Postblogging Technology, April 1956, II: Colonial Inertia

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

A bit of Flight for you, and a whole bunch of British politics with Miles Thomas' resignation and conformation of the Canadian Pacific order for five Britannias. I'm not sure how that came out in the end? I may have egg on my face over this in the end, but it really does seem to me that the case against the Proteus has pretty much been made. I guess it's the shareholder's money, after all.

Extravagance or not, though, I see worrying signs of the opposite problem. Is the financing of the Aswan High Dam going to fall through? Tony Eden wants to go for Nasser's throat at the best of times, and I have my doubts about how long Jean Mollet can restrain himself from bombing Radio Cairo. I just hope that Nasser doesn't give them the excuse by clearing the Israelis out of their little wall around Gaza if the Dam's financing is withdrawn. 

A man in a business automation ad. Sign of the times

Look at me worrying about world politics when girls should be about fashion and fun!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

The Economist, 21 April 1956

Leaders

"Missed Opportunity" Macmillan's budget is, like every budget since I've been old enough to read The Economist a disappointment because it doesn't cut spending and taxes enough. That seems a bit crass, though, so the magazine throws in a bit about tax reform. 

"Five Months for Algeria" It's not fair, the Mollet government thinks, that just because the French didn't do anything about Algeria during "a generation of colonial inertia" that now the French have to mobilise up to 200,000 conscripts in two call-ups (100,000 now, another 100,000 later) and raise their overall strength in North Africa to 600,000 and reorganise their army for guerilla warfare. It's also not fair thata minority of the socialists and Communists are making a stink about it just when the French public are showing a will to act. It's almost as if those crazy leftists think that the "colonial inertia" started in 1830! Even the Economist finds this a bit much. The Algerian rebels are already administering liberated areas, and the idea that 15,000 rebels are terrorising 8 million Algerians who could just be persuaded to go along with the latest French scheme for anything-but-independence-except-real-change. Even now the government can't commit itself to seating elected Algerian deputies in the French Assembly. Maybe at some later date is the best they can do. Fortunately, the government has given itself a five month deadline to implement its vision, which puts a time limit on Algeria's agony. "France should have wept before these occasions, as Britain should for Cyprus."

"The Feminists Mop Up" The Feminist movement has accomplished most of its worthwhile goals, and it would be a shame if the movement were to fade away because of a popular belief that the only remaining small gains to be made as of 1956 were too radical. Also, the Chinese Communists are uncomfortable with all this anti-Stalinism. 

Notes of the Week

How you tell that you've pissed off the photographer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

"B, K, and the Middle East" That is, Bulganin and Khrushchev, who have proposed a United Nataionas arms embargo on the Middle East, which seems like a good solution to the problem, but actually isn't because Britain should be allowed to continue exporting arms to the Middle East. It's everyone else who should stop. The Economist then goes on to explain why the Secretary General isn't making any progress in the Middle East. It is because Israel needs peace more than Egypt does, so of course it is taking a harder line. I'm not sure that's how negotiations work! Two Notes cover Macmillan's premium bonds, about which I am trying and failing to form an opinion. Even The Economist has to have at least a Note about Grace Kelly, but fortunately it can pretend that it is very serious business due to Monaco being a seedy tax haven, about which things The Economist knows more than it is letting on. Lauris Norstad is the new SACEUR because it was about time that they put in an airman, and when it comes down to the choice between a colourless engineer and a mad bomber, well, at least the bomber is entertaining. The new budget hasn't increased the tobacco relief for the elderly in line with the increase in the tobacco tax. 

From The Economist of 1856, "Educating the People" explains that public education is for authoritarian governments of slavish Continentals, not free Britons. So even though it is a good idea, it is actually, to a deeper and more careful way of thinking, a bad idea. The Economist likes the way the debate over the Restrictive Practices Act is going, blames the current potato shortage on the Potato Marketing Board, to which it is opposed, like all Marketing Boards. The issue in Vietnam is not that the Diem government has withdrawn from its commitment to national elections on the technicality that it was rather committed to them by the Geneva Agreement than explicitly agreeing to them at the time. It is that the Viet Minh will probably resume the war now that the armistice terms have been violated, and the Russians should do something about that because peace is good. Spain is having strikes and demonstrations because even $50 million a year in U.S. aid isn't enough to prop up a regime that corrupt and inept. The Cominform has been dissolved, the Chancellor's premium, bonds puts him in competition with the football pools, no, I mean really, as in conflict of interest competition. The Kenyan Assembly wants to get on with apartheid, which isn't going to happen, the National Union of Small Shopkeepers is being inflationary, the Danes are still on strike for the 40 hour work week, Bulgarians are ignoring the new fashion of denouncing cults of personality, the latest front in negotiations for a Japanese-Russian peace treaty is the Japanese desire to sending huge salmon-fishing fleets into Russian waters. There's some kind of argument over nurses' pay in Britain for a change. Paris is having a press war. 

