Lawnmower Boy

Thanks to Lord Liaden for really helping me bring this one into focus. These exercises are always so useful to me that I am going to push my luck with the patience of the board a little further and ask: What do you think Auralia (the sword that slew Takofanes at the end of the Turakian Age) has been doing for the last 70,000 years? (Bonus points for including Empyreans and the Drindrish, from Valdorian Age, in the scenario.)

It's just part of the vibe I'm going for. You know, these kids today with their baggy pants and their hippity-hop music.

When it gets Fast and Furious time, I don't want to distract the narrative with no Emerald City, but the point is good and clear, and human history and Babylon are big enough for magic vistas that are true to the moment when the pedal hits the metal. Hmm. Eiffel tower, and WTC, of course, mile-high skyscrapers go with multiple level parkways. What else works? The Berlin Wall? What would the Berlin Wall divide in Babylon?

I did standard heroic, because that's what the old book said, and I was all starry-eyed and naive. I would be very tempted to let the PCs have more points next time, just to see more varied characters.

10. Foxbat. Iconic, but hard to use. 9. Bulldozer. Easy to use, but designed to fold like a wet dollar bill in a G-string. (And at times like that, Bulldozer regrets the passing of the 25 cent bill. Mainly because he privately worries that the strippers don't turn him on the same way as thinking about his last fight with Brawler.) 8. Black Paladin. This is a superhero RPG. Has there ever been a campaign where someone didn't bring, or was tempted to bring, their favourte D&D character? 7. Teleios. Creepy creepy creepy creepy. But inevitable. 6. Istvhan V'han. A classic pulp villain of the best kind. 5. The Edomite. Oh, sure, he's disturbing. His fate in the online game reminds me of the time that TORG did an adenture about the "High Lord of Earth," the conceit being that the Earth dimension might be getting a High Lord of its own. At the time, the idea was that players could send in the results of their game to create "probabilistic outcomes," and influence the direction of the setting. Apparently, everyone wrote in to say that the would-be High Lord of Earth was p0wned like a little girl when they played it. I think that reflects the fact that he touched a nerve. Well, so does the Luther Black of Demons: Servants of Darkness (and Scott's Necrull). In a comic, where the good guys win by narrative fiat, he'd be a favourite. 4. Deathstroke the Terminator. Mechassassin. His ray gun has an "extra crispy" setting! 3. Utility. He's better than the supers, with their accomplishments and stuff, ,because he's smarter. I can totally relate. I'd be Utility, if I ever got out of this attic. Now let me pause this list a moment while I lick Cheeto dust off my fingers. 2. Takofanes. Because he's awesome, that's why. So shut up! I'm not listening, I'm not listening....Nope, not defensive about this choice at all. 1. Doctor Destroyer. Oh, sure, he started out generic, but Steve Long put a master's touch on him. The most powerful, terrible villain in the CU (leaving Tyrannon the tree dude out of it) is ..a neurotic, narcissistic horse's rear end. Prone to depression, paranoiac reactions, and every other obnoxiousness that of which everyone who has lived long enough to meet a narcissist has regretful memories, he's a note perfect creation. Why hasn't the Doctor changed the world with his technology? Why doesn't he rule it with his genius? Just as well ask yourself why that annoying talk-about-himself/herself person at work never gets anything done, when it would make his/her life so much easier to just shut up for a moment and do it. Ultimately, he's just trolling us (but especially Thundrax, at least now that Vanguard's dead) for reasons that he dares not explain even to himself. (Therapy spoiler: suicidal ideation.)

I already have a connection with Takofanes: Charlotte's late Dad serves him as a lich. But the more that I think about it, the more I see the value of this suggestion. Local guide thing, too. Of course, if you want a streetwise popular culture figure that modern 15-year olds will recognise, you have to figure out how to write Tupac, not the Artful Dodger, but I'll give it a whirl. Sneaking around the Library is also totally on. I don't know about Babylon's intelligent cars, though. Cars are people already!

Condolences, Ternaugh.

Giant brains of Herodom Assemble! For my own amusement, I am about to start in on a fourth Champions Universe serialised "Oh my God, what kind of amateur would call that a novel?" So, I'm brainstorming. i) The Setting: Tatammy High, a highschool with a secret superhero programme in an underground annex. It's in one of those pre-WWI "tram suburbs" that I assume they have in West Philadelphia. (I made a very dumb choice of setting, as I don't know West Philadelphia from a hole in the ground. Hints from people who do would be awesome.) Three members of the faculty are either retired Silver Age superheroes or similar, and teach about 30 kids. ii) The Protagonists: the incoming 9th grade: Kung fu princess/orphan Charlotte Wong, speedster/cyberpath/refugee from a dark, postapocalyptic future, Rose; magic girl/feisty Latina/nerdy principal's daughter, Dora Guzman, and totally, like immature boys Bruce (latest grandson of the Hobgoblin, progenitor of a long dynasty of local Batman-imitator family), Brian (dark, moody recipient of half-understood ancient Elvish wild magic), and Twelve (escaped superclone project of Teleios. Thinks that individualism is a sickness of the modern American condition. "I'm a number, not a name!") iii) The major adventure milieu is going to be Babylon, City of Art and Man. The quest is going to be a foray into the Library of Babylon in search of information about the lost sword Auralia, Light of Dawn, Bane of Times A-Gone. iv) So the basic concept is junior high school students going downtown to the library to research, hang out, flirt, gossip, only turned up to 11. I have some idea of what I want to include street racing in the City of Man; creepy graduate student carrels deep in crumbling wings; ancient eugenic experiments coming to horrifying fruition; the gathering menace of Powerful Forces; dark magic of worm yellow and shining darkness. That kind of stuff. The question I have, after this wall of words, what kind of things would you like to see in the City of Man, or its library in particular?

Dear Customer: Do you have chronic understaffing at your work place? Are you short of help and unable to get the most basic things done while on the clock? Have you never noticed these things elsewhere. If so, I certainly appreciate where you're coming from. (Mars.) If you have noticed these things, I have some questions for you: i) If there are lineups at every checkstand a mile deep, why do you think that standing in front of the "closed" sign at Customer Service is going to improve things? Do you think that there's someone hiding behind there who will jump out and congratulate you for figuring out the secret way around the lineups? (Although you might just want any one of a million things that our inexperienced cashiers can't do, and I am trying to be understanding here. If I am not as patient as I might be, just imagine that I have been called away from putting the milk and meat orders away in the coolers to do this for you. Because I have.) ii) I presume that you will have noticed that there are no bakeries/flower shops open at this time of the night. Your local supermarket has flowers and cakes! So far, so good. But, and this might be a bit of a logical leap here, if your local flower shop is closed because it can't provide proper service at this hour, do you think it likely that your supermarket will have someone available who can "wrap this up very nicely, like you would present to a performer after she comes off stage?" It's not that I don't appreciate your needs, and am not willing to at least try. It's that I have three new merchandising ends to build tonight, and the only question is how late I have to stay to get it done. iii) Presuming that you haven't thought the above through, have you considered revisiting your assumptions before you wade through the lineups to get to a cashier to demand your special wrap job? Because it would not be completely unreasonable to have this hypothetical special-flower-wrapping person trained as a cashier, so that they could be on the tills, as opposed to being free to do an ultra deluxe flower wrap for you. iv) I appreciate your coming to tell me that your cashier is slow and incompetent. Have you considered the possibility that we would not have hired a 55 year old with who can barely speak English with crazy-person-ticks if we could have found someone better? There are many excellent sources of information about public policy issues that might help you understand why we couldn't find someone better, and those same sources will help you direct your energies and attention in productive ways, such as writing your MP. I suggest that hectoring the night manager is not one of those productive ways. v) Speaking of fighting your way through the lineups to bring your very important concern to someone's attention, but if that said person has to be paged out of the depths of the store, and emerges sweaty and holding a box cutter, perhaps there exists some benefit-maximisation-algorithm that you can run that would suggest that this is not the best way of proceeding with complaints about out of stocks. I mean, certainly if the item is not on the shelf, go for it. If the item you found is a 12 pack of toilet paper, and is not completely to your satisfaction because there's a little tear on the bottom of the packaging? Now, we are wandering into the territory of the somewhat unreasonable. vi) I understand that the bakery department loses almost 20 cents an item when gourmet donuts are confused with regular donuts, and I would be the first to concede that putting self-serve boxes out for customers to use is going to result in those mistakes as well as general wastage. Still, consider the possibility that customers will respond to this not by shrugging their shoulders and deciding that they really didn't want to box up some donuts (which, again, I'm not seeing as a business optimisation strategy, but never mind) but, instead, calling for customer service. This will result in their getting boxes (probably more expensive ones) and a lot of time being wasted. Are we really going to save that much money? vii) It would certainly be deplorable if people were to use rainchecks stashed at the tills for illegitimate purposes. I can certainly see how storing them at customer service might slightly reduce such abuse and lead to savings at the margin. But it is worth considering the possibility that either the night manager will have to waste a lot of time handing them out, or that people will go without, and be disgruntled, instead, and never shop at the store again. Have we really thought the business case through satisfactorily? viii) Dear The Street: I understand that you set profit expectations in service to the shareholder. I understand that this is how capitalism works, etc, etc. But, and here you're going to have to follow along with me on a huge logical leap, what if there is a correlation between hours cuts and low sanitation score results? Oh, I know, it's far more likely that it's just laziness that leads to dirt and cross-contamination, and that you can just keep on cutting labour targets forever, knowing that if you tell the frontline staff that cleanliness is a priority, that it will be done. (Unless they're lazy.) But what if there is a correlation? I know, I know, I'm repeating myself. It's to get your attention, because this crazy hypothetical actually has some consequences that might be important to you. You see, if this crazy theory is true, cutting hours to meet financial targets might lead to your food being poisonous. Just a thought. ix) Somewhere, someone in the ranks of middle management is typing an email right now that says that "Your request for additional decorating/meat-wrapping/food-service/relief-management" help could not be filled. We understand. Sometimes, there is no-one to do the work, either at the store or in the chain, and the consequences will be felt through the chain. Classically, one solution to this problem, to talk like an economist, is "raising the bid for the item to its clearing price." That is, if you offer to buy something, and no-one offers to sell it, you increase your offering bid. Now, imagine that "labour" is a "thing," and that its "price" is "wages." What we are seeing here is that the store is offering to "buy" "labour" with an "offer." That is, with a "wage." And no-one is offering a supply of "labour" at that "wage." What I am saying here is that classical economics offers a solution to this problem.

One of the hallmarks of personality disorder is inappropriate vocalisations. Not talking to yourself --mostly. Instead, mild cases will manifest as frequent and public, inappropriate singing. Going beyond that, there will be random comments, or more disconcertingly, random noises. Then you have shade into more fantastic scenarios, such as the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where it almost seems like the condition turns into a contagious disease. So it is not exactly far-fetched that constant exposure to sonic technology would lead to brain damage, and the symptoms almost write their own scenarios. It's boogie night in Campaign City!

I know you are, but what am I?

Waffle taco! Which led me to wonder. Has anyone done a deep-fried peanut butter and banana waffle sandwich? Intensive research (minutes on the Google!) suggested not; but I did turn this up. The fried chicken waffle sandwich (with spicy mayo!) There's a sense in which all of these things are just competing for also-ran status. We already have deep-fried butter, after all. But I do salute the people who keep on trying. Somewhere, some day, someone is going to invent the breakfast food that just gets up off the plate and straight kills you. Or maybe they have, and there's no witnesses, and there's a deep-fried waffle butter deep-fried fried patty sandwich behind your house right now, checking the windows? (An equally exhaustive Google search turned up no sign of the old Joy of Cooking recipe for a bacon waffle where the bacon strips are cooked in the waffle, so that the batter absorbs all the precious bacon-juice. Which killjoys claim is "fat," apparently. What to they know?)

