Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Ronnie
The Economist, 3 April 1954
Leaders
"Bombs in Cold Blood" The Economist has a deep thought; it is really hard to set off a hydrogen bomb, and public opinion and "public men" should take the hint. Usually sober voices have been saying wild things since the Bikini test, and damage caused by "inadequate safety precautions" may be dwarfed by what is brought on by those hasty remarks."Sensible men will not take too seriously the vision of a world devastated by technical oversights," but there is a real question of whether these tests need to continue, as long as the Russians do, too. We have seen that as long as both sides have poison gas, both sides have been willing to not use it. So, in short, hydrogen bombs are bad and the only thing to be done is to build as many of them as possible as quickly as possible so as to keep the Reds in line. Though if the Americans are willing to share their atom bombs so we don't have to go to the trouble of building them, that would be swell, too.
"Signpost to the Budget" The Economic Survey for 1954 s that. Between a £500 million increase in national production and improvements in the terms of trade, we get a bigger pot of £800 million, but when all the demands made on it are taken together there's no money left over. Since there needs to be more investment in industry, there will have to be, of course, tax relief in the form of higher depreciation allowances, and now we are in the position of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Also, if the American recession gets worse, the world will end.
"Recession Recedes?" We are disappointed to report that the United States' rapid shift from "Keynsianism is bunk" to "Keynes like the dickens or we'll lose in '54 seems to have worked, and the world won't end this year. Shucks!
 |
| Due to geography and stuff, Sitka wasn't particularly further from the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1854, but we did eventually manage to send troops there from Victoria. no Russian men-of-war being found, the place was not occupied in accordance with a prior neutrality agreemen between the Hudson's BAy and Russian-American company. . |
Notes of the Week
"China is Warned" Mr. Dulles has warned China that unless the Red offensive in Southeast Asia is immediately curtailed, America will enter the war as a combatant. The Economist is skeptical that words can save Dien Bien Phu or change the course of talks in Geneva.
"Hydrogen and Hot Air" Whatever Labour's exact position will be in the Monday debate about the H-bomb, it will be emotional twaffle. Also, Molotov's application to join Nato must be some kind of joke. The latest developments in Egypt see Nasser coming out ahead. In Britain, constituencies are being adjusted with every effort to avoid a partisan effect, while the current hearings on the Housing Repairs and Rents Bill are very partisan, inasmuch as Labour is worried about the future of rent control. The Economist is worried that the government in Kenya is making things too easy on surrendered Mau-Maus.
 |
| A reconstruction of the Scorpion Pass bus on display in Israel. |
"New Moves in the Two Germanies" Both Germanies are going to be "sovereign" and independent and have armies and conscription soon. Next stop, Hitler!
"Bill for Health Services" Public health service spending ("socialised medicine"!) in Britain has risen from £398 million in 1951--2 to an expected £430 million in spite of attempts to "brake" spending. Parliament is fighting over the Television Bill. I'm a bit hazy on the details, since as usual the emagazine is more interested in telling Labour what it shouldn't do (oppose advertising) than in telling us what Labour is doing. Tory backbenchers, who are also critical, mainly want fewer restraints on "television contractors," but have been told to shut up or find themselves without a constituency. The Economist is even more upset at agriculture subsidies than health services, even though they cost less at £375 million. Harold Stassen is in town to explain that Americans are actually fine with East-West trade. They just act like they're ready to start a universal war over it. The "Comecon" group is also endorsing more trade between the blocs. The Economist finds a bit more gas in the outrage tank to be upset at the ECSC for acting like a cartel to limit burgeoning German steel exports which are damaging Belgian and French business. The Catering Wages Board has cut the minimum wage for "tippable" staff because they're making too much money. The Economist, for a change, thinks that it is a bad idea, poorly implemented. Anthony Eden is the prime minister Britain needs! Comprehensive schools may or may not be terrible, and until we're sure, we shouldn't do anything about them. A London investment syndicate wants to start buying council housing estates because it thinks that it can make money running them, it says. The Economist is not buying it, and various people are pointing out that rules against "investment and speculation" exist for a reason.