Letters

Trevor Huddleston's Naught for Your Comfort explains the problem with apartheid, which is that Africans will give up on Christianity because South Africa is so mean. Father Huddleston wants us to know that he is no "negrophile" and "does not like Africans," because no-one can like an abstraction, but all Africans he knows are fine. But then he generalises aboiut White South Africans, so he is a hypocrite, and he just assumes that the Bantu Educational Act will be bad, and dismisses the notion that White South Africans who treat their help well are part of the solution. He doesn't think that economic sanctions will work, and, The Economist suggests, as liberal leaders like him are removed from the scene, Africans will have no choice but to work in secret. The Communist International, 1919--1943: Documents, Volume 1, 1919--1922 is pretty useful because the editor includes a discussion of every document. Other than that, it's a pretty worthy book. Lawrence Abbott's Quality and Competition is a study arguing that "quality"-based competition is more important to economic progress than price competition. Henry Cord Meyer's Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1915--1945 has an "awkward and American style," but is a pretty good study of the development of the idea of Mitteleuropa" in the interwar period. Edward Bernays is the editor of The Engineering of Consent,  is a collection of articles on public relations. Iris Brooke's Pleasures of the Past is a "potpourri" approach, but the author knows a lot about the old days, so it's fine. George Pendle's Argentina is a business-focused look at the "distant colossus," and Charles Larrowe sutdies Shape-Up and the Hiring Hall, explaining how the "shape up" system has led to New York's crime-ridden waterfront. 

American Survey

"The President's Vein" is a page and a bit on the current farm bill kerfuffle. At some point I might have to pay attention to it! Certainly my father must be rolling over in his grave over my neglect of the process that producers all those pork belly futures he made a career of! The Economist gives its view of the current American inflationary episode and related inventory stockpiling and monetary tightening. A recession in 1958 will only affect the GOP in Conress, and what have they ever done for him? "It is reported that

Wiki says that Gruenther was one of Eisenhower's alternatives
to Nixon in '56. Nothing about a potential Democratic nod.

some Democrats are thinking of General Gruenther for the presidential nomination." The Economist goes on to point out that this is crazy, but at least it's an excuse to talk about how if  Stevenson is too close to Kefauver for either to win, then there's Harriman, and, if not Harriman, then Symington. The American Association of University Professors has struck back vigorously at infringements of academic freedom by sanctioning five universities,  including Berkeley, for dismissing professors for invoking the Fifth Amendment or refusing loyalty oaths. In related news, the  Senate has found state-level anti-sedition laws to be unconstitutional, provoking Howard Smith of Virginia to push a nullification bill. "A Correspondent in San Francisco" writes at the bottom of American Notes describing something like the whole history of the city in a column and a half before finally getting to the point, which is that real estate development in San Francisco is hard because the neighbours object, and then goes on to make some other point not to be discerned since the note cuts off mid-sentence at the bottom of the page, thereby finally proving that even The Economist will cut you off if you go on too long. 

The World Overseas

"Khrushchev on the March" The Soviet Union's main failing these days is lack of housing and food, and although the next Five Year Plan will double home construction, this is "really only a drop in the ocean." Food is another matter. Khrushchev is going all in on maize and the Virgin Lands, and "will probably stand or fall" on its success. The new agricultural law is also fiddling with the collective farm system in a way that will probably better align incentives with production, but the real gains in fodder crops leading to more milk and meat, will have to be made in the Lands, and the magazine is predictably skeptical. 

"Blueprint for Apartheid, I" Dr. Tomlinson's report on "the socio-economic development of Bantu areas in South Africa" is more than a million words on the 260 "Bantu areas" which are currently underdeveloped. Lots of capital is needed, and the details are not sitting well, especially the fact that factories will have to be built in the areas, but "total separation" of the races is needed or the Blacks will end up running things and there will be "miscegenation." Except that total separation doesn't mean getting rid of Black workers in White areas! Only 70% of the Black population will be in the "Bantu areas" at the end of the century if the plan is carried out, but otherwise the figure would be closer to 25%. The Bantu areas will consist of 47% of the state, but only once the British have handed over Bechuanaland. The Spanish strikes might be a sign of things changing, Singapore's current constitution is a mess, leading to a political impasse. Byzantine political manoeuvres in the North Rhine-Westphalia state assembly require the closest scrutiny by everyone pretending to be a middlebrow, but not because neo-Nazis might be trying to get into the government, look, we've hashed that out already, give it a rest, says The Economist. Not its usual approach to alleged German revanchism, so I assume that there are tax cuts in the works. From India's point of view, Pakistan's inclusion in the Baghdad Pact and American arms aid is just going to lead to a war over Kashmir, and Nehru would like everyone to quit the provocations because he needs the money that would otherwise go to arms for his Five Year Plan. 