Postblogging Technology, March 1944, I: Pulling In the Horns My Dearest Reggie: It has been so good for all of us to hear from you. Your gifts were much appreciated. I cannot imagine where you obtained the nursery suite but it is perfect! (No, strike that, I am sure you were informed through Wong Lee.) I cannot believe your choice of a theme in the decoration, however. Wait until "Miss V. C." sees it! I do not speak lightly, either. I was in Chicago, last week, and had occasion to visit with the "N.C.s" and was subjected to a most unpleasant dressing down, made all the more difficult by the fact that I was of necessity seeing some unsavory types. You will have heard by now that I am proposing to go to war in the guise of the civilian master of an Australian naval auxiliary, with Sparrow in the guise of a landing craft tender. (Perhaps I repeat myself? I should really check, but am too lazy.) What has this to do with Chicago? Well, Grandfather would never adventure so without providing for contingencies, and, following his old precedent, I took the precaution of placing my men within the American Fleet. Under the (racial) circumstances, I chose not to be a slave to tradition, although there was an irresistable opportunity to place a wily old dacoit in the kitchen staff of the New Jersey battleship. Instead, I bought retainers from those "men of respect" with whom I have had to dally in the course of certain relations with our friend. An acquaintance of a friend --but, again, you surely know the story. I have always rather liked some aspects of this. It makes me feel quite the benevolent squire when I relieve the fears of men who have fallen into gangsters' hands. A cynic would add that it wins an extra measure of loyalty. (Unless they have seen those recent Hollywood productions where the suave, rich man is more to be feared than the gangsters who bring you to him.) Unfortunately, the human material is imperfect. At least they are not truculent tinderboxes, like the run-of-the-mill hoodlum, but they are naive, and I should like to groom them more before placing much reliance on them. Hopefully, I shall not have to, and will ultimately activate the connection for less dangerous matters, as it is hardly clear which way they will jump when they are asked to do things that appear . . . unpatriotic. I cannot frankly tell them that, as Grandfather said, he gave up masterminding the fall of Western Civilization in the moment he saw the casualty returns for the first day of the Somme, on the grounds that, in the face of the fine job that Western Civilisation was doing of bringing itself down, the family's proper role lay in cushioning the fall for its members. As to your charge, I sat Mr. Murphy down and we have gone over the finances of the proposed sub-division. I honestly had not considered building on the roadside land. It is rather farther from town than the land I planned on giving over, and Michael has high hopes of restoring its former fertility if we can only control manure runoff in the creek. Still, your wishes are my command, and I was rather impressed with Mr. Murphy's bank statement. In retrospect, I should not have been, considering how much overtime he (and his wife, before her confinement) have worked in the last two years. Knowing what he can afford gives me -or us-- something of a guideline for the size of the lots, as well. Now I wonder whether I was too hasty in planning to dispose of the lower land as residential properties. Americans do not like to rent out their houses, and for reasons I will explain below, I am becoming increasingly more anxious about maintaining our rental revenues. Perhaps there is a future in commercial real estate development just outside the city, or in more-easily managed situations, as in a case that I am contemplating now in Vancouver. As for the Murphys, I am confident that they will be very nice houses. You can tell that to the person who inspired the request. (Oh, yes, I know the influence at work!) This brings me to the final matter about which you were most anxious, Reggie. Your son's trip to Sacramento went well, and there was no scandal. Rather to the contrary, the Lincoln by all accounts ran smoothly and the trip was almost boring. In fact, your son is frustrated, since Lieutenant A.'s ancient roadster broke down, leading to what was by all accounts quite an adventure. Yet, for some reason, the girls appear more taken with Lieutenant A., who comes across the scrappy and resourceful young man, while your son is written off as a spoiled,rich boy, and any protest to the contrary that he rebuilt the car with his own hands is deemed "conceited." I try to nod wisely and offer gruff, manly advice about the wisdom of saying less and doing more, but the boy misses his father. On a more serious matter, a most unexpected turn of events. A bundle of Doctor McLoughlin's papers were indeed in the archives at Sacramento, in papers from the dissolved Indian Affairs agency of Yerba Buena. The largest piece is a bundle of copybooks for letters having to do with the Doctor's official dealings, but Lieutenant A intervened to arrange for a photographic copy of the whole, and I have seen some brief extracts that indicate that there are also copies from the Doctor's patent book and the Company's Yerba Buena indentures. The former have some potential for leveraging difficult land transactions, as you and I and "Cousin H. C." know from using our copies. The latter are more tricky. Some of the issued indentures are still about, and Wong Lee recalls using them to secure birth certificates for some followers in 1919. As I recall, all the indentures "invented" acceptable identities for men of our old crews who wanted to engage to work in the country. The relevance to the old bureau was that some of those identities were Mexican Californian Indian, but there were others, and the indenture books are certainly not organised by the race or religion of our lascars, much less the pretended race! What I am saying is that I will not be easy in mind knowing that this document has been sitting in the state archives for seventy years until I have seen the full, developed roll. Never mind. It matters very little to me that "Miss V.C." has discovered a real lead. I very much doubt that she has the sophistication to use it, and it is absurd to think that sheneeds it. "Lieutenant A," and the Engineer, are another matter. did he suspect the fasicle's presence? How else put the Lieutenant on its trail? This is a mystery, and so is his purpose. Ah, well. We shall deal with it. Somehow. And I shall endeavour to calm myself by continuing my newsletters. Flight, 2 March 1944 Leaders The Prime Minister made a statement about air power. He deems the Battle of the Atlantic to be over, and that the success of the invasion depends on the success of the air offensive. The paper finds this to be mysterious. Which seems a little coy, given that the paper must have some insight into the empyrean realms of the planners. Perhaps it is coyness with a purpose? I will admit that I am drawing inference from very little here, Reggie. Just anticipating the inevitable fixing-of-the-blame if the invasion fails, or the claiming-of-the-success if it does. The paper also supposes that the German air force is being shifted westwards. The paper is also pleased that the “Double-way attack,” that is, by night and day bombers, has had the effect of reducing German fighter production, as this will relieve the attacking bombers. War in the Air The Russians have won a battle, but, regrettably, no-one has praised the Red Air Force. The recent Allied offensive by Bomber Command, 8th and 15th Air Forces gets its due. More details of the attacks are given. The recent German bomber offensive against London is noted, and the way that the Germans are “imitating” us by using chaff to fool radiolocation is noted. Interestingly, a picture of a “Ju53 magnetic minesweeper” illustrates the page. You no doubt know all about this, but except for some notice in the press a while back, the idea of a plane flying over magnetic mines with a massive hoop to detonate them by flux is –is novel the right word? “Bizarre” might be more accurate. Does it work? The recent raid on the Ladronnes is noticed. Guam, Saipan and Tinian are within some crucial range of Tokyo. Is this where the “Island hopping” is going next? It would explain a great deal of veiled reference and hints regarding the B-29 without requiring an outlandish China-based campaign supported via the Himalaya air route! Now where is the Japanese battlefleet? The German, by the way, in the form of Gneisnau, now written off in its watery grave at Gdynia, is in sad shape. “The Prime Minister’s Review” The Prime Minister is retreating from 1944 as a firm date for the end of the war. It remains hard to believe that Mr. Janeway will prove right, however. Apart from that, I prefer the paper’s summary, as it is …summary. Short items: Mr. Woodford pleads for the greater use of electric auxiliaries on aircraft in a paper given to the IEE. At the beginning of the war, we had planes with two 500w generators, while the Germans used two of the same size giving 1500. Now we have 3000w generators coming into service. How much power do the planes You work with require for their special business? Bill and David are very much concerned with power supply, although mainly from the point of view of cooling overheated elements in very complicated assemblages. It does not help that we now propose to do the final assembly in the Pacific! Somewhere. Australia? Borneo? Manila? Guam? Fujian? Children say the most commercially lucrative things A brief précis of the Mosquito, with extracts of its wonderful performance. Sir Stafford Cripps praises the Air Inspectorate Division. I will second that. We inspectors of factories truly are unsung heroes and all of that, sorting out problems, seeing through smokescreens, walking weary, weary miles through Willow Run. Which really is quite big, you know. Here and There Two new Essex-class are launched, including the cheekily (or, depending on one’s readiness to be offended) sacrilegiously named Shangri-La are launched. The paper informs us that those in the know will be interested to hear that Mr. Bloss is reinstated as head of airframe production at the Fighter Aircraft Production office. The rest of us can just relax in the knowledge that more privileged others, have our best interests at heart. Air Chief Marshal Harris is decorated by Moscow for blowing up Germans. A Commonwealth “Radio in Aircraft” conference is opening in London soon. The new air service to Stockholm is suspended for various reasons. It is said that experience has greatly improved productivity in the American industry. Charles Wright of the War Production Board (shh, Reggie, we are not supposed to notice when an American of great moment in the aviation industry has the name “Wright”) notes that whereas an American fighter might once have taken 157,000 man hours to produce, by the time that the 1000th plane is off the assembly line, it is down to 7800. Which has the stink of burning statistics to me, as torches are applied to feet (if numbers have feet) until they yield what Mr. Wright wishes them to yield. Still impressive. “Synthetic Blackout” Night flying training is made easier by new darkened goggles. But they are darkened in a new way. Do you know what the new Exactor remote control needs? More publicity, Reggie! Here it is. H. R. L. Smith, “Safety in the Air” After the war, planes should be safer. Here are worthy initiatives towards that end, of the coordinating-planning-organising-cooperating variety. Wallace Barr, Cellon salesman, has died. Behind the Lines News of Japan’s Donryu bomber and the German He177. A new device that makes it possible for pilots to bail out safely at 50,000 feet has passed development in Germany. I suspect that it is this that frees the aircraft already noted for its upcoming flight. The markings of the Hungarian air force are noted, in case our planes run into any of the several dozen of their planes still flying. Aircraft Recognition notes the Bristol Beaufort and Grumman Avenger, observing that the easiest way to tell them is that they are being followed by a plane carrying a museum acquisitions agent. Well, less the Avenger, but only because we have done such a fine job of building carriers from which practically no other American plane can fly! (Not that I expect complaints from Japanese infantry or submarines on the grounds that they are offended by being bombed by old planes, as opposed to one taking the name of the Pure Land in vain…) The Boy’s Own discussion of jets that so impressed “Mrs. J. C.” continues in the Correspondence pages. The Economist, 4 March 1944 Leaders By-election omen-reading again! The paper thinks that the success of the independent candidate, which seems to foreshadow gains on the Left and the return of party politics,might actually be an illusion. Even if it is not, we shouldn’t return to party government until after the war is over, which will be after the election. In short, the electorate, although as treasonous as any lot of stirkers and coal miners, is stuck with the Prime Minister through 1948 or so. The paper also thinks something about postwar Germany, which seems to boil down to it not going away. The paper thinks that the future for South Wales is coal. Or buggy whips? Buggy whips might be better. Just in case you haven’t had the time to immerse yourself in these things, I will explain that the paper is thinking in terms of post war coal exports and oil-from-coal. Which astonishes me yet again. Surely a business paper can understand that coal’s problems start with its inability to compete with oil pumped from the ground, for the moment only as fuel for transportation, but, in the long run, perhaps anywhere. This has had the effect of driving down wages, which has had the effect of cutting off the supply of new coal miners and investment capital, which has led to falling productivity, which has led to… I can understand why the paper would pretend not to understand this. The only solution is an increase in the price of coal, which would be against the interest of everyone save the coal-owners, and possibly even they, considering that they would not see the increased revenues. But to deny this not only cynically, but to make predictions on the pretense of it not being true? What is worse, or perhaps better, even if we break out of this cycle of diminishing returns, how sure are we that there is no oil in England? Of course there actually is, and that it has been found at all intimates that geologists are right to suspect that there is more to be found by better drilling. What for coal, then? I am not saying that we should drop money into oil exploration on the three-cornered isle. In case the Earl asks, I think northern Canada to be a better bet, but I am asking about the future prospects of coal owning. The paper has thoughts about Army Education. Skipping lightly over matters tedious such as vocational training, admittedly important to such as might eventually have vocations, as opposed to money, it moves on to “Citizenship training,” which does not sound sinister to me at all. Citizenship training (unlike “worthy” vocational training?) is a way of relieving boredom. Funny that the paper should say that. I know, I know, Reggie. An unapologetic rentier like me has no business putting on the airs of a man of the people. It is just that I have had occasion to think like a pirate of late, and I cannot help but look to the coal situation in the light of old Coxinga. When theK’ang-Hsi Emperor quelled the pirates, he did not do so by conquering them in battle, but by making sure to build something that made us willing to be quelled. We may look back to that golden age as the descendants of captains of pirates rather than as descendants of pirates, but there was something for our followers, too. Notes of the Week Finns are abandoning ship some more. Poles and Anglo-Catholics are excitable. The Secretary of State for Air wants us to know that he’s very airminded. That is “Archibald Sinclair.” Accept no substitute (ballot, that is.) We bombed Monte Cassino, which is near Rome. We must therefore also bomb Rome before we can take it. Unless we don’t. The paper has proposals on how we can not bomb Rome that sound extraordinarily unworkable. Perhaps we could leave it to the Italians, who have hitherto done a fine job of arranging for their cities to not be levelled in conquest? Latins are excitable. There are to be further limits on civilian coal (“and coalite,” which is just like coal except that it doesn’t actually burn) consumption. For March, the restriction is to 4 cwts in London, 5 in the north. Which is actually not a change, the paper adds, going on to observe that the actual substance of the new restrictions is on coke, to 10cwts of fuel apart from coallite. This is not a ration. It is a maximum. Even the paper pauses to note that the implications for the poor are daunting. “There are working class flats in London which have had no more than 1 cwt of coal since Christmas, and rural dwellers have been very badly off.” If we had just rationed fuel back in 1942, we might be warm today. Right now. The paper’s lapse from bloodlessness suggests that the paper is cold. Now that’s a crisis. The paper has opinions about things that the TUC has said about control of labour and nationalisation. It seems that the paper and the TUC are joined in thinking that people and capital need more control in their lives. This is how captains go from commanding ships to longboats, gentlemen. On the other hand, the paper notices the need for state intervention in the old age home business. And again a step backwards as the Government contemplates various means of constraining cost-of-living increases in pensions. Do old people vote Conservative? Why, I believe they do! Never mind, as I am sure that office is beginning to pall on the "Baldwinites." The paper notices that Professors Pigou and Macgregor are retiring simultaneously, leaving both of the Oxbridge Chairs of Political Economy open in the same year. Cambridge will be filled from London, leaving it vacant, while the Glasgow chair is also open. There are others, too, and the prospect of more. Perhaps there has developed an excess of demand over supply of Olympian, white-headed Thinkers Upon Matters Economical? Such are the concerns that trouble the paper’s sleep, at least to the extent that it sleeps, in its cold, cold rooms. If only we were Ireland, with its troubling excess of unemployed college graduates. American Survey Our Correspondent in California talks about “Water in a Dry Land.” The western half of America or so uses irrigation! Irrigation requires irrigation works! (Insert Scripture quote, there being a commandment to irrigate in one of those books that begins with an “R.” Or am I confusing the sermon with injunctions about eating shellfish? I am showing my pagan upbringing, dear Reggie.) In any case, the irrigation works are now extending to mighty dams of the kind built by “Cousin H.C.,” and thus, after a page or more, the point. Harold Ickes thinks that once the Grand Coulee is complete, some of the 1.2 million acres to be irrigated will provide a home for returning veterans. There will be no more such great dams, but incremental work, for example, on the 528,000 undeveloped acres in the Mississippi-Missouri basin might yield yet more well-watered land, allowing the basin to accommodate another half-million people, per the Bureau of Reclamation. I lied earlier about coming to the point with Mr. Ickes’s statement, Reggie. Another page and a half gone and we arrive at a discussion of water rights in the West, which often belong to the oldest landowner. OCC seems to reflect the views of the newer beneficial owner, and gestures to conflict between the Bureau of Reclamation versus Army Corps of Engineers. Perhaps he thinks that the Army will swoop in and save the new breed of agricultural entrepreneur? I think we can agree that that is optimistic, Reggie. It is our water, and our water it will remain. Water shortages are a fact of life in California, and if you want to avoid being hurt by them, you should arrange to have wealthier and more timely grandparents. Or find another business. Or cultivate politicians. And the Earl wonders why I do not simply break with the Engineer if I dislike him so much. “Uncertainties About Labour” Are strikes adversely affecting American war production? The paper has asked before, and the answer is still “no,” and the reason we hear the contrary is because trade associations want lower wages, and unions want higher wages, and can’t we all negotiate it and get along? And the answer is no, because of politics. American Notes “Congress versus President” Congress offered $2 billion the President asked for $10 billion, “economic realists” wanted even more. Congress passed, the President vetoed, which was an outrageous breach with precedent, all were shocked and appalled, etc. Congress re-passed with a veto-proof majority, requiring numerous Democrats to vote against the President, and Senator Barkley resigned as Majority Leader in the Senate. Surely this seismic event will echo down the pages of American history. Although since Senator Barkley has since been re-elected to his position and paid a social visit to the President, it will be a subtle and subdued echoing. One is almost inclined to be cynical, given that the main damage done is to Mr. Wilkie, the “economic realist.” Eleven states have now provided for soldiers’ ballots. Selective Service will be taking another 240,000, including many farm workers. Farm organisations protest. The World Overseas A page-and-a-half on the Italian Fascist Government’s new economic legislation. The Pitcairn Island Local Government Committee on Cats and Dogs issues an interim report: there are no cats or dogs on the island. Inquiries continue. “Empire Wool Problems” A huge surplus of wool has built up during the period of production control. Something Must Be Done! Specifically, something that in no way affects our rents. Unless it leads to increased profits at the point when we renegotiate them. Because that would be fine. Letters to the Editor is back. Correspondents argue about just how many old houses there in Britain right now, an issue pertaining to how many new ones must needs be built after the war. Later this afternoon, the Emperor gives a violin recital in the Forum. A representative of the mining association of Great Britain thinks that coal miners are being compensated quite competitively, and (by implication) the critical shortage of coal miners must be one of those odd things that happens once in a while, of no import and signifying nothing. The representative has now to speed across the Atlantic to address the Bituminous Mining Association of America. The Business World “Relics of Dear Money” The paper notes that the impression that cheap money has won out is somewhat deceptive. It points out that hire-purchase schemes often have effective interest rates ranging up from 7 to 30%, and cites the example of a life insurance policy offered by a well known firm in which an annual premium of £80 is broken down into two semi-annual payments of £41, which seems at first glance reasonable but (flourish of slide-rule!) isn’t, actually. Apart from these near-confidence games, it is more concretely noted that the notional