends its Avionics Outlook Thompson has taken time out from poaching generals to buy the Antenna Research Laboratory and enter the microwave antenna field.
"Continuous Belt Circuit Baker" The National Bureau of Standards has come up with a continuous belt furnace for firing limited production runs of printed circuitry, replacing seven batch-type furnaces taht had "proved frequently inadequate." The NBS uses a silver paint to print the circuits on ceramic or glass plates using a stenciled screen process at 1350 degrees. Plates can be stacked six deep on the four inch wide belt and the speed of the feed can be adjusted from the belt gears.
"Highspeed Machine Hobs Gears Faster" Michigan Machine Tool has same. Seeks carbide gear makers. Object, profits. (It's not really a solution to our current problems because it is just a way of achieving the same speed as a carbide steel hobber with plain carbon steel.)
Equipment, alerted to the alarming news that we're not bored enough of spark plugs, sends George L. Christian to the latest Spark Ignition Conference to hear about fuel additives and KLM's opinion on plug cleaning. (It's against it.) In the next installment, we move on to engine analyzers. Can't wait!
Air Transport has F. Lee Moore reporting on the CAB findings into the UAL DC-6 crashes at Crystal Mountain and Oakland. The crashes appear to have been due to pilot error, with inadequate training emphasised, although the precise mistake was mishandling of radio information from the ground either by listening on the wrong frequency or adjusting equipment incorrectly in the cabin. Speaking of flight safety, all the world's experts united to hold the Air Force down and scream at them until they agreed on centreline lighting. CAB wants a power loss signal to replace automatic propeller feathering devices, but is waiting for pilot comment. The first ten 4-0-4s are expected next month, and the nonskeds want everyone to know they absolutely are safe and have flown a billion safe passenger miles over seventeen months.
Robert H. Wood's Editorial is about how great Flying Tigers Airline is, how unrealistic are Air Force claims that their unrealistic production schedules are actually realist; and how the Merchant Marine are almost as bad as the railways what with their anti-air propaganda.
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