The Business World

The budget envisions a deficit of £341 million, up £200 million from 1955-6, but this is an improvement on an original projection of £531 million due to cutting spending through the Coal, Public Works Loan, Milk Marketing, and Sugar Boards, and is mainly due to money for the nationalised industries. Some of the money will be raised by the various new savings instruments, which is good, and there is fussing over pensions for the self-employed, the profits tax that Butler originally put up to cover the massive hole that his income tax cuts blew in the budget, and the increase in the cigarette excise tax. We've covered all this a bit, and the profits tax is the main focus of The Economist's concern over tax reform. This is an area of tax policy where I take The Economist with the largest grain of salt I can get on my pretzel, but it does all seem a bit dodgy. Notes discusses the new tax on cider.

Business Notes

Markets are up and speculators against sterling are on the run, so that's good news for Macmillan's budget. On the financial side it is interesting that Shell is showing such solid profits, and the P&O is doing well, too. Crackdowns on consumer credit ("hire-purchase" in British talk) are evidently the way we deal with inflation now, there is some discussion of railway investment, already covered by The Engineer, and metal prices are down. Steel production will be up 11% in 1956, so if Britons want more steel than that, they can import it themselves, says the steel industry. (18,850,000t ingot steel deliveries, meaning 13.25 million tons of finished steel products, up from 17 million tons last year, which was supplemented by 1.2 million tons of imported steel. Things will probably be better than last year overall because industry reacted to the steel shortage last year by stockpiling and can now run them down. 

"De Havilland's Rising Star" De Havilland's handsome profits this year after the losses of the year before due  have something to do with the MoS absorbing the loss on the Comet, but mainly reflects steady sales of Doves and Herons, Vampire trainers, which are a cheap jet fighter, the last on the market, and, with bomb racks and the instructor pilot position and equipment, a plane that can fill three roles for small air forces. Engines, propellers, and exports are all doing well. 

"The Bill for the Comet" To begin at the end, £10 to 11 million, on the Ministry of Supply's account. The question is whether De Havilland's excellent financial year indicates that this was an overpayment of the £6 million or so that was paid to De Havilland. Who can say, The Economist concludes, because there are those who get the benefit of the doubt around here (neo-Nazis, Geoff de Havilland) and others who don't!  Vauxhall is looking pretty good this year, the London County Council is thinking of raising the speed limit in built up areas from 30mph to 40, the TV audience may not continue to rise at its current high rate, concludes a study commissioned by the BBC, considerations of the Ministry of Transport's draft regulations on pilot hours continue, Chile is allowing its peso to float freely, cocoa prices are rallying. 

"New Power, But Not for Cars?" Alan Muntz & Co have acquired the rights for the the Pescara free piston turbine engine, which might be just the thing on trucks, in electrical generation, ship propulsion, and locomotives, but not, notwithstanding GM publicity and Renault developmental work, on automobiles. 

Flight, 20 April 1956

Leaders

"The Civil Scene" The wonderful lads of the USPS are tearing covers again, so I have no idea what is going on as I begin reading, so this might be a special Civil Aviation issue? The introductory Leader points out that, considering how expensive airliners are, the big aircraft companies are doing pretty well. 

"Flying for the Farmer" Special purpose crop dusters are better than the WWII surplus that isn't safe to fly any more, anyway, and it's nice that Auster and Percival are working on them. 

From All Quarters reports General Norstad's appointment and that Bulganin and Khrushchev are going to see an RAF air show at Marsham before they leave. Canadian Pacific has ordered three Britannias with an option for five more. Deliveries will begin next year. They will be used on the trans-polar route. The East German Airline, as the public relations people have recommended it be named, might be the first non-Soviet airline to operate the Tu-104. Sparrow missiles have been issued to 6th Fleet. Chuck Yeager gave a talk on high speed flying to the RAeS the other night.

"Starfighter: Lockheed's Mach 2 Fighter for the USAF" The article is mainly devoted to the tricky mechanical and aerodynamic design aspects of the wing and engine inlet, and  but it then goes on to talk about armament (a 20mm rotary cannon, first in US service) and points out that lack of proper radar and control, or a missile, means that it won't be good for high speed interception, and notes that the single engine is likely to lead to a high accident rate.