idea that the “traffic will bear 5%” is not well corroborated by the actual market for securities, where colossal firms have been able to demand 2.5%. Drilling down, the accepted mortgage rate of 5% is perhaps not surprisingly in this light settling down to %4.5. Consider the implications for housing of a further reduction, to, say, 3.5%! I really ought to use a bigger brush for that last para. The paper seems to consider returns well under the increase in the cost of living to be normal, as opposed to something to be up in arms about. I imagine that this is because the paper thinks that the trend can be stuffed back into the bottle by being sufficiently harsh to farmers and coal miners. Will I sound like a broken record if I stress again that it will not, and that our main hopes are rents and dividends on growth stocks? (And capital gains on real estate, if it somehow manages to avoid the drag that population stagnation might be intuitively expected to impose.) Recorded music used to be awful, but now it is quite good. Samson cars are like that. When they're available again, they'll be quite good, whereas before --Wait a minute. How much did we pay for this advertisement, again? Business Notes A worthy Canadian initiative in regards industrial banking; equities have been “blitzed” on the market by the resumption in bombing. Industries might in the future be compelled, as opposed to bribed, to relocate to distressed areas. Expenditure on advertising has fallen in the war years in some industries and increased in others. There are tea leaves here to be read, the paper says, although given that toiletries, for example, have decreased while boots and shoes have increased, it will be subtle mind indeed that discovers them. The Indian Budget may not do enough to contain inflation, the main reliance being on gold sales to mop up surplus spending power. (Rich) Indians, then, are to be trusted to save the money that the government is spending, whereas (working) Americans are just waiting for the slightest pay-increase to go on the tear to end all tears. Speaking of, retail sails in Britain have disappointed. Home heating could have improved efficiency. Nice canteens and improved houses for miners will save the day. People would eat more herring if it were more appetising. Accordingly, the Herring Industry Association thinks that there should be subsidised loans for fishermen. Canada is a place where you can invest. East African is to have money, now, although actual East Africans continue to prefer Maria Theresa thalers. East Africans are not fools. Flight, 9 March 1944 Leaders The old “Air Defence of Great Britain” command title has been recreated, because “Fighter Command” is out of style. The paper approves, because it always does. The Americans have attacked Berlin in daylight, and even sent fighter sweeps over it. I notice that the paper avoids explicitly saying that bombers are escorted to Berlin. As during the Battle of Britain, having fighters actually escort the bombers is more difficult, as fighters achieve a higher cruising speed than bombers. War in the Air The Arakan Offensive is over. ‘Twas a glorious victory, and air supply of the troops was important. The counterattacks at Anzio continue. Aeroplanes were involved! As well as the German siege artillery, which rather leaves me thinking that we were foolish to give those big tubes targets. I hope things develop well, but I feel a certain sense of foreboding, for I remember the terrible work they did in the last war. The Australians are to make Lancasters, as Canada is going to do. Quite a stride for Australian engineering, I should think. The Governor of Bengal has made a tour of the famine areas. Aeroplanes were involved! Two members of the Parnall board have resigned. Is this a secret scandal? Do you know, Reggie? Many aeroplanes have been sent to Russia. India wants air services. Also South Africa. Showing their endearing loyalty, the natives of Southern Rhodesia have chipped in for a plane in the Spitfire fund. The US Army has discovered the source of the Orinoco river. Aeroplanes were involved. “Convoy Cover” An RAAF Spitfire squadron somewhere in Libya has flown protecting flights over merchant convoys at some point in the war. Vokes oil filters were involved. And aeroplanes. And Australians. Won’t someone please send us some real news, the paper cries. Behind the Lines Japan is now producing 1200 aircraft/month. German radio, quoted by Reuters, blames diversionary tactics for Allied bombers getting through. The Deutsches Allgemeine Zeitungcriticises the high command. I hope that certain air marshals’ affairs are in order for retirement, and papers readied for the courts-martial! Speaking on Paris Radio, Jean Herold Paquis tells the French that Axis victory will be won on the ground, not the air. “New Rolls-Royce Engine” The paper is now permitted to tell of the Rolls-RoyceGriffon, which is like the Merlin, only larger. It is based on the old record-breaking “R” engine, has 36.7 litres displacement, and runs at 3200rpm. It does not, however, have two-stage superchargers yet. The day of the high-altitude day-bombing “Liverpool,” or whatever Avro calls it, is still a ways off. “Indicator” talks about dealing with the inevitable unreliability of the modern aircraft, of the relative roles of science and ingenuity in sorting out the snags, and of test rigs and regular maintenance. Cabbages and kings are left for his dotage, which cannot be far away, given that he seems to share our vintage. “Radio in the RAF” The RAF uses radios. They’re little boxes with wires sticking out. You talk to them, and they talk back. At least until the gentlemen come to take you to the rest home. Tongue in cheek justified by the paucity of actual in formation in the article. “Studies in Aircraft Recognition” Covers the Douglas Boston, Martin Maryland, Pe-2 and Ju-88. “Boundary Layer Control” Do you like very complicated mathematical papers in theJournal of the Royal Aeronautical Society? If so, you have already read this. Now read it again, but without tedious math. Do you not? Well, lick a finger and move on, as there are more pictures of planes, over. Correspondence Not all of the letters in this number are from eager boys. There is at least one from a cranky old man, and, oddly enough, one from an electronic engineer, the chief designer of R. K. Dundas, who has either time on his hands, which would be unfortunate, or a bee in his bonnet, which I can at least understand. It’s about broadcast power, if you are interested. “The Air Estimates” The paper found Sinclair’s speech so wonderful that it will vote for him twice! Berlin has been almost destroyed some more. The Economist, 11 March 1944 Leaders “The King’s Shilling” The Welsh miners’ strike raises the question of whether Service wages can be increased to the industrial average or, even more exorbitantly, to the American pay scale. The Government says, “no,” because of the delicate balance of prices and wages. The paper thinks that, on balance, the Government is right, but that when Sir John Grigg speaks of “inflation on the wildest scale,” he overplays the Government’s rhetorical hand and damages his own argument. In any case, the paper lays out its own, more modest proposal for a pay increase. “Presidential Progress Report” The paper is inclined to complain that American Presidential elections go on too long. Do not look to me for a scholarly citation, here, Reggie. They all say that, every time. Has it, perhaps, occurred to them that this sort of thing just encourages it? The paper, in any case, is offended that Americans are offended that the paper is offended. Or something. The paper hopes that we can all move on and elect Mr. Wilkie and be done with it. The paper is a very silly paper. “America in the Middle East” America is not in the Middle East, silly paper! It is in the Western Hemisphere. Oh, never mind, Reggie. Oil. “What is a Great Power?” Large, rich, populous countries. Now with illustrations, using cleverly distorted maps to show that with these conditions applying, China is not really a great power, but that we pretend that it is one, and Britain is only a great power if the Commonwealth wills it, which it should, and that Japan might not be a great power in the future. Notes of the Week Finland is still abandoning ship. Russia and Poland. Turkey is still neutral and will therefore be given fewer guns with which not to fight in the future. Something about parliament and ministerial powers? Coal miners are awful for striking when there is a coal shortage, just because they are not being paid enough. They should wait until there is enough coal to strike. It’s only fair. Argentinians are excitable. It is noted that there is an urgent housing crisis. As it took five years to build 300,000 houses after the last war, we all hope for better performance this time around. The “fifteen year plan for the reconstruction of India” presented by Indian industrialists is hopeless naïve. The paper explains, slowly and carefully, using short words and soothing gestures to calm the agitated babus. Yugoslavs are excited. There is to be a Royal Commission on Population. The paper is hopeful, but “population trends move slowly, and Royal Commissions sometimes move more slowly yet.” Mr. Lyttleton is very impressed by the extent of war production in 1944. But we are winding down, and in such a way as to fit work to sometimes immobile labour, and thus all the more reason to explain these things to a populace whose reserve of good will, the paper intimates, might be drawing down at the end of five long years of war. Flemings, Walloons, Hollanders and Luxembourgeois (is that right?) are excitable. American Survey “Watch Texas” Our Correspondent in California, who last week passed gas on the subject of irrigation, now notices where there is plenty of gas. Everyone should invest in Texas. Or the Northwest, because of the Grand Coulee dam. Or, at a last resort, in California, which has only Henry Kaiser. By Jove, Reggie, I think we pay this man! Remind me to pay him less.(If he turns out to be Mr. Janeway in disguise, I shall not be firing only Mr. Janeway!) Although given the way that "Cousin H.C." perks up when we discuss November, he might overrule me. The eyes roll. American Notes “War Production Report” America has produced vast quantities of war materials, Congress says. To do it has let many war contracts. It has rather lost count, which makes it hard to say just what will happen when they are all wound up. Congress promises to look into this and get back to us. One industry that has overbuilt is the machine tool business. “Its only real hope lies in the rapid development of new materials and processes in post-war industry, which would quickly put all tools made during the war out of the market.” As we shall see, American Notes is reading Fortune. “Planning War Economy” Perhaps Americans have woken to the virtues of free trade. The paper hopes so. The World Overseas (Vichy) Latins are excitable. Holland has been cruelly exploited by Germany, and the spectre of famine looms due to the shift of available acreage to industrial crops and a shortage of farm machinery and fuel. Our Dublin Correspondent notes that a shipyard has opened up in Dublin to support a proposed Irish merchant marine that can exist if only the Government will subsidise it. OCD has very clear ideas on what impecunious causes are suited to government money, and which are not. If OCD thinks that Dublin will defeat the Pearl on the postwar seas, OCD is due for a great disappointment. The Business World “Is There Enough Oil?” The United States, the paper says, “s suffering from one of its periodic scares of impending oil shortage.” Dr. Egloff, of the United Oil Products Company, points out that Mr. Harold Icke’s recent forecast that the world might run out of oil in as few as thirteen years is based on proven oil reserves only, and we might well find more. The paper rather agrees with Dr. Egloff over Mr. Ickes. It does occur, the mind having turned to the old Doctor, to contemplate his comments when Beaver arrived on the coast, that it is all very well to have a cheaper means of conveyance. One must needs find the fuel, first! The costs of oil exploration must be carried by the price of oil for consumers. Business Notes Railways and electrical generation and distribution need Plans! The Bank of International Settlements has published a pamphlet on exchange restrictions that the paper quite likes. The interest rate on bank loans to industry is likely to fall in the future. Equities and real estate, not bonds, part the second. It is supposed that if we try to sell goods in the United States harder, it will happen that we will sell more goods in the United States in proportion to how hard, and how effectively, we try. Sir Stafford Cripps thinks that there should be more cooperation between management and labour. The actual increase in wages from October 1938 to July 1943 is 76%, as opposed to the 65% calculated from wage rate increases, the excess being carried by overtime, which will disappear after the war, so that the estimate of increased purchasing power weighing on “inflation” may be overstated with respect to the postwar period. This will certainly quell demands for wage restraint, as there are certainly no signs of pent-up frustration at the poor state of various goods and services that will lead to demand for more money so as to spend on more things. Flight, 16 March 1944 Leaders “The Air and the Sea” The First Lord introduced the Naval Estimates in the House this week. Aeroplanes were involved! On a more serious note, unlike the Prime Minister or the Air Secretary’s speech, this one actually had some interestingly concrete things to say, noting that in 1941, submarines sank only 1 of 181 ships sailing, 1 of 233 in 1942, and “in the second half of 1943” only 1 in a thousand. That leaves out six months there, which I seem to recall were quite bad for submarine sinkings. But what do I know? I am only a shipowner. Presumably, all will turn out, at least in the Admiralty’s telling, to have all been the Air Force’s fault. “Another Point of View” Admiral Nimitz promises to pound Japan with landplanes based on the China coast. So much for my premature speculations about the Ladrones! The paper thinks that such bases are unlikely before the naval war is won. So if there is to be “strategic” bombing of Japan, it will be from aircraft carriers. The Statement of the Ministry of Aircraft Supply claims the production of 99,000 aircraft through the end of 1943. We Americans are beating the world! (Pirates side with the victor.) War in the Air Continuing night and day attacks on Germany must be pushing the Germans to their limit. Tactical aircraft are wandering over the Atlantic shore, looking for someone to fight. Oddly, the Germans decline to come up to be shot down. Here and There Canada now has 12,000 trainers in service. American Aviation “takes it on itself” to reveal the existence of the Hawker Tempest and Vickers Windsor, which were seen by Wellwood E. Beall of Boing on his visit to England. Captain Roy Brown has died. Canadian Pacific Airlines is growing rapidly. Scale models of a Hampden and a Halifax II were presented to Frederick Handley-Page in a fete in his honour. They were delivered a little late and were far heavier than they looked. Even Maori can now be fighter pilots, at least in the RNZAF. Charles Wilson’s statement about the 8760 aircraft built in February is noticed. Canada has taken over the Alaska air route. Ads: “Look out for Hydulignum!” Why? Is it falling from the sky? Have all of Britain’s advertising writers found war employment? “Coastal Comamnd Station” Exists. Some nice pictures of depth charges blowing up fish, and perhaps occasionally German submarines. There is a nice discussion of the Command’s Consolidated B-24s, which fly quite long missions (sometimes more than 16 hours!), which would be quite impossible without the Minneapolis-Honeywell autopilot. I notice that while the Liberator itself is said to be a miserable flying experience in bad weather under autopilot (your eldest pulls out his maths and gives his well-worn talk about the inadequacies of the Sperry design), no ill is spoken of the Honeywell device itself. A pilot tells us that he once flew for 14 hours on seven different courses without disengaging the autopilot! Operational losses happen, and the maintenance burden of these long flights is, of course, colossal, but the autopilot –but I repeat myself. “Indicator” talks about “Mathematical myopia.” Basically, he does a great deal of war ferry flying, and is sick and tired of ground people telling him that he’s the problem. And so I expect to say, on the day that they take my car license away. Though he does have more useful things to say than some doddering old man. “Aircraft Recognition” has caught up with the A-36, P-40, and Westland Whirlwind. In case you were wondering what those planes you saw six months ago were. Behind the Lines Germany is using new planes, and 500kg bombs in its attacks on London. Says the Hungarian press. Coercing and starving coal miners turns out to be bad industrial relations. Inform The Economist! A Swedish correspondent writes that Germany has become a land of the submerged. Those who have good reason to wish to disappear, including not only deserters and criminals, but also particular, politically compromised men, need only have their relatives go the police and tell them that they were lost in an air-raid, and then reappear in another city with a claim that their papers have been destroyed in another air raid. Presumably the ones with money in Sweden can talk to Swedish correspondents… In any case, I send this along to Fat Chow. Germany has a labour shortage on the one hand, and improved ground control of fighters, on the other. The Germans suspect that the Allies have secret airfields in France with which to move agents in and out. “Growth of US Air Power,” Has been covered. Interestingly, in the light of those who talk about American manufacturing’s genius for standardisation, it turns out that 67 different aircraft were being made in the united states in 1943. An ad praises aids to cleanliness offered by one firm that promises to address “industrial dermatitis.” Gloves are apt to work better, but I can appreciate the difficulty of providing them in adequate quantities. A long article about the “MacLaren Undercarriage,” which seems rather gimmicky to me. Correspondence Continues last week’s theme of a battle of old versus young, this time with a pilot explaining why fast fighters beat slow but manoeuvrable trainers, and a scolding coming out of the receding “airplane rating” episode. It looks like some people have more time on their hands as February turns into March. Has there been a relenting in some aspect of the war effort of which we are not yet informed, Reggie? Short bits: the paper wonders about how the plywood of the Mosquito will stand up to the tropics, now that they are in use against Japan. And it turns out that a disposable fuel tank can be turned into a nice coracle. The Economist, 18 March 1944 Leaders “Irish Neutrality” The Irish have been very naughty. In the interest of good relations, the paper prints, with only the slightest hint of irony, the old “Home Rule means Rome Rule” slogan. That should help make Dublin more amenable to Allied (London) demands! “According to Plan” Mr. Willoughby presents the Governmentn plan to build 300,000 houses within two years after the war. The paper has pages of useful criticism. “Verdict on Munich” It is time for history to judge the Munich agreement. It was bad, it turns out, Reggie. If Britain was not ready to fight in 1938, surely it was not ready to fight in 1939. It is difficult to understand why we have all chosen to forget just how much money was spent on armaments in 1938 and 1939. Unless some people want to forget. Like the paper. Notes of the Week “The Russian Offensive” is succeeding. Roumania is still abandoning ship. Anglo-Catholics and others are excited (over schooling.) For example, now that we have no teachers, it is contemplated not firing woman teachers on grounds of their getting married. The paper is upset that Mr. Hudson is retreating from free trade in agriculture. (Italian) Latins are excitable. National Health and Full Employment are on the agenda of ministers and Fabians. There is fighting in the Far East, with attacks on Truk, the Japanese attacking in the Chin Hills, and the Allies advancing in the Chindwin. A more detailed map than the one provided would go far to suggest the balance of importance between the two offensives! Guam is sufficiently close to Tokyo that something censored something. Infant mortality is exacerbated by poverty due to mothers working longer than they should, but perhaps not to the extent rather emotionally claimed by the female(!) Dr. Summerskill. Ladies are illogical. For example, these two find a giant, rotating filing cabinet to be amusing for some reason. it's a good thing that they're so well dressed, or someone would get upset. It is announced that the total killed and wounded in Britain in air raids to date is 113,219. American Survey “Contract Renegotiation” Our correspondent in Massachusetts notices that renegotiation might prove to be scandal fodder due to the highly varied ways in which the excess profits tax might be applied in individual cases. I am certain that when the boys (and girls) come marching home, Americans will want nothing more than a long-drawn out autopsy of individual cases. What could possibly distract them? American Notes “Kingpin of Victory” is Lend-Lease. “Army Casualties,” killed and wounded, are 95,795 to this point. Mr. Wilkie has carried the New Hampshire Republican primary, but the latest Gallup poll suggests that this is highly unrepresentative of Republican primary voters as a whole. The World Overseas Even more pages about the Pucheu trial. Canada has…Wake up, Reggie! Portugal is having Social Reform! Expect Finland and Rumania to have finished surrendering, first. Now follows the massive annual “World Commercial Review” insert, which, the Earl may rest assure, I have considered in much greater detail than my flippancy here would suggest. I just find little use for it in my summary report. Which is to say, and is this not the way of mankind, that I find nothing in it to shift my thoughts on where to invest those moneys at my discretion. The Railways need a Plan! Mining wages should increase, but only in proportion to increasing productivity, the paper thinks. I suppose I do not need to bang my drum again, Reggie. If you cannot attract labour under current conditions, you must abandon those conditions, not double down on them, unless you are prepared to do without coal. Business Notes Civil Aviation is …advancing. America is richer, and spent a smaller proportion of its national income on the war effort than Commonwealth countries, and especially the U.K. Credit has contracted in the UK, as usual, seasonally adjusted. English resistance to technological progress threatens its place as shipbuilder to the world. Aviation, March 194 3 Down the Years in AVIATION’S Log Some things never change. The entry for 1919 has “engineers prophecy that 200mph flight will soon be realized commercially,” while the 1934 entry tells us that airline speeds average 150mph. Remember the outrage when skeptics said that the DC-2 entered into the MacRobertson Race wouldn’t average 200mph? Neither did the De Havilland number, of course, but it came closer, because it was a racing plane! Other things change much faster. The 1929 remembrance is of "Lady Mary Heath" receiving the first aviation mechanic’s license held by a woman. Really quite unnecessarily tawdry of the paper. In 1934 the Air Ministry diligently set aside 13 “practice areas” for “cloud flying,” presumably to save civilian pilots from certain death in mid-air collisions with service planes coming hurtling out of the nearest strato-cumulus. Line Editorial Junior is on about the disposal of Government inventory, an estimated $60 billion of goods, including $2 billion “marketable or usable for civilian purposes.” Either the ‘or’ here has some other than the obvious meaning, or Junior privately shares the general opinion of the marketing business. . . From there, though, the editorial descends into that most dreaded and boring of copy –specifics, mounting rapidly into such dizzying array of specificities that one must conclude upon the need for organisation, planning, and specialised government agencies. Editorial Leslie E. Neville thinks that “Industry Must Lead in Re-Locating Workers.” In the future, American employees have a right to expect not to be put out of work by their own efforts. If industry does not take the lead in relocating workers to places where their labour is in demand, the government will, and who wants that? LaMotte T. Cohu, board chairman and general manager of Northrop Aircraft, has developed a system, which we can all study, and which is further discussed in a worthy article, beginning page over. “Northrop’s Plan for Postwar Employee Re-Location” Not to hold you in suspense any longer, Reggie, but the manufacturers of the P-61 have a system, and that system is of a piece with their work. It turns out to be that every employee has a punch-card on which every piece of information of any value about his employment, such as his skills, address, age, seniority and family status are recorded, allowing, when Northrop or some other firm has a requirement, for a massive card-sorting machine to spit out the exact card (and thus name) of a man required for, say, a 45-year-old refrigeration and air-conditioning repair/hydraulics installer/WWI veteran in suitable circumstances for a married man with two dependents and a seniority date of 7-9-42. (There is a sad story of the Depression hidden behind these numbers, but I do not need to tell you. I remember those heart-rending letters about thin and anxious men, desperate for the work you couldn't give them.) And, so, it turns out that advanced machinery is the solution to this postwar problem. I endorse this conclusion! It is also good news for the county, if those plans for an IBM punch-card plant goes through, the firm might even take some small share of the "giant sorting machine" business. Earle M. Scott, “Scott’s Plan for Reconverting Small War Plants" The “President of progressive Scott Aviation Company” says we can hardly just lay off staff on notice of contract cancellation with two week’s pay and a wave in the direction of unemployment insurance and ‘Uncle Sam.’ No, the kind of employee we want to retain does not want charity. "He has saved, bought war bonds, paid off old debts, and, perhaps, invested in a home. He is in the best financial condition he has been in years; but, as much as they look forward to, and pray for, victory, they look to the future with misgivings. They are not afraid of the postwar years –they have heard far too many optimistic reports about the coming golden age. But they are worried about the conversion period.”( I believe the failure of agreement is original to the article, but perhaps I copied it wrong, and owe Progressive Mr. Scott an apology.) So how to ease these employees through the conversion period and keep them around? Termination pay. It need not be high, in fact, shouldn’t be, so as to keep “inflationary pressures” down. Nor should it be a lump sum on release; but rather semi-monthly payments, beginning with the two weeks’ pay on release. Money for this should be held in a reserve, “untaxed, unrenegotiated, and allowed as a cost.” Scott has the good sense to let a paragraph intrude before he follows this up with the observation that “no government subsidy” is involved. So, to summarise, Scott Aviation has provided for $10/week for 9 weeks, on the understanding that this will be a supplement to the New York State Unemployment Insurance Benefit of $18/week, starting two weeks after unemployment begins and extending for 16 weeks, or perhaps more in the case of some firms. In Scott’s case, 60% of employees will be released, while 40% are kept on at reduced hours. So, in some, the plan requires that UI payments do not garnishee payments made out of a special corporate income tax-free reserve deductible from the excess profits tax. But no government handouts are required. John Foster, Jr, (associate editor), “How a Myriad Ideas put More Planes Aloft Quicker,” East coast aircraft production manpower efficiency is up 80% over two years, each man turning out 77lbs/month of airframe today compared with 42.6lbs then. Many of the savings have been in engineering departments. As recently as 1940, these were staffed with relatively limited numbers of men of considerable experience and versatility who could handle perhaps two models in limited production. Today, although employment is past its peak, the departments are vastly expanded, at the expense of originally hiring new employees with no previous aircraft experience, which meant that “old line” engineers had not only to do their own work, but to train newcomers, many of whom had no engineering experience at all, a fact especially true of women workers. One company’s engineering department employs 33% women now, compared with 7% just 16 months ago. Whereas there were then no women at all in the drawing department, today there are 26. Fashion designers and cartoonists have been successfully trained to do technical illustrating. Thereafter, it was a matter of organising and in many cases reorganising the flood of newcomers and salting them with experience while streamlining processes and accommodating such special needs as needed to be accommodated. See how manpower can be better utilised by simple expedients such as factory day cares. We shall talk less about the poor shipyard executives who might have offices above stairs. R. W. Feeny, “Analytic Geometry for Speedier Wing Lofting,” discusses the use of mathematics more complicated than simple algebra and trigonometry to improve, well, wing lofting. From the look of it, it involves an engineer’s worst nightmare –the substitution of arithmetic for drawing. Lynn S. Metcalfe, “Slide-Films Promote Employee-Relations Training” through the wonders of modern technology, various training sessions can be made more productive by turning tedious presentations into fantastic slide-shows! Lt. Comdr Harry J. Marx, USNR, “Prime Axiom in Hydraulics is Banish Dirt.” The worthy papers of Mr. Volkes in Flight on the subject of filtration now have their trans-Atlantic counterpart. I distrust Commander Marx. He is the first author in this number photographed holding his pipe, instead of clenching it in his teeth in a manly fashion. James J. Heatley, “Fuel-Weight Measures for Better Flight Performance” The old rule of thumb of 6 lbs/US gallon is not terribly accurate across the range of temperatures found in flying. We need weight in pounds to estimate endurance, but we get volume in gallons from filling the tanks. We need to know how much fuel we have (rather important for calculating lift off weight, you would think?). Here is how to compute it, with graphs. P. H. Moyer, “X-Rays Now Gage Propeller Blade Thicknesses” The precision required in machining hollow steel propellers is so precise that it was thought worthwhile to measure it with industrial x-ray machinery. This is quite the bit of photography, as is here explained. Side Slips “Once more a great shipbuilder has shown aircrafters “how to produce.” But, once more, unfortunately, the ‘production ‘ is in newspaper headlines only.” Side Slips, I remind everyone, is the funny and irreverent take on the aviation news. Hilarious! And putti are never inappropriate. I believe we know which cousin-in-law the paper means! It rather rudely points out that promises of production of first the Mars and now the Hughes plane have gone unfilled. With Navy fighter planes still sorely needed, it is time to “let the shipubuilder stick to his ways.” If that is some snide reference to the Buffalo plant, it is only producing what the Navy thought it needed. Cousin “H.C.’s” enthusiasms for giant flying boats will get no defence from me, though, Martin seems scarcely less to blame than our organisation! As for Hughes, quite frankly, an odder man you will never meet, Reggie. Unless your little club in Vancouver matches the London scene, mind you, in which case he’s a sadly familiar type. There is a reason that this new breed of “psychiatrists” think that they can diagnose diseases of the mind by their symptoms. Aviation News “January Plane Production was 8,789, Poundage 90.3 million; Trends Forecast” We are, apparently, pushing the production targets! The target is 113,000, and we are on track to build 100,000! January production was 8,789, the same amount as November’s figure, and only 13 short of December’s. Meanwhile, the projected monthly rate is levelling off, and will never reach the projected 10,000/month. It may, indeed, even decline in the future. The WPB is concerned that this will demoralise the public, which is why it is sternly admonishing the public not to be demoralised, for various reasons including that military types production is up, poundage is up, and we are now building BC-29s and “other types.” Speaking of other types, Russia has agreed to haul off some of the junk fouling our factories –I mean, Douglas is sending 2000 A-20s to Russia! America at War –Aviation’s Communique No. 27 Tojo has told the Japanese people that airpower is key, and Japan has the edge. But he is wrong! American (and there are some other Allies, the paper thinks?) production facilities are superior, and the “Jap has to copy.” I thought this kind of arrogance led to Pearl Harbour? Or am I remembering more than I am supposed to, again? We are going to invade Europe. Air power will not eliminate the need for ground forces, but it will make their job “easy to the point of negligibility,” as in the landings below Rome, where the Germans didn’t even resist! Perhaps this communique was prepared somewhat in advance of publication? “Curtiss-Wright’s Back Up Our Battleskies initiative" has been a rousing success. More workers are coming to work! That is, the rate of absenteeism has fallen from 3.34% to 1.1%. Suggestion boxes were stuffed! Scrap was reduced 37%! Spot Checking The Martin Mars transport aircraft, recently converted from a patrol bomber, just completed its first 4700 mile trip to Honolulu in 27 hours, 26 minutes. This would be considered damning with faint praise, I think. The Senate, meanwhile, asks why, if the Navy does not want the “Kaiser-Hughes wooden flying boat,” it has agreed to buy 20 of the Martin machines. The Washington Windsock Blaine Stubblefield reports that some airfields will be declared war surplus. Will “aircrafters” hit the postwar market with a “modernique” automobile while Detroit is still in the process of resuming 1942 models? No decision, Mr. Stubblefield says, combining equal measures of industrial insight and prose style. The Zero still outmaneouvres Allied fighters, but we lick ‘em, anyway, showing how much that’s good for. The Truman committee sure was silly, criticising great aircraft like the SB2C, B-26 and JRM-1! “New warplanes are all the rage, but if you look the lists over, you will see that all service planes were either in service or completely engineered before Pearl Harbor. The flying boat versus landplane debate may be moot, as people may turn out to prefer 50-seaters to giant, multistory airliners, giving frequency of service the nod. Stubblefield reports that people who have seen the Kaiser-Hughes flying boat are impressed with the carpentry, and that officialdom is burning with curiosity over how it turns out. Postwar airline success will be constrained by price-per-mile. More Aviation News Minneapolis-Honeywell has a new film out explaining how its autopilot works. The AAF have 2.3 million personnel, including 100,000 pilots, 20,000 bombardiers, 19,000 aviators, 107,000 air gunners, 556,000 ground crew, 29,000 training planes. In Canada, more than a million lbs of airmail has flown out of Vancouver, and Boeing-Chilliwack has added a night shift. Wasn’t Chilliwack essentially a trading post and a tavern the last time I saw it, on that fishing trip with you, Reggie? And wasn’t that only ten years ago? Aviation Manufacturing A joint government-industry committee has been struck to manage contract renegotiation and conversion in southern California. Northrop thinks that its newest plane, the P-61, has not got enough publicity, even though it has “fairly long range and effective speed and climb characteristics.” Even Northrop seems to be suggesting that its various “control” devices and instrumentation are more worthy of comment. Too much stuff driven by too much engines to get too much firepower equals a flying barn door, I imagine. “Manufacturer’s Report” is the usual miscellany of random statistics, in which Douglas stands out as actually attaching financially useful information. It has delivered on a billion dollars’ worth of contracts. “Coast ‘Quits’ Down; ‘Pools’ Save Man-Hours” Less labour poaching cuts turnover on the West Coast. Don't look at us, Reggie. Aviation Abroad The Nazis have new glider-bombs, rocket planes. China is being supplied by C-47 transports flying over the Himalayas, the paper tells us. News! Total air tonnage, we are told, exceeds that once carried on the Burma road. But how much of it is consumed turning the planes around? Fortune, March 1944 Business at War “Spam and the Future” Today’s article is about a meat-canning company with the army on its feet and the world in its sights. It turns out that Spiced Ham and Pork is something that people will eat, albeit under protest, unlike canned mutton. That is, when prepared the way that Hormel does it. The Army Quartermaster’s specification renders it inedible, and Servicemen complain. A Dr. White is quoted as saying that Servicemen are giving Hormel priceless publicity by griping. You can’t buy better advertising? Dr. White says? Is Dr. White related to Mr. Janeway? Another firm is Triumph, of Elkton, Maryland, which is a massive, brand-new munitions plant complex that became notorious when its operators were arrested for various fraud and corruption charges back in 1942 While on bail pending appeal and barred from participating in the management of the company, Mssrs. Kann and Decker have done quite nicely out of their shares, and the court-appoointed war manager Benjamin Franklin Pepper is now in charge of conversion to peacetime production of whatever they might be able to produce, barring a race riot levelling the place ‘”when white and Negro relations ignite.” The Farm Column Ladd Haystead thinks that rural electrification has been a blessing, as has crop diversification, pointing to Upshur County, Texas. But, as always, there are storm clouds on the horizon. Perhaps the local co-op has borrowed too much money? Could be! More is possible Bell Laboratory is experimenting with telephone-without-telephone wires, with the signal carried by powerlines and house wiring, as well as with electrical “diathermal” cooking and various other gadgets that might allow farmers to consumer even more electricity with advantage. He also supposes that city farming might make a comeback, pointing to people doing farming-type things inBrooklyn. There might be 100,000 “city farmers,” Haystead supposes. Trees are a good crop. The president has them on 400 of his 1400 acres at Hyde Park. Without reforestation of lots such as these, America would run out of timber eventually! Trials and Errors Mr. Janeway is in New York City, or was, back in January, when he wrote this. Mr Janeway supposes that the American consumer is becoming jaded, because he has all the things he needs. Therefore, manufacturers resort to “billboard engineering,” persuading people to buy things through ever more effective advertising and pointless improvements, for example, in the “streamlined, chrome-plated, high-speed family automobile,” which American families demand in spite of congestion and designs that make engines and tires inaccessible, so that special tools are required for elementary repairs. Advertising is awful, and so are American consumers and American manufacturers! It will all come to a bad end! This brings us to the point that Mr. Janeway is making, that in the future we will be dependent on exports, and of course foreign consumers, such as those in China and Brazil, to pick woo examples of foreign lands where people are poor and benighted, will not want chrome plating and special tools, and so America’s competitors will get all of the business, as we have “gadgeted ourselves” out of the market. Mr. Janeway helpfully explains the relevance of this discussion of chrome automobiles to the subject at hand, which is the machine tool industry. Our machine tools are too complicated and break down too often, with their multiple settings and speeds and the like that no-one ever uses. Give Mr. Janeway a good old fashioned lathe, any day! Other things the hapless Chinese need: small steel plants integrated with crane factories. (Just for example, the point being that the poor Chinese will not need large steel mills, but might want geegaw factories alongside.) They might also want synthetic oil made of Chinese coal, or instructions on how to farm, irrigate, and protect against flooding, at which they are notoriously bad. And how about this idea? China could procure Chilean copper, if Brazil vacated the market by taking up the manufacture of aluminum out of native bauxite? According to my inquiries, Mr. Janeway is 30, and not 17, as you might suppose. The Fortune Survey Is on the future organisation of the United Nations. When I opened this number to a letters page where a Wisconsin forester was writing to cancel his subscription because the paper was using too much paper, I was inclined to think that the world had found one forester of the kind of whinging precision that I more usually associate with indoor labour. I wish now to retract my interior criticisms. Oh, and I retract again, as, page over, it turns out that they asked other questions. Who should be President? Roosevelt, it turns out, though per Republicans, it ought to be Dewey, and a hardy Corporal’s Guard of 8% of Republicans think that it should be MacArthur, leaving me appalled anew that the General allows his name to be floated in this way. If has no capacity for embarrassment, should he really be directing the war effort in a major theatre? Although the presence of young Mountbatten in another… The major postwar political issue, by the way, is to be unemployment, as we gaze into the crystal ball to predict future opinions about things to be done even further into the future. Today’s big “The Job Before Us” feature is about the invasion. The greatest battle is still before us, and the bloody fiasco at Dieppe shows just how thoroughly it can go wrong. A feature on “Invasion Tactics” shows the obstacles to be overcome. I am struck by the detail of air attacks on enemy radiolocation stations. It gives me a better sense of what the planes that you service are doing, and of what Bill and David and their subcontractors are accomplishing down on the water, and what we might be able to do --will be able to do-- for our friend after the war. and, of course, there are all those details about the sanguinary exercise that is to be the invasion. “Retreat from the Pentagon” I sure hope my photocopies are legible. Despite the title, this is about reconversion, and the costs to industry. It is also forecasting a deflationary gap when American consumers can no longer finance purchases out of the current income that they lose when they leave war work. I suppose that all of the talk of a "postwar depression" necessarily implies a movement from price inflation to price deflation, as after the last war. I know that I talked confidently a moment ago about price inflation in the context of the postwar bust, and now I find myself disagreeing with Fortune, but I think I will point, again, to the coal miners and stick to my guns. Short of reintroducing slavery, you cannot raise production and restore employment in an industry that labour is abandoning without increasing wages, or pushing unemployment to such heights that people will welcome the chance to work in the mines. And considering how high unemployment got in the Distressed Areas in the 1930s... Well, that thought is enough to put me off my lunch. “One War Boom is Over” The machine tools boom is over. The paper proposes that we should be concerned, since manufacturing busts follow machine tool busts. This is, however, a company profile-type story, and we do not want to be upsetting the shareholders. Monarch Industries, specifically, hopes that another boom has just begun. Clearly it will not be in machine tools, for prospects for demand are poor. 700,000 of the US’s 1.75 million machine tools were made in the last 3 years. It is going to be very difficult for current models of machine tools to sell. Fortunately, Monarch is in good shape financially thanks to putting money away during the war years. It has learned a great deal about making various kinds of non-machine tools as a result of war contracts. The boom it hopes for is (mostly) in non machine tool areas. Other possibilities include the miraculous entry of entirely new machine tools onto the market, and a return to the Depression-era cliché about dumping current production into the ocean in order to create new markets, which is hardly serious, although it at least ties in with Mr. Janeway’s column in a way that makes Mr. Luce look less of an idiot for paying him. Guided by nothing more than my unshakeable dislike of Mr. Janeway’s oracular act, I plump for the miraculous new machine tools, which will be even more complicated “universal” tools with even more speeds and settings. That said, instinctive dislike will not guide my investment decisions, obviously, and I will stick with electrical engineering, preferably close to home. The Bituminous Coal Institute answers a common question: can the children of coal miners be educated? The Institute is happy to answer that, yes, they can. State and federal standards require that they permit coal miners’ children be educated, and the Institute hardly begrudges them that more than a little! Indeed, coal miners’ children are even free to go on to university and community college, if they can pay for it! These really are appalling ads, and not appalling in the sense of the ill-judged British ones I sniped at earlier. The Institute seems unaware of just how callous the industry that it supports comes off here. Miners will always be captive to their employers so long as they value their jobs more than the dubious prospects of the freedom of the water margin, but it is unbecoming of the industry to gloat over it.