Letters
 |
| No true Scotsman! |
Books
Hans Kohn's German History: Some New German Views is a bad and terrible book, just like Germany. R. G. Hawtrey's Towards the Rescue of Sterling has a "Trotskyite" title because Hawtry is the Troskyite of Keynsians. By which is meant that he is even more in favour of a dearer money policy than the reviewer. Jean Saintenay thinks that everything would be fine in Indo China if absolutely everyone didn't hate the French Empire. The reviewer isn't convinced, but at least everyone can agree that "mere anti-colonialism" is just the mistaken view that every country is capable of self-government and, as such, is just "evasion" of the White Man's Burden. (That last bit is me.) Constantine Benckendorff's Half A Life is the memoir of a comfortable White Russian emigre who didn't do anything very much in life except get on the right side of the book page editor. D. Hudson and K. W. Luckhurst's The Royal Society of the Arts celebrates the two-hundredth anniversary of the society all the famous artful people join and finds that it is involved with all the famous artful stuff, but that would be a really long book and very hard to review so here are some random examples. Emile Moreau's Souvenir d'un Governeur de la Banque du France is the memoir of a slightly more accomplished friend of the page's editor, who is really going all out for his drinking buddies this week. B. S. Yarnley on The Economics of Resale Price Maintenance, The Scottish Journal of Political Economy, and W. E. Hiley's Woodland Management are worthy books (and one revived journal) all.
American Survey
"McCarthy and the Constitution" A long explanation that at least touches on McCarthy cancelling a committee meeting with fifteen minutes notice so that he could fly off to Wisconsin, which is probably what actually got the Republican caucus to go along with making the Army-McCarthy hearings the ultimate confrontation of the "new bureaucracy" of the Senate's investigative committees and the "old bureaucracy" of the Executive branch. Also, no-one knows what Dulles is bringing to the Geneva talks because no-one knows what is going to happen at Dien Bien Phu, and also because Berlin was such a letdown that no-one else in Washington wants to get involved. The President's interest in trade expansion continues to be in trouble in Congress, because everyone wants a tariff, just as a one-of-a-kind exception to free trade as required that one specific industry in their district or state. People are starting to get a bit impatient with Congress not doing anything, with half the session left to do something about the farm plan, Hawaii, tariffs, and social security. The drought in the Southwest is threatening a new Dust Bowl. The revisions to the strategic stockpile totals are good news to U.S. miners and refiners. The Economist is still finding ways to be upset about the New York dock strike. The survival of American Woolens is still in doubt, and for some reason still in the magazine.
The World Overseas
The Business World
"Two Views on No Par Value" The Parliamentary Committee on Shares of No Par Value agrees that all the fears expressed by the 1945 Cohen Committee were just nervous vapours and everyone should go ahead and issue all the No Par Value shares they like.
Business Notes
Leaders
"Fair Stands the Wind for France" The French have some nice planes these days. See article, following.
 |
| RuthAS via Wikipedia |
"IFR Without Tears: Sampling the Zero Reader and other Instruments in the Sperry Company's Anson" Sperry keeps an Anson XIX with all its new gadgets installed, and recently invited Flight along for a ride. We're told that changes from earlier instrument panels begin behind the scenes, with the replacement of air-driven with electrically-driven gyros. We get an explanation of the Zero Reader's working, which will probably be a great relief for the lay reader. (You set the desired heading, which includes concepts like "OVERSHOOT" as well as simple course settings) into it, and it uses its two pointers to guide the pilot through the necessary changes in bank and pitch until the pointer is "zeroed." The gyromagnetic compass and artificial horizons are also explained, but they're nowhere near as mysteriously wonderful.
Here and There reports that The Dam Busters will film in the Lake Country, that the Danes have lifted their ban on jet flights, that Pan Am has introduced installment payments for flights. The names for the RAF F-84 variants are clarified. The Netherlands is getting its first batch of Hunters.
This week's historical installment discusses the B.E.2. The article not fitting entirely into six pages, pictures of shock-waves featuring in the current issue of Hawker Siddeley Review is discussed.