 

"The Mi-1" We get a detailed design study of this new Russian helicopter. 

By Karl Barnfather at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia
to Commons by Leoboudv using CommonsHelper., Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8929716

Here and There reports that the demonstration Seamew is back from Jugoslavia, that an Orpheus engine is going to the Milan trade fair, that Grand Central Rocket and Allegheny Ballistics Laboratory (a Hercules Powder subsidiary) will work on the Vanguard's third stage, Honeywell on its three-axis gyro, Vickers on its magnetic amplifier autopilot. The Italian Rocket Society wants a European Vanguard. Belgrad Radio reports that Jugoslavia will soon receive some American jet fighters under mutual defence aid. 

"Off the Beaten Tack: Multifarious Activities of Civil Aircaft the World Over" Airplanes do more than just drop bombs on people! For example, they spray crops, talk to elephants (sd I choose to interpret the picture of a BOAC York somewhere in India), and fly in to King Island, which is, I bet, the first time King Island's been mentioned here. 

"The British Corporations" BOAC and BEA get facing page articles. BOAC ran a profit, lost its chairman, and has to do something about the DC8, but, say the British papers, what about the Britannia? It's slow, that's what. BEA doesn't run a profit, also lost its chairman (to Bristol Aircraft), but has a nice new plane, the Viscount, and is buying some Vanguards, which, to take away some things very important people have said very heatedly in private, is probably too big to be that slow, just like the Britannia. I don't know if you were at the meeting where your lads decided to buy Britannias, but I'm sure you heard it to over the minority shareholders yelling "We told you so about the Comet!" Anyway, BEA is "not likely" to go ahead with plans to re-engine the Ambassador with Darts or to buy a DC3 replacement, because both ideas are dumb. 

"British Independent Operators" So what do unscheduled airlines secretly run by influential Tory backbenchers do? Pick up trooping contracts, mostly, but there are also small islands, tourist junkets, and cargo, providing you're not trying to compete head to head with professionals on the Atlantic run. 

Christopher Lee was the grandson of a Carandini count. 

"World Airline Directory" Oh boy there's lots of airlines and they all subscribe! Pages and pages of them, complete with head shots of very important businessmen. (I'd say "heroic," but you would have to reread to get the joke, and I'm not that mean!) And that's it, because there are a lot of subscribers. 

The Economist, 28 April 1956

Leaders

The Khrushchev/Bulganin visit was nothing much and The Economist is proud of rude Britain was to its guests. Because they were rude, first! Macmillan's plan for the budget is to find £100 million to cut from public expenditures, which mainly means defence because there is no other money to cut, really. Aside from "waste," there is "a strong case" for abandoning the development of British naval aircraft in favour of buying American types, for smaller forces in the field, and for a replacement of general conscription with selective service. Edinburgh airport is getting a new terminal 

Iraqis found Salter intolerable, as did Rab Butler
By NortyNort - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons
wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14272218

"Iraq on Show" The Ramadi barrage has successfully thwarted a spring flood and two bridges over hte middle Euphrates have opened, showing the benefits Iraq is gaining from its oil revenue, and on the same note, the Baghdad Pact is meeting in Teheran to welcome new member and core Middle Eastern country, the United States. Iraq is great because it hires so many British expatriates to run its affairs, and has a brilliantly great development plan by Lord Salter that is wonderful, say sources close to Lord Salter. In summary, Iraq is a great country on its way to a brilliant future, and all those nationalists and Baghdad cafe critics can be ignored.

   "The Pattern of a Family Budget" Even though the author, a correspondent, is very wealthy, his family has been living on capital and hasn't saved any money except for the large amount of money that he has saved that he can't count for obvious reasons. The problem, of course, has been the times. Starting with the fact that he couldn't have a car in the war years, extending to spending £900 on education for his children, and the unreasonably heavy burden that comes with five modest European summer vacations and one American in recent years. Tables of figures are produced to show that he is practically in the poor house and won't be able to leave any money for the three children of the next generation except for the £900/year that will start accumulating soon, given that their youngest child is 23. 

Notes of the Week

"Desperation in Algeria" Moderates Ferhat Abbas and Ahmed Francis have fled Algiers for Cairo and announced that they are joining the FLN because French police and settlers are running amok and no-one seems able to stop them. Meanwhile in Paris, French politics are in crisis for reasons that need to be explained by a double page, four colour diagram, which unfortunately The Economist can't print, and so satisfies itself with a long list of people, a description of what their actions seem to mean, and a suggestion about what they might do in the future. On the other hand, in Britain there has been an absolutely brilliant budget debate, with Tory backbenchers pushing for more tax cuts -excuse me, I misread. "Tax reform" that cuts taxes. Several Notes describe how everyone was very rude to each other during the Khrushchev/Bulganin visit and how various people (Hugh Gaitskell) and institutions (Pravda) were disappointed. "Red Arabs" are wrong about Russia, and there are gratifying signs that some non-Red Arabs see that. 