I'm glad that Squicky Eugenicist BDSM World isn't on the map. It ought to be, but then the PCs will want to go there, and you'll have to DM it.

ostblogging Technology, February 1943, II: To The Gates of the Pure Land * Wing Commander R_. C_. Q.C., D.F.C. L_ House, Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire. My Dear Father: I hope you will forgive my impertinence in taking over your correspondence with your cousin again, dear Father-(Out-of)-Law. Uncle is travelling in the East with the redoubtable Wong Lee, and someone here must congratulate you, as I am told that your decoration must otherwise go unpublicised for now. Uncle is also frantic to continue his campaign on the Earl's patience in respect to electrical engineering versus "little steel." And he has, perhaps, noticed that confinement is wearing on me and that I would welcome this opportunity to make myself useful. More on Uncle's itnerary. He will be touring facilities in Buffalo on the Boeing matter, but I do not think anyone takes that seriously. The real meat of the trip, it turns out, is a visit to some Heaven-forsaken suburb of Detroit. There is talk of Uncle Henry taking over a white elephant that one of his business partners ran up for an Army contract and cannot now "make go." Fortunately, his son will have the last say in that matter, and Uncle and Edgar have an understanding. Uncle will be returning via Chicago and Vancouver, so you can expect to hear more of our mutual friend, as well as from the yards, on the subject of a mad owner, dictating minute changes to the refit of Sparrow. Needless to say, Uncle is quite beside himself at the prospect of going to war. He will not admit it, but he is jealous of your DFC! I should probably slip and say something about boys being boys if I went on about it. You and he are now definitively pencilled in as guests of honour in Santa Clara for the holiday season of 1946, amongst our family heroes from the wars returning. I hope that you shall be available, as, Heaven willing, your grandchildren will be there. Time, 14 February 1944 International "Devious Dipomacy" &etc. The paper is upset at Izvestia being upset at the Pope. Poland is at the root of it, the paper says, but it approves of various measures to promote regional autonomy --if they go through. "Brighton Speaks" And says that the Tories are in trouble. Germany: "Situations Wanted" Several "Situations Wanted" ads in German newspapers are parsed as evidence that Germany is collapsing. Would that it were so. "Squandered Lives" The paper notes the famines in Honan and Kwangtung. It is suggested that "skyrocketing prices" have played a role, as well as blockades, crop failures and hoarding, while international relief agencies "must pay prohibitive prices" for food. It is suggested that Chungking can do something by prompt and leaderly action. Father writes (see below) that it would accomplish rather more by issuing silver until the rich are willing to part with their rice. But if there is one thing that Chiang and his cronies will not do. . . The paper also notes Madam Sun's recent statement. War News "The Great Test is Ahead" The paper is pleased by the cheap capture of Kwajalein, but quotes General Marshall to the effect that people still do not appreciate the full magnitude of the 'great test ahead.' Rumour has it that the people of Kwajalein fought for the Japanese because they believed that the Army would perpetrate a pogrom, and the paper is willing to put it on record that the General has received protests in regard to the use of flamethrowers at Tarawa. The paper also credits 2000lb bombs dropped by land-based bombers. The Navy, "with its new carrier strength and antiaircraft fire, was no longer nervous about land-based aircraft." We are referred to another article, on Secretary Forrestal's annual report, which notes that the "45,000 ton" Iowas now carry "148 antiaircraft barrels, ranging from 20mm up to five-inch dual mountings." Monte Cassino, and not the defences opposite the Nettuno bridgehead, is the "stone wall" of the Italian campaign. German blockade runners are on the loose. Those brave, brave captains and their crews. If only they were not taking war materiel to Japan!(**) The paper quotes General Montgomery on being "fed up" with the war. Germans are not sending fighters up against American bombers. Berlin is "dying" under air attack. Stilwell and Mountbatten are fighting about the Ledo Road. Father has now met Stilwell. His opinion, he says, is of Marshall and the President, not Stilwell, since knowing that Marshall put Stilwell in charge in Burma tells Father everything he needs to know about their true opinion of Chiang and his army. the Marine Corps Women's Reserve held its first birthday this week. They are college girls and very spit-and-polish (but meek in the face of "real" Marines), but still girls, with feminine accoutrements everywhere and men trying to "crash" their social functions. After Valentine's Day, imprints of lipstick will no longer be tolerated on Vmail. It "ruins" the automatic feeders, which must be stopped and cleaned after very pass. I somehow suspect exaggeration --and a girlish fad. Girls and machinery, you know? Domestic The President is probably going to run again. A House bill for a $2 billion tax increase reached the President's desk, in place of his own $10 billion and Wilkie's $16 billion. Wilkie argues that since the national debt will be $300 billion, and annual interest alone will be $6 billion, almost as high as the entire 1934 budget, so that we must have high taxes in order to "save our standard of living in the future." I smell a rat. What happened to the good old Californian Republicans of old? (Not counting the Engineer or his father, of course!) The President signed the new veteran's bonus bill. Only $300. You will know that Uncle will not be satisfied until the bonus is higher than a ten percent down payment on one of Uncle Henry's five-thousand-dollar houses, but some progress. Representative John Rankin, Democrat of Mississippi, thinks that only communists, the "tax escaping fortune of Marshal Field III," and "Walter Winchell --alias no telling what" want soldiers to vote if it means violating the sacred constitution with the Federal ballot. Invited to elaborate on Winchell's "alias," Rankin called Winchell a "little kike" on the floor of the House. Mr. Rankin hates Coloureds, rich people, especially liberal rich people, Jews and many other groups to be named later. And aliasses. The House seems to have more tolerance for boors than I do in my house! "Mahout" The GOP will win in 1944, unless they don't. Credit (blame) will partly go Harrison Spangler. which is why he gets the four-page cover story in this number. Senator Vandenberg endorses General MacArthur, because there is no reason whatsoever that a 65 year-old divorced bachelor who sends tanks after veterans cannot be President, and not because Senator Vandenberg is a horrible old woman who has persuaded himself that spoiling Governor Dewey's chances will somehow open his way to the Presidency. I almost feel sad for Colonel McCormick and General MacArthur, who are so confident in their intelligence and influence, and so readily duped. "Hunger Postponed" Last summer, writing from his 1500 acre farm near Mansfield, Ohio, novelist Louis Bromfield predicted famine in February. It was delayed by a prior engagement, and has rescheduled for April. Senator Lodge is going to war. Or, possibly, is just not comfortable in his own skin. Henry Wallace is an idiot, Mackenzie King is a snake. Canadians cannot get spirits, thanks to rationing and shortages, and, more importantly, the artificial rubber programme. Politicians and the press join to worry that cutting back to a 48 hour week is essentially a return to the Great Depression. Science "Engineer-Architect" Hermann Herrey, "no starry-eyed planner," proposes to solve Manhattan's soon-to-be-fatal congestion problems by completely reorganising its street grid and land use. The key would be an eighty-foot high, six-level "belt highway," at an estimated cost of $250 million. "All this, thinks Herrey, would involve no volcanic disruption of city life." The Press: "The Times Gets Ready" The New York Times is preparing for the future by purchasing a radio station, and placing it under a man who is in charge of managing the paper's adoption of facsimile distribution of newscopy via radio to "a receiver in the reader's living room." Uncle will be beside himself at the prospect of dealers selling such an elaborate electrical gadget into homes so soon after the deep-freezer. Business America has an official oil policy, which is to expand its stake in Arab oil. The Western Hemisphere current supplies 88% of the United Nations' petroleum needs, and reserves are being depleted faster than they can be discovered. Manhattan-based businessmen have "[F]ormed the China-America Council of Commerce and Industry, chairmanned by Thomas J. Watson, International Business Machines Corp. president and global good-willer." It is supposed that the U.S. will supply two-thirds of China's presumably enormous postwar imports. Because of course the first thing that the Chinese people will do when peace comes is spend foreign exchange on American typewriters! (J.) Magnin's and Bullock's are to merge, A sad day. As you will have heard, the NYSE finally went into the black last year. Credit The artificial rubber programme is in trouble. The easiest path to production is via industrial alcohol. The plants making rubber out of alcohol made out of grain are well ahead of production targets, but will be halted in their tracks by the growing grain shortage. The petroleum-derived process relies on butylene made at the 100-octane cracking plants, meaning that it is in direct competition with 100-octane gas aviation gas manufacture, while the promised butyl manufacture[?], the only viable substitute for rubber in inner tubes apart from Du Pont's small neoprene production, has not emerged at all. Butyl is produced at a reaction that cannot take place above 150 degrees below zero, and must then be heated to 150 above. Production is negligible. Allotments of civilian tyres have fallen below what "Rubber Boss Dewey" once called the "starvation diet" of 30 million," and prewar stockpiles of both tyres and natural rubber are used up. Truckers actually talk of a transportation collapse." Related, the paper notices the formation of the National Federation of American Shipping, upon which subject Uncle has bombarded the Earl with enough optimism for a sequel to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Education Various schemes to persuade high school students to finish their degrees before entering war work are discussed. Cleveland is the national leader, somehow managing to have more students enrolled last September than the year before, while at the other extreme, San Francisco has all but given up, handing out a full semester's equivalent of credits for "war work." Texas, which after WWI banned all public school second language education as divisive, is now moving towards bilingual education in Spanish. Art Some "primitive" watercolour paintings done between 1815 and 1825 by a "Miss E. Willson" has come into the hands of a New York dealer from an unspecified collection and been sold for surprising sums with surprising speed. I am not sure why this story is in the paper, but my eyebrows cannot rise any further at the personal details. Ah, well, it is Uncle's subscription, and I read out of the strictest sense of duty. Decision, by Edward Chodorov, is earnestly left wing but terrible, and its racist, war-profiteering Senator villain leads into the next story, about former isolationist, John T. Flynn, who publishes, with Doubleday, As We Go Marching. This short but powerful work discovers the fact that an unwieldy public debt is the true cause of Fascism (or vice versa). The paper asks whether the example of Sweden and Baldwin's Britain does not suggest that the debt can be managed "dynamically," and hypothetically supposes that Mr. Flynn would give an answer that would seem to imply (no, really, that is the drift of the article!) that Americans just have not the brains of Swedes. I do not know about this, but I am having some difficulty understanding whether it is Fascism, Communism, or even an excess of Democracy which leads to high public debt, or vice versa. All that I can be sure of is that public debt threatens my future prosperity, and no amount of mathematical mumbo-jumbo by advanced British theorists will change this future-fact. What, after all, has mathematical mumbo-jumbo ever given us? Flight, 17 February 1944 Leaders The paper thinks that the Bishop of Chichester is an amiable old fuddy-duddy for being worked up about the bombing of Berlin. At the same time, it is a dangerous argument to say that the bombing is justified on the grounds of shortening the war alone. Where else might such an argument lead? Manganese. Nikopol. Manganese manganese manganese. This has been your quota of "manganese" for this number. War in the Air All aircraft are on tactical work in Italy this week as the Germans counterattack. The paper approves of using strategic bombers for tactical work when the alternative is losing the war. Men! Always so logical. (To let you in on a little secret, Sir, that is woman-talk for "silly.") Buried in the article is a discussion of whether or not airpower can be counted upon to cut off a battlefield from reinforcement. James (who is leaving again next week) says that someone is having a conversation through the press that he is also having in private. I assume that this is about the Invasion air plan? "Halifax Development" It is good to hear of the Hercules replacing the Merlin to good effect, instead of vice-versa, as I was feeling a little sorry for it. "Jet versus Airscrew" The dreamy Mr. G. Geoffrey Smith contributes again. At least, I assume that he is dreamy. The paper certainly has a crush on him! Or am I guilty of "recycling" Uncle's joke? "Shock Waves at Sonic Speed" Apparently, the wings of aircraft designed to fly at around the speed of sound have to be specially designed, and this might be hard. That seems to conflict with Captain Mcintyre's "next few years." Here and There General Smut's "personal" Avro York is actually to be property of the Department of Defence. Captain Macintyre of Scottish Aviation believes that civil aviation will within a few years achieve 700mph. "Flak" A precis of an article on the German antiaircraft arm from the German press. They sound very professional and well-equipped, which is depressing considering that this is only what the censor allows them to reveal. The paper's correspondence page continues to be very long and full of very well-worked up papers on subjects that make me wish my boy were born and grown up enough that I could be watching over his shoulder right now as he discovers these things for himself. I'm sorry, I know that sounded broody, but I do not retract a word of it, and I'm crying a little right now, because when I think of these boys --and I think they are boys, to write so earnestly and so intelligently about jets and the law of reaction, and the (lack of) potential of broadcast electrical power, I cannot help also thinking about the great and terrible pending event that has them penned up together in their boredom as winter turns to the spring of 1944. The Economist, 19 February 1944 Leaders “Chickens to Roost” “the sky is black with chickens coming home to roost at the Ministry of Fuel and Power.” The miners are upset that the minimum wage award did not lead to a general increase in miner wages. Speaking of impertinence, they make much of the fact that they are paid significantly less than workers in engineering for more difficult and dangerous work. The paper grants that they have something of a point, but not much of one, considering that output per man is low and falling, and that if the miners want more money they should work harder. But now they have been all cozened and indulged, and will not see the iron logic. There must be nationalisation, and rationalisation, the closing of pits and the introduction of mechanisation, etc. The paper certainly knows a very great deal about coal mining, for men who "toil not, neither do they spin." Well, cloth, anyway. A marvellous tale of how the world should be is quite another matter! “Outlaw Europe” German occupation and oppression has caused a breakdown in the European social order, moreso in the East than the West, admittedly, but it is in France that people are demanding an end to economic dominance by the “two hundred families.” They’re going to go communist, is what the paper is saying. “The Principles of Trade –III: The New Liberalism” Rereading Uncle's diaries, I gather that he loathes this series as a grand waste of time and paper. I see why. Notes of the Week “Russia and Finland” The paper thinks that Russia should offer Finland a moderate peace, as much to undercut German propaganda as for any other reason. Russia-Poland, electoral reform, educational reform, India, pay-as-you-earn, Latins. “Employment Policy” The paper senses an incipient Great Surrender on full employment, which the Government looks to abandon as a fever dream releasing us from its clutch with the morning light. “The Size of the Market” looks at the notion that Britain cannot have the kind of consumer goods-led prosperity that exists in America because its market is too small, and rejects it. American Survey “Only Fear Itself” Our Washington Correspondent attended a meeting of a private professional and business women’s club somewhere in the bedroom suburbs/market garden belt part of Washington. The ladies who lunched talked about the postwar. They are worried about the future. A doctor’s wife was convinced that her husband would have no practice to return to, as the non-mobilised doctors would have aggrandised all the patients, and because of socialised medicine. Apropos of not very much, Mrs. Murphy says that she may begin to "try again" this summer. I do not suppose you want to hear these details, sir, but I want to stress just how important Uncle Henry's "health care" organisation is to families such as the Murphys. Mrs. Murphy may joke that she is going to keep on keeping on until she finally has her daughter, but the truth is that she was married in 1931, and was beginning to think that she would never be able to afford a second. Now she is quietly determined to accumulate babies as long as "she has a doctor," and all that implies. As she joins me in what passes for a constitutional in our condition, I got to field pointed questions about plans for the land between the creek and the park road, where the trees failed again this winter. She points out its suitability for houselots. I can hardly discuss Uncle's plans, but, word to the wise, I should like the Murphys to get an inside track. Back to the lunch meeting with OWC. Teachers and social workers are worried about juvenile delinquents, and there was a “difficult discussion:” about “racial facilities” in local schools. Perhaps, OWC concludes, these fears are over-done? The World Overseas Ulster’s old unemployment problems are likely to reassert themselves after the war; Spain’s autarky is working to the extent that the country’s economy has not collapsed. Germany’s coal and steel situation suggests problems in the mines not dissimilar to those of Britain. (Or America.) The Business World “Long Term Housing Policy” Planning will save us. Uncle claims that building more houses will save us. Perhaps there could be both? Business Notes Tramp rates are up; Canadian Pacific finally pays a dividend; Woolworths’ is doing better than expected; there are glimmers of hope in the Northern Rhodesian copper mining labour situation. Time, 21 February 1944 War The Germans counterattack under the cover of winter weather in Italy with the support of their siege artillery. All German men not yet mobilised of the classes of 1884--1893 are now called up. Swiss sources report that the Germans are trying to squeeze out another 900,000 men for military service. The paper has brotherly love for General Holland Smith of the Marines. (Yes, I am being facetious.) The paper ridicules German radio for announcing the sinking of Ranger. The paper feels that it is time to salute the Russian General Staff, which it choooses to write"Shtab." Beats describing them as "lanky," "gangly," "salty," or "dark," I guess. TheTribune elects to run the story of an air raid that led to the loss of B-24s "Fyrtle Myrtle" and "Golden Gator." The former was so-called because it carried a new father and an expectant one, and was lost without survivors. "Golden Gator" flew on to crash later, and four men escaped. In order to help the paper's audience better imagine the fate of the fathers of "Fyrtle Myrtle," the Tribune's correspondent dwells at great length on the gruesome fate of the other seven crewmen of "Golden Gator." The Tribune is published in Chicago, "C-h-i-c-a-g-o," not "T-o-k-y-o."[***] Britain continues to arrange a "counterbloc" in Western Europe against a presumptive Russian rival block in the East. Britons are told to prepare for the tension of the "nip and tuck" of the invasion by taking a rest day, lying about in a lighted room with an open window with some diverting reading. It sounds heavenly, but perhaps not the best tone to take just now? You certainly do not sound as though you have any time for "rest in the incumbent position!" Turkey is still neutral. The paper notices conflict between the Soongsand Dr. Kung. Disease follows famine in India. the paper is surprised that the excitable Latins of Costa Rica are not going to have a civil war, after all. . Domestic Our Correspondent in British Columbia reports that the property of Japanese coastal residents deported to the interior of the province has somehow fallen into the hands of the provincial government and will be disposed to the benefit of returning (White) veterans after reasonable expenses &tc, not least to cordially encourage said persons of Japanese descent to go elsewhere. No doubt this will work as well as countless would-be anti-Chinese boycotts over the years, and those whose wallets have unaccountably fattened will have to work all the harder to not look their returning former neighbours in the eye in years to come! Perhaps to wash out the taste of the story, we are told under the same dateline of a temporary relaxation of Canadian meat rationing. This may be greeted by general salivation, but is merely intended to dispose of a surplus caused by a backing-up of shipments intended for Britain. Oil and Russia dominate Washington discussions of foreign relations. The President has signed the repeal of the Exclusion Act. An end of an era here in Santa Clara... New Jersey politics are finally being cleaned up! Tax accountants do not know what they are doing! Theodore Bilbo is to be head of the Senate District (of Columbia) Committee. The City's Coloured population is apprehensive that he is ill-suited for office, especially as his first act was an order for "gangsters" to get out of town, when, in fact, Washington's crimes are all political, not personal. The paper is puzzled. Governor Bricker visited Washington this week to explain that he would be the most anti-New-Deal-President of all! Uncle says that he is "auditioning for Vice-President." The paper is warming to Wendell Wilkie, cooling to Henry Wallace. Your Member of Parliament is back in Ottawa from the fighting to give a speech calling for more generous veteran's benefits after the war. Bad news for Halsey; Spruance is to be a full admiral. The paper is amazed by the amount of materiel $4 billion dollars will buy and move to "England" for the invasion, and tells a little story about US troops pumping out a manor house's flooded basement. Is this normal? Are many of the stately homes of England sitting on top of standing floods? I can imagine it, given how hard it is to get anything donehere on the carriage house, never mind Arcadia, but it cannot be good for the structure! The paper reports that while two years ago almost 50% of draftees had various technical skills, the current Selective Service call-up shows only 180 out of every 1000 having "usable skills." Secondary schools are now running preinduction courses to teach "fundamentals." Science, Press, Education, Arts A Swedish scientist believes that bacteria originating in the chemically-rich atmospheres of Jupiter, Mars or Venus might travel to Earth on meteorites. The paper proposes "Flu from Venus," and notes University of California's Charles P. Lipman's old claim to have found living bacteria in ancient meteorites. Long distance calling is getting easier in America. Already robot voices tell callers the time and weather, while switchboards automatically route local calls. Now, Bell Telelphone Laboratories shows a mechanical brain which enables long distance calls to be put through without human assistance. Already in use in Philadelphia, it will spread across the nation after the war, when the equipment is available. "Eventually, [engineers] believe, it will be possible for a customer to dial an out-of-town call on his home or office phone." This will not eliminate the need for operators, says the paper. In fact, the number of operators has increased as telephone use has increased; but it does "seem to foreshadow a day when men will seldom hear an operator's voice." Orestes H. Caldwell, editor of Electronic Industries, thinks that railroad train crews need two-way radios. I am mildly amazed that they do not have them already, but Caldwell's point is that there is enormous room for railways to buy things from the industries that subscribe to Mr. Caldwell's trade magazine. Perhaps even music and news will be broadcast in "dismal railroad waiting rooms." Dr. Hattie Alexander of Manhattan loses only 25% of her patients to influenzal meningitis thanks to the new sulfa drugs. The Air Surgeon's Office encourages the use of benzedrine to maintain crew alertness on long missions, and of course, it is well known as a cramming aid and as the "pep in the German Army's pep," but the Surgeon now cautions that people should use no more than 30mg of benzedrine per week. To end a benzedrine alert, one should take a mild sedative. The New Yorker will no longer let its copy appear in Reader's