Aircraft Intelligence Americans are working on the Robertson SRX-1 "zero-length takeoff" plane, Boeing is putting J57s into B-47s and is testing remote automatic takeoffs and landings in B-47s. Have we mentioned the S.O. 4050 V autour often enough in this issue? We haven't? Lets mention it again! The Dutch are building a Scandia variant, and here's more on the Fouga CM 170, not in the section but rather a separate six page article.
"The Helicopter Comes to Stay: Bell Chief Looks Back then Forward to a Bright Future" So I read here, and it is only what I read, so please don't hold me to it, but the helicopter is here to stay!
"Low-Level Booming: The Sonic Shock-wave as an Offensive Weapon" Flight's man at Edwards Air Force Base gets his leg thoroughly pulled by some engineers from North American on the subject of a "low altitude fighter boomer."
Correspondence
"Disappointed" warns everyone in Britain that emigration to Canada might not lead to a good job in the air industry because colonials can be like that. H. S. Togood wants BEA to try booking seats to make flights more comfortable. T. Delaney of the Air Cash Crew, C. H. Stillwell (W/Cdr, Ret), A. W. Hay, and R. M. Oulette remember the old days, before the war.
Civil Aviation reports that Egypt is buying Viscounts, Aquila's flying boat service from Southampton to Capri has been approved. Super Constellations are being delivered, and Lufthansa and Aeroflot continue their campaign for landing rights. Flight rounds up the reaction to American's decision to force its stewardesses to retire at 32. I'd be pretty embarrassed if I were someone at American Airlines! BOAC and BEA say that they have never had to retire a stewardess on grounds of age, "efficiency" being the only relevant criteria, which isn't quite as reassuring as they mean it to be.
Maxwell Taylor, "Imperially to India" The author reminisces about flying to India in 1927 in a steam-powered Beardmore Intransigent quadriplane in a modest two dozen two-hundred mile all-day stages (give or take a train ride across the Italian border), quite luxurious except for the coal dust getting everywhere. Seriously, 53 hours of flying over eight days on the first stage, with Taylor the only passenger on several legs, not surprisingly considering the ill-fitting walls and windows and the deafening roar of the three engines. That's a lot of change in twenty-five years!
The Economist, 10 April 1954
Leaders
"Well Enough Alone" The Economist loves the budget, although it hopes the next one cuts spending, just on the general proposition that it is too high a share of the national income.
"The New Rift in Asia" In a major speech last week, John Foster Dulles threatened to send US "military forces" (just not the kind who die, wich seems to narrow his options) to Southeast Asia to bolster the French, who do not obviously want bolstering. This puts the Geneva talks off on quite the wrong foot. The talks are, however, hostage to the heroes of Dien Bien Phu. The French want a negotiated settlement, and that is what they are looking for from Geneva. They seem to hope that the forward American position can be used as a bargaining chip to get a better deal,which would outrage the Americans if there was any sign that Washington was capable of thinking rationally about the advance of Communism in Asia, which it is not, as everyone is afraid of running foul of Knowland and the church ladies. Everyone but the French are agreed that the French must not quite South East Asia, and perhaps that the threat of American involvement will check that of Chinese involvement. The question is what everyone will accept in the way of a continuing French presence in South East Asia. Which leads The Economist to explain the Entente Cordiale on the fiftieth anniversary of its undertaking, followed by an explanation of why the cosmetics industry is a big deal, and not just with the ladies, as men make money from it, too. It is supposed that cosmetics are a vital industry now, what with women working and men no longer constrained from straying by threats of hellfire and damnation. (Ronnie has opinions!!!) The industry is worth £4.5 million in advertising alone, and the latest thing, which has the British Medical Association concerned, is hormone creams. That can't be safe, can it?