The National Joint Advisory Council on restrictive labour practices recommends no union-busting legislation, which is boring and disappointing but probably the right approach. Ghana probably can't be independent because probably there would be an inter-regional civil war. Greece can't be independent because probably there would be a partisan civil war. Well, I mean, it is independent, except in the sense that it isn't allowed to have certain opinions about Cyprus. The Economist is worried that the Burmese general election will spark  unrest. We are suddenly talking about arms control and disarmament in Western Europe. Germans disagree about whether their budget surplus should be spent on tax cuts or social services. The idea that tax cuts might lead to inflation nis ridiculed. Walter Reuther is great because during his trip to India he scolded the Indians sometimes, but also he was sympathetic other times, which will win them over. 

Calls for middle class radicalism are just the same old thing; Sweden is cracking down on credit to tame  inflation; New Zealand's crackdown on credit to tame inflation was very controversial when it was imposed, but now a report by a government commission says that it was great. Buckingham Palace isn't actually spending that much money. The Economist of 1856 looks at "Russia as Adversary," and concludes that the Crimean War was justified because it showed that Russia was a puffed-up bully. Not that it wasn't a threat to everything The Economist holds dear, mind you, but the point is that everyone needs to shut up about the war being a terrible idea. 

Letters

"Simplus" writes at great length to point out that the idea of auditing major industries in the way that the nationalised industries are is a "muddle headed proposal." Wallis Taylor of the University of Exeter points out that the "middle class tax reform proposals" championed by The Economist apply mainly to people with incomes of £1000--£3000, who are in reality in the 95th percentile of British incomes. J. L. Williams, the General Secretary of the Society of Civil Servants, asks why civil servants should be forced to move out of London when private business is rushing to put ever more workers into London. John Alexander-Sinclair want to revalue the penny to make everyone's lives more convenient, and after living in London for two years, I actually find his proposals plausible and well worth four paragraphs of The Economist's time. I am part of the problem, am I not? 

American Survey

The Leader is an eye-glazer on "Wherefore American foreign Policy?" occasioned by the fact that Dulles is still the main weak point the Democrats can attack the President on with impunity. Down at the end we wander into the suggestion that probably a war in the Middle East is inevitable because no-one wants to rein in the Israelis before they attack, even if the U.S. and Russia will probably combine to nullify the results. This would seem to suggest that war won't happen, but that's assuming that everyone involved is a rational actor. There are two arguments about atoms going on right now. The first is over giant hydrogen bombs, which some people don't like, and testing them, which even more people don't like. The other is the President's "atoms for peace" proposal. It is argued that the two are actually the same issue, because they have "atoms" in the name.  This allows The Economist to cram all developments on the atom front into one five paragraph Leader, making it even more important news than word that someone making more money than 99.9% of Britons can't save as much money as he would like. Democrats are pessimistic about '56, it says here. The District of Columbia should be a state, it says here, even though Congress isn't about to let that happen. However, there are going to be Democratic and Republican primaries in D.C. in May, and locals are thrilled that they get to vote for something for a change. Bus desegregation is coming to the South after a Supreme Court decisin, and most specifically to Montgomery, Alabama.

"Looping the Loop" The ongoing giant urban renewal project in Chicago, involving turning four access routes into the downtown into expressways and demolishing assorted obsolete factories and ultimately displacing 14,000 people (only 4000 are still to be moved) is reviewed. 

The World Overseas Poland is responding to word that it doesn't have to be Stalinist any more by not being Stalinist any more in hopes of getting ahead of public opinion, which is not happy with the Communists. Social Democrats are in trouble in Denmark after the general strike, and Communists are gaining influence. From Russia, revisionism has caught up with the Red Army purges of 1936--8, and the anguished question of how the officers of the Red Army came to inform against each other is raised anew. What did the Tukhachevsky Group really want? Were they heroes, or villains? West Africa is likely due for some turmoil with the fall in cocoa prices. "Blueprint for Apartheid" gets a second installment. It recommends heavy subsidies for Christian missions, and that large amounts of money be loaned South Africa for development of the Black areas by assorted international deep pockets. At this point, both report and story about the report are brought up short by Professor Bischoff's loud throat clearing as he proceeds to explain that this is all Cloud Cuckoo Land and that apartheid is therefore completely impractical, and the sooner you get used to the idea of racial integration, the sooner you'll be over it. As we haven't had nearly enough about the byzantine manoeuvres in Rhineland-Westphalia, it is next off to Wurzburg before finally reviewing the aforementioned commission report showing that New Zealand's experiment in using crushing interest rates to crush inflation and the Labour Party was perfectly justified "Orthodox Finance," and that what the country needs is even more of it since money is still far too easy. 