Digest. Marshall Field III has dismissed the editor he brought in to found the Chicago Sun. The first Coloured newsman has been accredited to the President's regular press conference, "light-skinned HarryMcAlpin of the Atlantic Daily World." The US Army is running correspondence courses for frontline soldiers ranging from grammar to electrical courses. Colonel Spaulding, who runs it, is one of the "fastest sandwich and coffee racers" in the halls of the Pentagon, and uses particularly colourful slang substitutes for profanities. Business Retail sales in 1943 were an all time record $63.3 billion, up 10% above 1942,up 64%, or 23.2% adjusted, above the 1935--39 average. The most amazing thing, the paper says, is that the numbers are not higher. With total income payments to U.S. people zooming to $142 billion, more than twice 1939, it was expected that Americans would run out and spend all of this, causing unprecedented price inflation. "People can still sometimes outsmart the economists." Justice Thurman Arnold has found new ways to pursue his old practice of breaking preventive patents, though the decision seems likely to be reversed. Advertisers are advised to avoid ads that annoy servicemen. Frank A. Pearson and Don Paarlberg think that the "the U.S. is committed to the impossible task of feeding more people and animals on a better diet than the land can provide." All sorts of things can lead to disaster in 1944, and probably will, unless Americans promptly adopt an abstemious diet of cereals, beans and potatoes. This can be achieved by letting food prices rise. On the one hand, so long as the price of oranges be allowed to rise with beans, I encourage this line of thinking. On the other hand, if Professor Pearson and his former graduate student thinks that the high rangeland and low marshes of the Snake and Columbia should go into beans and potatoes, I have hoes, shovels and bucket yokes ready for them. Watch out for rattlesnakes! Speaking of, Congress wants to run industrial deomobilisation. The WPB has cut the supply of glass jars to the salmon roe canning industry. I was not aware that this was even an industry, but apparently it is used as bait in the inland trout fishery. Perhaps this is news for you or your wife? Flight, 24 February 1944 Leaders The paper is uncomfortable about the bombing of Monte Cassino, but judges that it was probably for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. Truk happened. I know this well, as only a day after James returned from Los Angeles, he was called away again to fly off to meet Intrepid at Pearl Harbor. Another carrier attacked, another steering gear failure. The Economist, 26 February 1944 Leaders “Showing the Flag” The Prime Minister’s review of the progress of the war in the Commons was a great set piece. Also, apparently, there will be an invasion. I am also taking away a certain pessimism about extravagant promises of a rapid end to the war? But Uncle points out that this is what Mr. Janeway says, so it must be wrong. The paper thinks that flying boats are so practical, and will hold its breath until it turns blue if you disagree! (Again, I am treading on Uncle's toes because I see his point.) War in the Air In the paper's version of the Truk attack, which may be a bit of trans-Atlantic churlishness, the operation was a bit of a letdown, as the Japanese Combined Fleet had withdrawn from the harbour, depriving Admiral Spruance of his chance of finishing the job that some say he left half-done at Midway. (And by some, I mean at the very least a certain Admiral's pet sub-lieutenant. Uncle, in his usual contrarian way, is a bigger Spruance booster by the hour that he spends with young Lieutenant (j.g.) A., although an unfortunate episode involving a porcelain vase of sentimental value may have intruded itself. I am inclined to forgive the boy a bit. It cannot be easy to grow so quickly into such size, with all joints and limbs poking out untended in all directions. Which perhaps gives you a misleading impression of the young man, Sir, as he is quite handsome for a boy of his age --says Grace, looking down her nose at the vast gulf of four years!) The paper notices, of course, the American daylight raids. Here and There Captainn J. H. White of BOAC is to be commended for making three journeys totalling 2400 miles in the air in 9 hours of flying time in complete darkness recently. So where was he going? N.B. Never mind, the last number of Time for the month describes its new Stockholm bureau, formed by a man flown to Sweden from Britain by a Mosquito. That's one. C. A. H. Pollitt, "The Flying Boat: Will it Survive?" No. "The Turbosupercharger" A very brief paper. As James says, this could be a very important technology for the future of marine motorships. I am not sure that aviation-suitable installations have much to teach marine engineers, tho'. Certainly this paper does not any new light! (Except to carefully notice the importance of making sure that the air-fuel mixture in each cylinder is the same. I imagine that would be quite a difficulty with these new engines.) "The World's Best Aircraft" I am reminded of the one about lifting yourself up by your own bootstrap here. First Flying does a paper about the world's best aircraft, and Flightexcerpts it. Now Flight replies. Will Flying reply to Flight? Anything to fill pages while we wait on the first buds and continental invasions of spring! Oh, my summary. It turns out that actually British planes are best! Behind the Lines The Japanese have put a new fighter in service. It flew at Rabaul. Nothing else is known about the new fighter. Oh, come on, paper! German boys may now be air force cadets! (In other late breaking news, Columbus discovers America!) A Vichy paper reports that the Germans have developed an infrared spotlight to support their AA. I hope for the boys' sake that it is true, but common sense makes me doubt it. Karl Zeppelin claims that the recent attacks on the German air industry have had no effect, and the apparent shortage of German fighters is due to stockpiling against the invasion. Or it might be due to changeover to new kinds of aircraft. As meanwhile the Germans are stepping up the use of FW190s and Bf109s as night fighters, I think that it is safe to say that the graveyard has met another whistler. The Japanese minister responsible blames "bottlenecks" for holding back Japanese aircraft production. Having heard all of this before often enough, I am supposing that we should expect vast fleets of Japanese aircraft in, say, 1947. Too bad you started the war in 1941, then! C. G. Volkes, "Air Filtration" A worthy subject belaboured worthily, wearily, wanly. It probably says it all that one of the illustrations is of the air filter off of a Boulton Paul Defiant. Notes of the Week “Unconditional Surrender” the paper wants more clarity with regards to what this means, to encourage the Germans to surrender already. There is to be a by-election, quite exciting! Correspondents at Anzio were censured by the army, quite outrageous. Finns and the Balkans, also Poles and the Argentines are excitable. (Uncle says this when he cannot be bothered to parse the substance of the dispute, and so do I.) The British Medical Association is cautiously welcoming of “socialised medicine.” The Federation of British Industries supports a better world. There is to be another call-up of men from industry for national service in Britain. All the men have already been earmarked, but still… Also, in America some are being released for, or even compelled to enter, industrial employment. “The Use of Resources” Has the commitment of so many resources to aircraft production at the expense of warlike stores been wise? Time will tell. American Survey Our Correspondent in Ohio reports on “Less War Work.” In the Cleveland area, raw material and spare part surpluses are appearing in war industries, and there have been layoffs and hours-worked cuts in some plants and in shipyards. There are even surpluses of certain classes of materials, such as tanks. The country, it is said, needs to get ready for peace. The Coloured population is even revisiting the idea that it is “last to be hired, first to be fired.” Race relations in Cleveland are, however, on the whole quite good, not least because there are not that many grounds to complain of not being hired on the basis of colour or ethnic background. When everyone can get a job, there is not much racial discrimination in hiring! I am only a woman, and I can see the case. I do suppose that it is going without saying that this could change. The World Overseas “The Northern Flank” Scandinavia is doing relatively well out of occupation, all things considered. “Malnutrition in Dublin” After our Dublin correspondent’s explanation of the brilliant plan to use higher school fees to discourage the obnoxious excess of highly educated graduates over suitable jobs, it does not come as a surprise to read this headline. One Professor Fearon has now done a statistical study to put the phenomena on a firm scientifc basis, concluding that malnutrition is a serious matter in larger families(!). Our Dublin Correspondent has still not heard that Modest Proposal was a parody. I wish he would ask himself just why there are large families in Dublin when the labouring occupation will barely support them. Who does he think provides for orphans, if not their kin? The Business World “The Outlook for Tobacco” Is wonderful. This is the true “inverse elastic” product. The higher the prices go, the higher goes consumption! Remarkably, people smoke more when they are worried about their finances. Or not remarkably, at all. Business Notes “Looted Gold” The United Nations warns neutral countries not to accept German payments in gold which does not belong to them. Profits are fine. Sir Leighton Seager, reporting to the Chamber of Shipping, hopes that buoyant international trade will carry the British merchant marine forward in the world to come. “Railway Returns” are high as people take profit, concerned about the postwar outlook. “Research in Industry” is good. There needs to be more than lip service, though. “Chinese Exchange” Attention is drawn to the parlous state of the Chinese monetary situation. Specifically, inflation is eating away at the incomes of those in Chungking who depend on foreign remittances in paper money, and now adjustments have accordingly been announced. I hate to confess to being wounded by your stringencies on the risk that Fat Chow is taking, but here is our defence. The reply will relieve some distress there, at least so long as the United States dollar still passes in the heart of Sechuan Province. Time, 28 February 1944 War Sun was seen in Moscow this week. "If spring is here, can the second front be far behind?" Muscovite: "Yes." Another byelection defeat for the Conservative candidate, a Cavendish running in the old family seat. The paper does not suggest how this could never happen in America, so I do not have to throw it down in disgust. The Germans are making rubber out of dandelions. "U.S. Rubber Development Corporation" discovers that the best way to get rubber out of the Brazilian jungles is to pay Brazilian gatherers enough money. As opposed to their other idea, which was apparently some version of 'scientific management.' The bombing of the monastery of Monte Cassino has left a bad taste in people's mouths. The paper is amused by the way that the Brazilians put a prominent American critic of the Republican persuasion in jail and were amazed to receive a diplomatic protest. Marshal Sugiyama and Admiral Nagumo are out as Japanese chiefs of staff after the attack on Truk, covered at slightly greater length elsewhere in the paper. Stilwell, MacArthur, Chennault and Nimitz are arguing Pacific strategy via the press. (And even the Pentagon, we hear.) James points out to me that in this latest round, Admiral Nimitz suggests the need for a landing in the Philippines. Presumably MacArthur agrees, so on to Manila? Eniwetok and Engebi fall to amphibious assault. German bombers might have penetrated to London by using air-dropped tin foil (actually, would aluminium not be better, or am I confused?) to defeat radiolocation systems. James points out good news for Uncle. It should be possible to "filter" out these returns electronically, giving the electrical engineers their own version of the good old "shells versus armour" game! The massive American daylight air attacks are reported. The paper has so much purely Platonic, brotherly love for General Wilson that it makes him this week's cover story. Also a fav with the paper, General Rotmistrov, and "rough and rugged" Lewis Brereton. His job is "to umbrella" the invasion, in preparation for a projected peacetime assignment verbing words for the paper. The paper is not impressed by the outcome of the Battle of Arakan, a minor sideshow where only small Japanese forces are likely to be engaged, and where truly heavy fighting will have to wait until after the end of the war in Europe. The paper considers it news that Lieutenant Kong Wau Kau is flying a P-51B in 8th AAF Fighter Command and has just scored his first kill. Because it is news, unfortunately. Domestic Administration and Congress still fighting over who gets to run demobilisation. And subsidy bills, and the tax bill. Polish WACs, sent to America by the Polish Government-in-Exile, impress everyone with their feminine wiles, which will presumably convert the US Polish community to supporting the Government-in-Exile against the Russians. Because that will be hard. US farmers took in $19 billion, up $3.5 billion on 1942. Estimated carry-over profits are $12.5 billion. Economists warned of a runaway land boom. (The proposition being that we will spend our profits on more land so that we can grow more oranges to feed the --wait, there is a flaw in this plan, for which see this month's Fortune.) Instead, they are saving the money for reinvestment in homes and tractors so that we can live better and grow more oranges with less work later. Damn you, farmers, with your rationality! I want my price inflation! Several prominent Democrats have made anti-Administration statements of one or another sort. Straws in the wind, blowing down the roads where the Wilkie caravan winds its way from event to event. Senator Burton has joined the race to be Vice-President. (Although the paper pretends that it is a Presidential campaign.) Southerners spread rumours of "Push 'Em Clubs," in which Coloureds compete to jostle and push white folk in the street. The Army Specialized Training Program just got combed out of 110,000 young men,"stunn[ing] college presidents." Only about 30,000 taking advanced courses in medicine, dentistry and engineering were left untouched, and 5000 enrolled in the programme in spite of still being 17. Colleges without contracts for woman students were particularly hard hit, and serve the chauvinists right! The Navy is so hard up for officers that it will commission 22 Coloured officers. They will probably serve in segregated ships. Science, Etc. A lie detector caught out Mrs. Edna Hancock of Brooklyn in perjury last week when she accused Mr. Murray Goldman of rape. It turns out that Mrs. Hancock is a slut, the paper cheerfully concludes. I usually leave it to Great Uncle to send out dacoits to avenge the injustices of the world, but I am meditating a change in my usual abstention. A machine which first cracks the shell of a walnut, then injects a mixture of oxygen and acetylene prior to passing the nut on an assembly line under a flame, causing an explosion which separates shell and meat is predictably unimpressive to the walnut industry, but the inventor gamely carries it over to the sugar beet industry, which needs a device to split up beet seed clusters. Here, apparently, his ingenuity will be rewarded, and soon sugar beets will be able to economically compete with sugar cane. The fact that we are already growing sugar beets in competition with sugar cane is ... Well, I have long since given up on understanding the business of farming in America except insofar as it rebounds on our returns. Hmm. Exploded oranges? Perhaps a cheap juicing method? The presidents of Hunter College and the University of Chicago are in the news today. Both are cracking down on their faculty, but in quite different ways. President Shuster of Hunter wants them to stop saying outrageous things ("communism is good," "Negroes are an inferior race") to the impressionable girls under his care, while President Hutchins wants to rein in outside activity by faculty in various ways. Business Bernard Baruch's latest report on demobilization is out. Presenting it, Baruch's "junior partner," "shrewd oldster" John Milton Hancock said, "There is no need for a postwar depression." "Fine point students" find nothing new in the report, but that may be the point. What needs to be done is obvious. The question is, can we do it? Or something like that. I reread myself with satisfaction. I could write for the paper. Just sketch out an article, add adjectives until I crack, and it's done! No, wait, here I learn that Mr. Hancock is an "optimistic Ancient," and it would never have occurred to me to capitalise "Ancient." I have much to learn. In a transition first, the Gopher Ordnance Works are being torn down. 500 buildings, $69 million on 21,000 acres, built to make powder for the Allies, and never even operated. "You wouldn't believe it, but this cornfield was once a war plant." Eh. It is funnier in America. Uncle Henry is in the news. His partnership with Hughes to build a giant flying boat airliner, has just been bashed by the War Production Board. The paper likes the Brewster business, but I doubt it will hold its fire in the unlikely event he tries to build the Boeing ship there. Another Liberty has broken up, this one at the dock, fortunately. The paper is all over his talks with Venezuela. Frankly, this is the same business as the Hughes thing. He fobs the enthusiasts off by upping the ante, which is natural enough for him, anyway. Speaking of, Republican "Henry J. Kaiser for President" clubs are sprouting up. Seriously. Well, he is registered GOP, but I think the county has made its opinion of California Republicans clear enough. The state party will have to go another direction before it can expect a favourite son candidate to get very far on the national stage. Most embarrassingly, the paper describes his "245lb frame." the national stockpile of foreign wool is being liquidated, hopefully clearing the way for us to make a profit. Oh, dear. It can be hard sometimes for me to remember whether I am for or against free trade. Miscellany, Milestones, Radio, Etc. Charles Eugene Bedaux, "wily industrial engineer," has died of a self-administered overdose of sleeping powders. I know that you lack time for trivia, but have you heard the one about the trans-Saharan pipeline for edible oils? Because that was Bedaux. Frances Langford is touring the fronts with Bob Hope's USO Group. Which I mention only because I miss James so much, and have Embraceable You playing as I write. Aero Digest, 15 February 1944 "Look Here, Mr. Striker" It turns out that strikes in wartime are bad! "Aviation's Post-War Dillemma" Business could turn down for various reasons. Editorial: New bill proposed in Washington, something something bad news. Guest Editorial: William Thomas Piper (President, Piper Aircraft), "'Main Street in the Coming Air Age," If only someone builds airfields everywhere, people will fly everywhere! I cannot say that anyone reads Aero Digest for that stuff. Even the Roosevelt-hating can be got better elsewhere. They read it for the technical papers, and those are of limited interest. That said, Uncle is at least at the edges of that interest, and my obligation continues. So I notice a paper on "new uses of the electron microscope" in industry (checking the quality of raw material samples), followed by "Electronic Process of Plastic Bonded Molded Plywood." With a pageover Minneapolis Honeywell ad for electronic control systems for bombers, you might be forgiven for imagining a plywood plant run by an electronic brain, which would certainly interest you, Sir, given your plywood investments. However, it is just about the use of electronic heaters-at-a-distance to ensure even glue setting within the board. I am sure that you are aware of this. I cannot help wondering if this could be used in cooking? Perhaps it is sensing the waning of attention of even the most earnest, the paper launches a new "What's Ahead?" series. Aluminum to replace house shingles? Radio wave heating to assist in tin-can making? Diesel engines in trucks and cars? Lighter aluminum-made freight cars? A carrot-beet hybrid called the "wobbie?" Facsimile reproduction of newspapers in one's own living room is mentioned here, too. So is colour television, three dimensional television, and even "storing up" television for later use. That last -hmm. The paper's version of the aviation news frankly admits that the decision to stop painting B-17s is intended to bring up the production rate, admitting the rather obvious point that the decline in aircraft production in January to 8789 from 8802 is a disappointment, greater structure weight notwithstanding. This is sort of confirmed by the statement of C. E. Wilson of the Aircraft Production Board that the results were most gratifying, because the greatest increase in production came in combat units. If you have to look that hard for a silver lining.... In Aero Digest's world, jet propulsion is years away. Rear Admiral Portal (yes, as a matter of fact, and actually your boss's brother) is in Washington for talks about . . .things. James is supposed to fly to see him if he can get away from Intrepid."Things," of course means British carriers to the Pacific. In family matters, your youngest has applied for permission to take a road trip to Sacramento now that his car is roadworthy. But this requires me to back up. As you will recall, Uncle could not resist a good carrying-on at our "Robbie Burns Supper" last month. I know that he expressed some mild doubts --as he should. How in Heaven's name do you keep a secret from one teenaged girl at the table when there is another teenager present who is "in?" I know that Uncle does not care to keep this a secret, but a promise is a promise. Last week, "Miss V. C." asked to talk to me about 'matters of some delicacy. And so it came to pass that we sat down over tea like proper ladies (as I suppose I now am, alas), while she, with all the discretion that is possible to seventeen years, delicately pointed out how uncannily similar certain family traditions of the McKees are to Chinese New Year practices. Oh, how hard it was, Uncle, to keep a straight face as this girl with her raven hair and high colour asked another of equally dark and straight hair and equal colour and an even more -ahem- eyelid if she had ever considered that perhaps there was some "Oriental influence" in our family background? No, no, I said. (Truthfully, at least, for her.) At this point I got a real surprise, as she produced with a flourish the version of the family tree provided by her mother, Mrs. H.C." (Uncle's alias scheme does not restrain me to confusing reuse here, because I do not scruple to identify Uncle Henry by his actual family name. Not when Aunt Betsy covers her tracks so well!) It seems that, uncomfortable with the way that it pointed in various directions, her mother has interpolated some additional McKees into the lineage, and, not surprisingly, the details of these imaginary persons fail the test of historical soundness in some cases. I am left spluttering, trying to explain how someone can be at the Spokane factory the year before it is founded, and "Miss V.C." pounces, announcing that Lieutenant A. has discovered that some of the old Chief Factor's business papers are at the state archives, and would this not be the natural place to look for McKee Asiatic connections? Oh, dear. From many a false premise, an indisputably correct conclusion. Fortunately, it is a wild goose chase, and Great Uncle reached such of the Doctor McLoughlin's papers as were extant long ago. But this is not the issue. It is the road trip, and I worry about my place in locum parentis. Young A was put onto this by the Engineer, who can have no motive other than to do a favour by proxy to a certain Admiral. He, of course, is looking forward to a weekend in Sacramento without parental supervision, while I am most intrigued by the connection, and wish to see it develop. The Engineer is torn between the temptations of Pacific First and his religious pacifism, and the conflict is developing in an interesting direction indeed if he is cultivating the Admiral, of all people. So here is my solution. I have given tentative permission for the trip, subject to Uncle's veto when he returns. However, Wong Lee will go as chaperon, and the children, will stay at our young housekeeper's aunt's home, and this will mean that that young lady accompanies the party. Two girls and a boy seem like a safe chemical combination to me, at least on the road, and Wong Lee and the aunt can combine to check young A when he appears to claim his prize. Speaking of comrades in old exploits, I will end by addressing your concerns over Fat Chow. Yes, he is in grave danger in Berlin. Yes, his Pan-Turanian acquaintances are madmen. But they, unlike the regular run of Central Asian ruffians, are willing to operate his network and carry materials to and from Chungking. I cannot guess how long this will last, but Fat Chow tells my sister not to worry too much about the Gestapo. His German acquaintances are (part of) the Gestapo, and yet have their minds on revolutions sweeping out of Shamballah and throwing the Reds out of Asia. Don't ask me to explain. Fat Chow thinks that it is a combination of desperation, lack of sleep, organic madness and benzedrine washed down by cognac. At least they are right to think they could use a little of what Shamballah has to offer! *Just so there is no confusion, I will go on the record that Uzbekistan is better than Kazakhstan in every possible way but one: the Gate of Shamballah is on the Sino-Russo-Kazakh border. **It's hilarious because Lascars are cowardly and Japanese girls are submissive! ***Notice that the Tribune story suppresses the report of eight parachutes seen from "Fyrtle Myrtle."