Notes of the Week
The hydrogen bomb debate in the Commons did not go well because the Prime Minister is senile and because it was Attlee who settled the Commons down, and who wants to give him credit? The Economist is disappointed that not everyone was as quick to recognise that the budget was perfect as it was. Molotov is still campaigning to join Nato on the grounds that it is essentially an anti-German or anti-revanchist alliance. Not only is this not on, it would lead to a similar arrangement in Asia, "with China calling the tune," and that would be beyond disastrous. Marshal Juin's decision to weigh in against the EDC and the European army is a disaster for the French government, while the railway strike settlement is a disaster for Britain, and Markezini's resignation is that for Greece. The east European satellites have been slow to hold their party congresses in the wake of the Russian one, because the east European parties get stomach aches when they think too much about the Soviet "new look." The Economist is happy to report that Andre Bonnard has been convicted of promoting Soviet-line propaganda, and at Pierre Joliot-Curie's behest, on top of that. On the other hand, democracies shouldn't do that sort of thing, so tut-tut, Switzerland, tut-tut. The Economist is happy with the debate on the Commonwealth in the Commons, which was much less vituperative than the ones over the Colonial Office in the fall, and on that subject isn't happy that the elections in Guiana are going ahead, but satisfied that the fact that they are strictly for show means that they will be for show purposes only. (There is evidence that Guatemala is promoting the spread of Communism there!) The Standing Committee on Museums is appalled by the state of the British Museum. Swedes are upset that the British aren't trying harder to trade with them. The WHO is being silly when it says it needs more money. Cuts in prices for consumer goods in Russia reflect the fact that Russians are very, very grumpy, and when the Virgin Lands bear fruit there will be money to pay for them.
From The Economist of 1854 comes "The All-Absorbing Struggle," an article about how the war is the most exciting thing going on right now.
Letters
Books
Michael St. John Packe was born to write The Life of John Stuart Mill, who was, the editor tells us, just about the smartest man of his times. D. Brunton and D. H. Pennington have Members of the Long Parliament, which is an ingenious and important historical study for reasons I know it will bore my readers to explain. The review credits Lewis Namier's pioneering work, but does not give adequate credit to French approaches. In my opinion, but what do I know? W. W. Rostow's The Dynamics of Soviet Society is an approach to the problem by someone who is not a Russia expert, and is very refreshing for that reason. Knowing things is for the lesser folk! J. E. G. Utting has Social Accounts of Local Authorities, published for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. There being no need to explain what a "social account" is, the author and reviewer launch right into arguments for using sampling to replace surveys. Fascinating stuff, and o wonder the review gets three columns. J. G. de Beus' Future of the West should be put away now and read in fifty years when perhaps people have forgotten Toynbee and Spengler, of whom this work is a summary. Alan Ross's The Bandit at the Billiard Table: A Journey Through Sardinia is one of those colourful travel books about a picturesque and backward place with surprising lessons for the civilised English person. Even The Economist thinks it is a bit much. Five published compilations of statistics (on food, telecommunications, crime, timber, international air travel, and other statistics) get a combined two line review that isn't "very worthy books all," because the reviewer and I have had a stern talk about copyrights.
American Survey
ed in part because labour regards it as a protection against even more stringent state laws. US foreign aid, including MSDAP, is at $3.5 billion this year with a focus on Southeast Asia. A long explainer on water policy in California, where the Republicans are making gestures towards returning the power vested in the Central Valley Project to the state. There is an interesting point about how the CVP was originally intended to distribute water rights widely, so as to break up "factories in the field," and address the migrants problem along with the water shortage problem. Not many colour televisions have sold yet, not surprisingly considering that they cost $3000 each and the largest tube size available is a bit over 12". The Senate amendment requiring that Alaska enter the Union alongside Hawaii has, as predicted, put off statehood for this session. The New York dock strike is over at last, and the Administration is considering curtailing its programme of clipping and reselling foreign stamps to collectors, as it might not end the deficit after all.
The World Overseas
"Commonwealth Debate at Lahore" The most interesting part seems to have been South Africa turning out to defend apartheid, and the aligning of the whole Commonwealth outside South Africa on the side of racial equality. Japanese excitement over the Lucky Dragon radiation poisoning reminds The Economist of all those awful Japanese nationalists of times past and also of those pinko neutralists of times now. Both! Japan bad! Population rising, exports too expensive, economy ruined!