Spring Books

"Business Hero" An introductory essay laments that there aren't nearly enough heroic businessmen in British literature. Reviews then open with the English translation of Maurois' life of Victor Hugo, and later MacColl on Roger Casement.  I would thrown in Cyril Hughes Harmann on Georgiane Bellamy, except she isn't really a first rank historical figure (famous actress, though!) and the value of the biography lies in the fact that she is an interesting one. In the same vein as Hartmann on Bellamy we have the even more notable Lawrence Stone on Sir Horatio Pallavicino, a secret agent of Elizabeth I, financier, and occasional corsair. Maybe this is one of our heroic businessmen? Lawrence Stone certainly isn't! Buried deep in the section are Anstruther on Dr. Livingstone, and, of course, Stanley, jointly reviewed with the second volume of Wallis' documentary history of the Zambesi Expedition. Even deeper is the first volume of a life of Robert Walpole by J. H. Plumb  Perhaps Oliver Simon's Printer and Playground qualifies, but it is as autobiography and those always have heroes. 

Hands up everyone who heard about the Mycenaean dagger carved into a standing
stone at Stonehenge in a science fiction novel.
https://stonehenge.archaeoptics.co.uk/scans.html 

The first volume of Churchill's History of the English-speaking Peoples is out, and the best that can be said for it by the reviewer is that it is by a hero, although not of business. J. Middleton Murry has a collection out, Ian Dunlap has a history of Versailles, Barbara McCarthy an edition of Elizabeth Barrett's letters, to one Mr. Boyd in this case, which hardly seem worth a book, which I would think, review admittedly not parsed, of a collection of the Duchess of Manchester's letters edited by A. L. Kennedy. Christina Keach has a book on Burns, and C. Auerbach on Genetics and the Atomic Age, regrettably short of rampaging mutants. K. B. Richardson goes to see with the whaling fleet, Herbert Block a collection of his editorial cartoons, an McClintock and Fitter a Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. J. W. F. Hill has a local study of Lincoln in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, the latest frontier of academic history in this period, is  my understanding. Vitor McClure writes on cuisine, Mario Praz on "the eclipse of the hero in Victorian literature," and Monica Sutherland on the affair between Louis XIV and Marie Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazzini. Charles Neider has Fanny Stevenson's Samoan diaries, with some additional material, misleadingly titled and bylined as Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson's Samoan Adventure. J. C. Atkinson's Stonehenge is a good survey that draws the "obvious" conclusion that primitive Britons must have been inspired to rebuild it in its extant final stage by civilised technicians and expatriates from Mycenae. William L. Shirer The Challenge of Scandinavia looks at how those darn Scandinavians manage to be socialist all the time. The letters of one Henry Clifford and Arthur Fremantle's diary account of the Civil War are reviewed together. Aylmer Vallance's Summer King is noticed again for some reason, and Gaston Rebuffat has a book about mountaineering.

The Business World

"Cold Water on Coal" The Coal Board likes to say that it will be able to mine 240 million tons of coal by 1965, so that Britain's energy future is secure. So last Fall it finally surveyed pit managers about what they expect over the next six years, and conclude by putting the 240m ton target to 1970; that is, for deep cut coal, since it will make the 1965 target. but with 10 million tons of upcast taken by surface mining. But for this it needs £860 million in investment (now £1000 million with inflation) through 1965, and 250 million tons is not that much more than the 214m tons of 1953 and 1954, or the 208m tons of 1955. It seems increasingly implausible that the 1965 or revised 1970 target will be met, but what alternative is there?
  

"Disinflation by Funding" "Now that Britain's effort to stop inflation is so largely entrusted to monetary policy . . ." it is good to hear about some financial wizardry that will help, and which we will now explain in detail.

"Cheaper Titanium" ICI's new reduction method for producing titanium is revisited, and the detailed workings of the operation are laid out in detail. 

Business Notes

The Dartford Crossing is two tunnels and a bridge.
Richard Bird, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons
.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6303328nnels and a bridge.