"Okay, imagine that it's way, way in the future, and technology has progressed towards an unimaginable level. Human beings have been altered by technology in unimaginable ways to do unimaginable things." "Plus, also, AI so intelligent that we cannot even imagine how they think. And aliens. Unimaginable aliens from unimaginable ecosystems. Now let's see your PC concepts!" Player 1: "I, um, I um, I... I'm playing a barbarian!" Player 2: "Wicked cool! Rogue!" Player 3: "Monk!" Player 4: "MU. I p0wns you, noobz!" Player 5: "Sigh. Cleric."

This is a myth. (Check out the comments, especially.) Your old-timey typing instructor will tell you that the QWERTY keyboard spreads commonly-used letters around and distributed by frequency of use between fingers to maximise the typing rate. It is a very poor touch typist who types much less than two strokes a second on the QWERTY keyboard.

Actually, "Taiwan" is apparently a Siraya word, extended from the name of a smaller island off the southwest coast of the island to the entire island. Wikipedia reports that various claims have been made for earlier "Chinese" encounters with the island, but, if these do refer to Taiwan, the island was then known as "Yizhou" or "Liqiu." This is a little easier to understand with reference to the history of Fujian, the province on the coast of China opposite. Although nominally drawn into the Middle Kingdom as early as the Qin dynasty, Fujian remained remote and inaccessible right into Qing times. Fujian is the home of the Min Nan "dialects," notably including Hokkien. Although the Min languages are usually identified as Sinitic, language politics can shade into the tad controversial in China, and we are rather behind-hand in extracting what a historical linguist in the Western tradition would be happy to label (often on scant evidence) the "pre-Chinese linguistic substrate of the southern dialects." I have seen some work done on Cantonese, but am utterly unfit to comment on that scientifically, much less the Southern Min languages. We do, however, have evidence that Sinitic languages replaced a substrate related to Austronesian in the region south of the Yangzi river at an early date. This language family indigenous to Taiwan, and it is inferred that it spread from the Yangzi valley to Taiwan in the Neolithic. Presumably it would also have spread overland, and at some point Fujianese might well have spoken Austronesian languages. What is known is that the Min language once spoken in Taiwan was imported from Fujian, and is now know as Taiwanese --as distinct from the Austronesian "aboriginal" tongues of Taiwan, such as Siraya-- and has been the object of modern language politics, with various pro-Taiwanese activists opposing the linguistic takeover of Mandarin. All this comes back to the main point, which is that Southerners rule and Northerners drool.

Stepping in on Cygnia's beat, here's one from my current favourite joint, the Spoon Kitchen of Kitsilano, Vancouver's neighbourhood that the Sixties forgot. (Because they were, like, too stoned to keep track of things, and now they can't afford to live there.) I haven't tried this one, but it's uhm, it's uhm, it's a thing that you can eat. (Pumpkin fried rice.)

Pursuing this highly feasible concept on the Interwebs did not lead me to detailed blueprints. I did, on the other hand, learn about the CIA's proposed manned ballistic reconnaissance missile, a concept eventually abandoned when old fuddy-duddies got upset about the idea of a regular programme of shooting missiles at Russia, no matter how awesome the pictures would have been. The Cold War got all the best stuff. (Source credit: Aerospace Blog.)

I think it was his boob window that really got the attention.

Intended embedded video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMZPek0ABs