The Business World
"The Budget Analysed" It's great(6pp)! Not much in the way of tax cuts, except for a cut of the tax on movie tickets to help out the British cinema industry in hopes it'll make something of itself one day.
"The Foreign Balance in 1953"First it was bad, but then it was great! We have no idea why, which is why we say "invisible exports" a lot; but at least we can agree that we should panic over changes in this number we don't understand very well!
Business Notes
Stock market up, gold flowing in, textiles up, match industry due for long-needed reform, commonwealth something or other, BOAC making a profit, BEA a loss because long-haul flights are more profitable right now, nine-year export credits now available to British exporters, the Radioactive Centre at Amersham is now open for sales, London Transport is doing a great job and only needs another £5 million this year, Treasury loans to the china industry are giving a good return, just goes to show, international agricultural talks under way to deal with surpluses without "dumping," Shell issues shares, a company auditors report to the shareholders of Hide and Company discusses irregularities, which is how audits are supposed to work, but never do, which might be why this is a news story. Edible oil market terms are firmer, Chile is holding onto its copper, hoping to sell to the US strategic stockpile rather than capitulate to current low world prices, which has The Economist upset at it.
Leaders
"Thoughts on Cranfield" The College of Aeronautics at Cranfield absolutely is a good idea and don't you listen to anyone who says differently.
From All Quarters reports that Nato is five, that Air Marshal Mukierjee is he first Indian CinC of the Indian Air Force, that General Vandenberg has died, that Constant Rozanoff has died demonstrating a Mystere IV, that Cranfeld is throwing a party.
"Gannet, RN" The Navy has received its first flight of Fairey Gannets, and Flight was there to take some pictures, of which no good ones are included probably because the plane is still on the Restricted List from the look of what was published. Martin Aircraft wants us to know that it is pumping out B-57s like there is no tomorrow and that the P5M is just around the corner.
Correspondence
Two letters about the old days, one from Harold Balfour, and two about hats.
Here and There reports that eight Bell HSL-1s are to be shipped to the UK under the terms of the MSDAP, that the McDonnell Demon has been grounded after three apparently unrelated accidents (mid-air explosion, engine failure, tail separation). Miss Mary Cook and Mrs. MacGougan of Skipness, Aberdeenshire, were honoured this week for saving 29 F-86 Sabres by braving a gale to turn on a manual radio beacon giving the Sabres a heading for Prestwick with only ten minutes flying to spare. Decca has two new air navigation devices, Dectra and Delrac. Civil Aviation looks at the British airline's financial returns, already covered by The Economist. The British charters are doing fine.
This terminates regular coverage for this issue of Flight, the rest of the number being turned over to a directory of the world's aeroengines circa 1954 following a brief review of the state of research.
Fortune's Wheel makes funny about German and Irish and the idea that Fortune exists to promote good stocks.
.jpg)
The first big feature story is "Ohio Today," which is about how the state that is high in the middle and round at both ends is full of business opportunities and also hogs. Mostly hog. but also cows, and some sheep, too. You can even vacation there if you absolutely have to. It has beaches on the Great Lakes!
Leaders
"Can Germany Go Capitalist?" Yes! So stop being so skeptical! A bright new dawn, etc. Just watch out for those cartels.
William E. Harris, "Chrysler Takes the Bumps" Fortune visits Chrysler to see what the smallest of the big three is up to. Clawing its way back, is the answer.
David A. Saunders and Sanford S. Parker, "The Sunny Outlook for Clothes" Unlike cars, which are a bit of a drug on the market because of that recession, demand for clothes is up, driven by steadily falling prices, and the demand side is overtaking the prices side to lead to increasing sales.
Otis Binet Stanford, "The Case for the Universal Card" A universal identity card would be so useful. Follows shorter articles about the potential damage to critical industries like optics caused by tariff cuts, the current scandal over labour welfare funds, and the scandal brewing over California lobbyist Artie Samish, who, it turns out, bribes people. I know! Shocking!
"McCarthy and the Businessman" Fortune surveys a bunch of businessman to see what t hey think of McCarthy. It looks like the "nays" outvote the "yays." People seem to be getting tired of him, to be honest.
No comments:
Post a Comment