After some financial news, "BOAC and Mr. Watkinson" explores the disintegration of the board of the BOAC after Miles Thomas left more the lotus lands of Monsanto after steering the corporation into the bright and sunny uplands of Britannias and DC7s. Then the minister, Harold Wilkinson, appointed G. D. Erlanger to replace him, with a civil servant to help him, and the board blew up. ICI's financials are good, car exports are slumping, there is some debate over the size of sterling foreign currency and gold reserves, there is not enough tax reform going on, we are worried about the balance of exchange again, British international trade fairs need to be revamped, ,and we get a detailed look at the new wheat agreement. Igor Kurchatov's talk on the prospects of fusion power at Harwell was promising. The new Thames tunnel between Essex and Kent is underway. The world tanker fleet is fully employed, whichis good news for shipbuilders. Edible oil prices are up due to a late winter frost hitting the Italian olive crop. 

Flight, 27 April 1956

Leaders 

"The Tired Pilot" Flight doesn't think that the current legislation is well-written, and BALPA agrees. 

Who exactly is responsible for the "British brains couldn't (didn't) come
up with the swept wing," anyway?

"Under New Management" Flight can't write the Leader needed here, so I will. "Cancelling the V.2000 so that Airworks could get more trooping contracts led to BOAC giving up on the VC7, which, since it can't possibly be the Pearsons' fault, pretty much has to be down to Miles Thomas, don't let the door hit you on the way out! Now send in the scapegoats so that they can get on with ordering some 707s!"

From All Quarters reports that everyone is going to pretend that the Queen's Flight ordering Herons is a scandal because the Household is spending too much money, and not that Geoff de Havilland can get away with anything. The latest Ghost isn't obsolescent because it has a very modern, very cool designation ("Ghost DGt.4." It has a lower-case letter and a period!) The last Firefly has been delivered, the MoS has ordered six Folland Gnats to keep the enthusiasts quiet, English Electric is doing its best to keep noise down at its Salmesbury and Warton airfields, where it is flight testing Canberras.

Here and There reports that the C-133 is test flying, that in response to a Parliamentary question, the strength of personnel at the Hebrides Ground Weapons Establishment on South Ulst is 2000, but only 600 are permanently stationed there and not rotating through. Also, helicopters do various picturesque things, leading into the article on the next page about various impractically small helicopters built by various indefatigable inventors. At least more worthy than the next article, about sport guiding, or the one after that, a unit visit to the Communications Flight Kaduna, which is in northern Nigeria. Kaduna is at 2,116ft altitude and is said to have an "almost temperate" climate. This was so much fun that later in the issue we get a squadron history of No. 16 Squadron. 

"Long Range Navaids: Part I: The Background" It used to be that you asked ground stations where you were by radio, but in the war this was automated and now we have Decca and LORAN, which are too complicated to explain in a page, and would you want an explanation if it could be? Find out next week!

Aircraft Intelligence reports that A3Ds and A4Ds are being delivered, that a "buddy" system will allow F-100s to refuel from each other, that Coastal Command has new markings, that the CL-28 is in production, that the French Minister of Aviation has taken time out from Algeria and political crises to order a whole bunch of planes.

"Aircraft Accident Investigation: Mr. E. L Ripley's R.Ae.S. Lecture Summarised" Three pages and a whole bunch of pictures about how sites are visited, fragments collected and carefully packed, then examined in laboratories while their find sites are plotted to recreate trajectories. 

"High Speed Experimental Flying: Colonel C. E. Yeager Relates his Experience to the R.Ae.S.: Rocket-propelled Research Aircraft from the Pilot's Angle"  Yes, Chuck Yeager is still dining out on flying the X-1. Quick, someone ask NACA and the Air Force what happened to the X-2 through (so far) X-15?

"Logistic Transport: Further Particulars of the Giant C-133" MATS Flyer recently had a pictorial article about the new Douglas C-133, a giant purpose-built turboprop transport, and it isn't plagiarism if Flight credits it in the reprint. 

"Lycoming T53: America's First Free-Turbine Aero Engine to go into Production" Not many details. Hopefully this works out better for Lycoming than the Proteus has for Bristol. 

Correspondence

P. M. H. Lewis also has opinions about airplane nicknames. The DH9 article leads A. H. Curtis and F. L. Gray to recall the old days, before the war. D. T. Bevan points out that the Britannia took too long and the Government deep-sixed the V.2000, and that's why British airliners are in trouble. L. Heather and D. Rodger-Brown finish up with more about the old days before the war. 

The Industry reports that Dowty now has a Nucleonics division, that Dunlop has a nice line of elecltric switches for control columns, and that Elliot Brothers is going to throw a party for its workers at Westminster. 

Civil Aviation 

There can be a last mover advantage. Too bad for Convair shareholders that it
went to the Caravelle. 

The Minister was roasted in the Commons over Miles Thomas, the R.Ae.S.'s two week air transport course at Oxford was a rousing success, Western is buying some Electras, the IATA is ten years out from the war, just like everyone else, because that is how time works, no-hopers are promoting the Eland in the United States and yet another iteration of the Convairliner, this time a jetliner, which will be a success this time for sure. 

  

 

Naturally as a magazine by businessmen, for businessmen, about business, the major article this month is a look at Eisenhower's decision to run for another term. 

Business Roundup

The recession that isn't going to happen won't be too bad. Construction is going on like crazy.

The Business Globe

In Ursula K. LeGuin's early plantary romance,
Planet of Exile, there is a far future Earth 
human named "Jonkendy," because John
F. Kennedy is a culture hero on a far-off world
hundreds, if not thousands of years in the 
future. Also, it was JFK who finally 
implemented major high bracket income 
tax cuts. Coincidence or Zeitgeist?

Everyone agrees that the real problem with capitalism is easy booms and inflation that, in turn, breed depressions, so if we're going to beat Communism we have to have tight money and unemployment. It's just common sense. And, of course, we can only achieve this with high interest rates, since, well, let's not even talk about taxes. Okay, we can talk about tax cuts or tax reform. That's okay.In sum, Harold Macmillan is the hero of the hour, but what about those continental Europeans with their shameful economic growth and full employment? The Aswan Dam is a pretty expensive project, and the finances work out to a $34 million interest charge for Egypt for at least the next sixteen years when the country's budget, which is in deficit, is only $670 million. So there will be either inflation or austerity, probably inflation, and a coup or something. Uncle Henry has never met a politician he wouldn't try to bamboozle, and now he's down in India working on a contract to build a steel plant for Tata. Euratom is a terrible idea because it might lead to "super-socialism," and the OECC prefers just "coordinating." Japan can't export shirts and blouses to the U.S. because the domestic textiles industry gets upset, so it is doing cameras and making buckets of bucks.

Leaders

Farmers need to remember that Ike grew up on a farm and vote for
him, never mind that he's screwuip up farm prices. 

"The American Game" Russia is talking about linking trade and foreign aid to export huge amounts ot agricultural equipment and the like to the underdeveloped world. Secretary Dulles says that is "the American game," and that we shouldn't get left behind. Counterpoint: Foreign parts are full of foreigners. Maybe if they ship us stuff like oil and iron ore and are super-duper friendly to free enterprise, we'll see a way. In shorter bits, it turns out that Edmund Mansure got the boot as head of the General Services Administration because he wouldn't hire enough Republicans. Smirnoff Vodka is talking off because Communist drinks are so dangerous! The Russian plan to heat Siberia by damming the Bering Strait to stop cold water from getting in or warm water getting out, I'm not sure which because I'm having trouble taking this seriously (or alternatively just build giant atomic heating plants up there), would be good for Alaska and Canada too; but Greenland might melt and flood us all. Lazy Bolivian miners won't mine now that the mines are socialist. It's terrible that Americans are bad at math, says the Carnegie Institute. T. Coleman Andrews, until recently the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, thinks that something needs to be done about the income tax, because it is too complicated. How about getting rid of it? Fortune suggests.

They really are a slice of old America. 

Sinclair Oil gets a major profile, as does a liquor company, Revlon, and the Post Office, plus construction magnate Henry Crown; Gilbert Burck and Sanford S. Porter are back to report on what's wrong with Middle America this time, pointing out that mortgage debt keeps rising and that it will all end in tears. That seems a bit serious, so then there's a funny bit about how the program chairman at your local annual Convention of Widget Makers is "America's arch villain." Unfortunately, Henry is still bored and he really liked the pictures in that feature we ran on the New England flood last summer, so we sent a photographer out to take some gorgeoius snaps of old abandoned mills. 

"The Worst Shortage in Business" explains at length that there just aren't enough scientists, lets train more. 

"'Automation:' News Behind the Noise" Delmar S. Harder of Ford popularised the new word, 'automation,' in 1947. Now everyone says they're automating even though at a chemical plant that might mean feedback-controlled gas flows, while at a food procession plant it means electronic weighing machines, and at another, electronic computers to do the math. Polling shows widespread fear that 'automation' will lead to mass unemployment. Meanwhile, Detroit already figures it has as much "mchanisation" as can be done, and all those schemes to "automate" electronics factories have run hard up against the fact that a bit too much solder means too much resistance for the device to work at all, so everything has to be tested and fixed by tanks of women with hand tools at the bench. The output of those chemical plants has to be hand-checked in laboratories and the feedback adjusted, and computers often offer just too much computing for a job that an accounting machine can do better. On the other hand, computers might assemble data to  help managers manage, or help in research by working through models (once the labour of designig the model is done); but "machines without men" is a fantasy.