My Dearest Reggie: The house, or rather houses, are a-whirl with the energy of youth this month. Our distant relative, the actor-turned-Signals-Corps-Captain (you know who I mean) has turned in a handsome apology for his behaviour over the last few months, admitting that he paid far too close attention to "Miss V.C.," and blaming marital troubles, now resolved, for the fact that he "was not himself." He will not, he told me, be making further domestic visits. I was pleased to accept this resolution. For all of "Mrs. J. C.'s" suspicions --some confirmed, I will ashamedly own-- he is a winning young man with a bright future in politics, if he chooses to pursue it. This affair, if successfully prosecuted, would quite ruin those hopes, and make his father's old age even bleaker than otherwise. (It is odd, or, rather, telling that a divorce should be seen as fatal to one's electoral prospects, while the press will decline to press closely the investigation into any candidate's even most obviously questionable ancestry, but the precedent was set long before our time.) As little as I like the Engineer, I will not deny him the pleasure of seeing his son succeed in a field in which he so resoundingly failed. But this did not resolve the matter of suitors pressing round "Miss V.C.," because apart from your younger son's obvious interest (speaks the wisdom of age) there is the matter of "Lieutenant A.," who now seems determined to press his own suit. As he is young, single, handsome, born to wealth and well-connected, I see no reason to object if he wishes to insert himself in our social whirl for as long as his Admiral's business keeps him in San Francisco. I have, however, intimated to him that Wong Lee's vigilance is not to be underestimated. I also rather hope that he manages to obtain a slightly more modern auto for use social calling soon, however. As for "Miss V. C.," and Wong Lee, for that matter, I am pleased, even if I must pretend otherwise, to report that he caught her in the main hall of Chi Wei Tao Wan the other night, trying to enter the west wing. As this would have involved removing the tarpaulin covering the Whale Man, it is rather a serious matter. Your wife still has not found anyone she deems competent to restore it. It may have stood too many seasons of Pacific storms since the Founder's son and daughter were carried through it to be introduced to their grandfather. In any case, I had to explain to "Miss V.C." that Grandfather is being kept isolated out of concerns for his health, and that she might be allowed to visit him by prearranged appointment if properly gowned, and that due to the condition of the main wing of the mansion and the state of preservation of the art in it, the covers must on no account be removed. None of this was convincing, of course. Indeed, I was as unconvincing as I dared to be, hoping that she would realise that the "appointment" would be a ruse, giving us time to make Grandfather up, while pointing her curiosity towards the furnishings of the main hall. I have, however, given an undertaking to her parents not to lead her curiosity. When she asked me about the Chinese practice of giving out monetary presents at the Lunar New Year, I had to suppress my temptation to dwell on the significance of red envelopes and the like, and instead claim entire ignorance. I could add to this picture of domesticity by painting your youngest and Wong Lee's son posing in their cadet uniforms and of your daughter-in-law in all of her radiance, but since I include photographs, words will not be needed, and I do not, after considering the last number of Fortune, trust myself not to descend into autumnal despair. I could also make some technical comments, but will refrain for a few paragraphs yet, though I will get them out of the way in the first section, as the second section is devoted to investment prospects in insurance, and will, I expect, bore all and sundry. Flight, 3 February 1944 Leaders “Technical Training” The paper makes no apologies for reverting to this subject again. Your eldest takes this as proof positive that the editor, like your correspondent, Reggie, has never been married. “Where are the Chiefs?” Where is the next generation of chief aircraft designers? Are American and German educational institutions superior to British? The paper does not think so, but others do. War in the Air Long range aircraft clash in the Bay of Biscay in a “strange development in a strange war.” Heavy bombing continues in that part of France of which the paper is not informed as to whether or not it will be the site of the invasion, attacking unidentified targets. Lest we who watch the great events from outside are left entirely mystified, the paper allows that German resistance has been entirely of AA, the fighter arm having been withdrawn to conserve its strength. Everyone is pleased that Leningrad has been liberated again for the first time. The USAAF now numbers 2.3 millions. It would seem to me difficult for the army to contain such an overgrown organ, but I am reliably informed by a very highly placed admiral (you may guess just whom) that it can and must, since the idea of an independent air force is a foolishfancy. American paper Iron Age reports that Allied jet interceptors will go into service soon, and that twin-enginedultra-long range fighters equipped with Allison engines are in production at General Motors. They are to escort B-29s. It is reported that “long range Mustangs” are escorting American bombers all the way to Brunswick and Hannover and back. Here and There US night fighter squadrons have flown Beaufighters. £600 million have been spent on airfields in Great Britain since the war began. More than half a million aircrew personnel have been trained in Canada under the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme. Accidents in American aircraft factories in 1943 have cost the lives of 18,000 workers. Coningham is to be AOC No. 2 Tactical Air Force, continuing his famed partnership with General Montgomery. Mr. H. A. Jones, official historian of the last war in the air, is to be the new Director of Public Relations at the Air Ministry. Mars gets more press. B. J. Hurren, “Backbone of the Fleet.” Hurren proposes that aircraft carriers are now the backbone of the fleet. Pictures of Indomitable and Biter illustrate. The Americans, we are told, have announced that they launched 65 aircraft carriers in 1943, including 6 27,000 ton Essex-class, 9 light carriers of 10,000 tons, and 50 escort carriers. Work continues on 3 45,000 ton carriers to operate twin-engine bombers. So, apparently, the actual totals are only secret from the American press. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose. Major Seversky supposes that aircraft carriers are too vulnerable and are doomed when faced with land-based air power. Mr. Hurren disagrees and supposes that even though x superbombers might be purchased for the price of y medium bombers flying from super-carriers, the fact that they are on ships might make them more useful. Pressed to say something actually interesting and original, Mr. Hurren proposes that torpedoes are quite useful aerial weapons, and more suited to the sort of planes that fly from aircraft carriers, and further supposes that a single-seat “torpedo fighter” such as the Blackburn Dart of days gone by might be quite feasible with plants such as the new Napier Sabre as its power plant (1,2, 3, 4,etc.) This strikes me as a weak justification for a class of warship that must serve twenty years or more to justify the expense. Far be it from me to dissent from the noble cause of building ever-larger warships, though! “Studies in Recognition” More pictures and silhouettes in aid of telling one plane from another. Or, as they say in the business, ”filler.” Behind the Lines In a morale-boosting parade, the Japanese exhibit models of their latest Donryubomber, Shintei reconnaissanceaircraft and Shoki fighter. Gnome-et-Rhone is developing various new engines, and the Arsenal an aircraft made of “improved wood.” My attention is alive, once again, to the mention of new wood products, with all that it implies for house construction here in America. If the houses are not to be cheaper, will they instead be larger? Good news, it seems to me, to the makers of home furnishings. Or, at least, as it can be with the postwar depression staring us down. The postwar era will be a strange one. Though I do not think anything so preposterous as air-delivered fruit is on the way! “Air Observation Post” Britain, too, has a cheap aeroplane that can support the army, the Taylorcraft Auster. More interesting than the brief ad for the industry is the revelation that they are attached to individual medium artillery regiments and flown by Army captains, who spot for the guns and correct them via radio, i. e., spoken voice communications. This will be the oldest of old news for you, Reggie, but I want to highlight the electrical engineering advance implied by this for the Earl. Lighter, more powerful radios, acoustic arrangements, higher frequencies in regular use… The implications for radio entertainment and even industrial use are considerable. Major F. A. de V. Robertson, “Heavy Bombers and Pathfinders: Britain’s Conquest of the Weather.” So desperate is the paper for copy that the oldest of old warhorses are decanted from whatever liquor cabinet they have been hiding in had put to work. The correspondent of much punctuation supplies a two page summary of the air war to date with exactly the kind of insight and detail you may expect. I suppose I should apologise in advance if you correct me and tell me that the Major is an indefatigable journalist who regularly does the air force station round up in the North Country, and that you have yourself shared the most confidential “gen” with him on strict discretion. But I rather doubt I need have bothered. “Charley Chan” A Chinese officer –born in Singapore, actually—is flying for the RAF. The tone of the paragraph may be guessed. "Charlie Chan" is substituted for his actual name, both by his brother officers and, less forgiveably, the paper. B. J. Stedman, “the Student’s Point of View,” Aeronautical engineers are being overtrained. Or possibly undertrained. I would have to read the article to be sure, and that I will not do. Even had I not become quite sufficiently conversent with the opinions of young engineers when I was one, thank you very much, I now live with two at either end of the spectrum, by its more expansive definition. The Economist, 5 February 1944 Leaders “Dominions and Republics” The paper is upset that Mackenzie King has rejected the current worthy initiative for the Commonwealth, and then it was a beautiful morning, with mist filling the valley below, and our mothers were with us, Reggie, so young, and we younger still, and a cowboy, the most –I’m sorry, I think that I drifted off there. “Words and Meanings” Oh, you talk about “free enterprise” and on the other hand “government control,” but what do you mean? “Representative Government” Let’s talk about electoral reform! “The Regional System” Regional trading blocs would be a good thing. Notes of the Week Russia is revising its constitution to make the Union more enticing to the Baltic states. Pay-as-you-earn advances in the income tax system. The premier has screwed up the Brighton by-election. Latins and the Balkans are excitable. The new report on Kenya is damning. White settlement has been a horrible blunder. India’s future is total political independence under British supervision. Half a step, ever half a step forward in the matter of allowing non-Britons to govern themselves without British assistance. Publicly-funded research and development is good, because it has as its end an increase in labour productivity in private industry. The TUC comes out in support of industrial training. American Survey “How Ready is the Right?” A section of American labour swung too far to the left in the 1930s, and a section of American business is in danger of swinging to far to the right now, says Charles E Wilson, Executive Vice-President of the War Production Board, and before that President of General Electric, to the National Association of Manufacturers annual convention. It certainly looks like the GOP is poised to make big gains in 1944, and then the sky will fall, unless it does not. American Notes “Plight of the White Collar Worker.” The point here is that “Little Steel is dead,” and therefore the cost of living is set to skyrocket (It has already increased 25%. Or 50%, if you prefer impressions to statistics.) It is noted that only 40,433 applications for wage increases for white collar workers out of 1,219,000 in one particular region, and concluded that white collar workers (and receivers of fixed income, our correspondent adds, innocently) are getting it in the neck. “Any substantiation of these difficulties” should be brought to the attention of the paper by its alert readers, as they would bolster arguments for more effective control of the cost of living against the loud cries of the inflation bloc, which apparently spreads its malevolent influence through the American body politic. “The Bottom of the Barrel” Every available pre-Pearl Harbour father between 18 and 34 may have to be inducted in the first six months of 1944, says General Hershey, director of Selective Service, in a speech to the National Automobile Dealers’ Association. If this is not enough, there may have to be reclassification. “Bottom of the barrel” is a relative concept, after all. “Stand Up and Be Counted,” the President tells Congress in the matter of the soldiers’ vote. The House has already moved for an unrecorded vote, so that, some will unkindly suggest, no-one will have to go on the record as opposing votes for soldiers. Republican resistance, inspired as it was by fears that the military vote would re-elect the President, does not look good on them. “Pacific Atrocities” Revelation of Japanese atrocities may impact MacArthur’s election campaign, and, of course, justify the wisdom of barring released Japanese detainees from returning to the Pacific coast, where presumably people are much more retaliation-prone on account of the sea air. The World Overseas “The Soviet War Economy” Russia has paid for the war out of what would be in a capitalist economy war profits, at the expense of what used to be its main source of revenue, a “turnover tax,", the decline of receipts of which indicates the extent of consumption decline. “Germany at War” The paper makes fun of Hitler. “How Many Houses” Is the ten year plan realistic? The paper does not know. Is planning for short term emergency construction adequate? The paper suspects not, and calls for more planning. Good thing the Germans are not getting ready to lob rockets at England in vast numbers, or more building would be called for instead of more planning! Business Notes The paper is watching the Washington talks on currency for insight into future exchange rates and mechanisms. Good. Electricity distribution is under discussion. There ought to be a large-scale oil-refining industry in Britain, as importing petroleum makes more sense than trying to synthesise it from coal or whatnot. Hear! Hear! Although, again, the Earl needs to be cautioned about the poor chances of our getting our Burma interests back. Even if Mountbatten gets off his ass and makes a campaign out of it, turmoil in India makes holding onto Burma unlikely, in my view. We shall see how our position develops, but oil is not of much use without investment capital. I wonder if there is more oil to be found along the Mackenzie River? Persia announces that it is shifting the backing of its paper currency from the crown jewels (officially assessed at 2.65 millions) to gold. This is pursuant to importing enough gold. Some of that will come from South Africa and America, but it is likely that a great deal is already in the country as a result of Allied gold imports into the country to sop up purchasing power left over from the Allied expenditure in the country. While much of that gold has served its purpose by going into hoards, some will have leaked through to the National Bank. The price of coal has gone up effective Feb 1st. Further price increases are being negotiated. Engineering wages may be going up, or be rationalised, or both. Labour is also an issue in the building industry, where efficiency is declining due to a shortage of young workers, and indiscipline is for some reason on the increase since the introduction of the Essential Work Order. The manganese shortage has been alleviated. Flight, 10 February 1944 Leaders “The Attack on the Marshall Islands “ Was delivered by carrier forces as well as Fleet Air Wing 2 and 7th Army Air Force, with all shore-based aircraft under the command of one Vice-Admiral J. H. Hoover. . Curious about the name, I discover that he was born in 1887 in Ohio, graduated 73rd out of 86 from the Naval Academy, specialised as a submariner, made commander in 1926, switched over to the air branch and made captain in 1935. Talk around the Bay is that he is able, fit and aggressive, but aloof and not well liked, except by the Spruance circle. Other leaders note that the Free French are flying war planes, surprising all, and, still more surprising, a popular aviation American paper has said cutting things about British aeroplanes. War in the Air In addition to the above, it is noted that planes have been involved in the fighting in Burma, have attacked the Rumanian oil fields, and have attacked the transportation facilities behind German lines. Dr. Goebbels falsely claims that 750 German aircraft dropped 1000 tons of bombs on London on the night of 21 January, whereas in fact only 90 raiders crossed the coast. On the other hand, Bomber Command’s six heavy attacks on Berlin delivered 9300 tons of bombs –and cost 200(!) aircraft. The USAAF made its first thousand plane raid last week. The Germans are supplying the Shpola pocket on the Eastern Front by air again, while the Russians have made a strategic air attack on Helsinki. Reports from Sweden are that it was a heavy attack. The paper supposes this was to encourage the Finn peace party. Here and There Royal Marine squadrons will fly with the Fleet Air Arm. A B-24 Liberator named Heaven Can Wait, defied irony by not crashing last week. General Smuts has been given a “giant four-engined Avro” in appreciation of his services. The “Standard Exhibition,” in the words of Minister of Aircraft Production Sir Stafford Cripps, celebrates “the man who makes the thing that oils the ring that works the thingummy-jig.” Several Russian parachutists, who had disguised themselves as pastors and in that capacity preached sermons in several factories in Estonia, were turned in to German authorities for preaching without permission. Ration coupons are offered to those turning in worn rubber boots for reconditioning. Americans talk in hilarious ways. Mr. Harry R. Sheppard, Representative from California, supposes that the Administration favours Pan-American Airways at the expense of good old American free enterprise. Lord Rothermere supposes that American might require a production of 5500 aircraft per year, post war. Others find this exaggerated. “A Russian Dive Bomber: The Twin-engined PE-2 Does 335 mph at 16,000ft: All-electric operation of Auxiliary Services” A translation of an article in the Swedish paper Flyg details this very serviceable, albeit virtually unarmed, three seater. It has no fewer than 18 electric motors, including one for the pump that operates the hydraulic undercarriage retraction. Pilots report that it handles well, but does not suffer fools gladly. Or shorts, I would imagine. “Germany’s ‘Secret Weapon’” is to be a crewless, radio-controlled winged bomb with rocket propulsion, but requires an elaborate launching mechanism which Allied bombers are attacking, although it can also be launched from the air. A. Gouge, “Flying Boats” In the paper’s next number, Mr. A Gouge considers whether a two-horse or four-horse carriage is right for you. That may not be fair, but I am in a mood, as I have just learned that I am expected to make a transcontinental excursion to discover whether Cousin H. C.’s new plant in Buffalo might produce the new Boeing flying boat profitably. I am not sure why he tapped me, as he cannot be in any doubt as to how I will advise him on the merits of the plan itself. I suppose he trusts me to report on the industrial side objectively, which I should take as a compliment. Correspondence Several previous correspondents are confused about how airscrews work, and how rockets can fly according to Newton’s Second Law. Something about action and? In any case, pedantic confusion is met with pedantic elaboration. Other letters discuss burning water and broadcast electric power. For all its fussiness, Flight is a young man’s paper, if more technically literate than the ones who write into your youngest's beloved "pulps." Behind the Lines The Adler automobile factory was destroyed by sabotage involving explosive and incendiary bombs, although the notice goes on to mention that it was carried out by five men armed with revolvers, which seems a curious way for bombers to carry out their work. German aircraft workers are now on 11 hour days. A new German aluminium alloy of “sufficient” resistance to corrosion (versus soap water as well as seawater, the usual standard) is on the market. “Sufficient.” Encouraging! It is reported that 500,000 German evacuees from Berlin have been sent to western Poland. It looks as though they shall be returning soon! Two German night fighter aces are reported killed in action. The Germans are using more single-seat fighters as night fighters. The Economist, 12 February 1944 Leaders “the Public Service” Should be more scientific, like the new REME, only for people trained in economics. “Baltic Vacuum” Germany has pretty much destroyed the social order of the Baltic states. I particularly notice, and am particularly moved, by the paper’s offhand observation that the “Aryanisation” of the middle classes of Latvia and Lithuannia, which were primarily Jewish, has meant the destruction –[and here the “off-hand” comes in] and probably also the physical extermination—of the greater part of the middle classes.” Though I notice this because of the grim implications of “extermination.” The rural classes are more numerous, their problems in many ways more pressing, and proper solution of them key to reincorporation of the Baltic states into the Union. Principles of Trade, III: “Prices and Markets” A page and half of labour delivers forth a product in the form of journalistic insight which the market must now value at its worth. Which, since it broadly implies that British wages must be kept down, would seem to be high for this paper. Notes of the Week “Hazard and Caution” The war in the East is reaching “a new climax,” as it does very nearly every week. The paper is finally convinced that the Germans will not counterattack successfully. The only question now is whether the Germans will be able to restore a front, or whether Russian troops will enter the “powderkeg” of the Balkans soon. The paper is disappointed with the lack of progress in Italy, but still hopes for great things. The paper has decided that the Government win in Brighton was by an insufficient margin. There should be more planning for housing. Turkey is still neutral. Latins are still excitable. So are school officials and everyone else concerned with them. There should be more planning for demobilisation. The paper is given furiously to think by manganese. American Survey “Four Midwestern Papers” Our Iowa Correspondent reads the Des Moines Register, Cleveland Press, Saint Louis Post-Despatch and Chicago Tribune, and is apparently paid for it. The liberal papers are disappointed that the Administration supports too many right-leaning and imperialist people. The Tribune thinks that foreigners are inherently Communistic. The eternal Senators Lodge and Borah still haunt the Hermit Kingdom of the West. American Notes ‘American Oil Diplomacy” America is afraid of running out of oil, and wants more access to Middle Eastern supplies. “The Sorest Point” A Church of England newsletter recently suggested that President Roosevelt ought be re-elected, leading the entire Republican press to make this unconscionable interference in American affairs front page news. The paper thinks this was over-reaction, and suggests it in its usual patronising tones. The paper is not helping as much as it thinks it is. “Sweat and Taxes” the proposed federal budget does not raise taxes by as much as is expected. Mr. Wilkie thinks they should be raised more. The informed opinion continues to think that the whole thing will never pass through the legislative process, anyway. “The Soldiers’ Vote” The House defeated the President’s proposal. The Senate defeated the House proposal. The Senate proposes a compromise that will give the President the substance of what he wanted, if not the whole. The World Overseas “The Falange Economy” Is a mess. “Middle Eastern Oil” is to be had. “Student Unemployment in Eire” It seems odd that more university and professional education has not led to employment for many Irish graduates for the last five years or so, but it has. Notwithstanding the increasing subsidies granted to students, which has led to more graduates than ever, more positions have failed to materialise. Perhaps this is the fault of the young, who harbour dreams beyond their station of escaping country for the city. Or perhaps it is the fault of Irish society, for Our Correspondent in Dublin notices the levelling policy of the Irish government, which has prevented a new class of rich to appear to replace the old class of landed aristocracy. Without high fees, solicitors and doctors cannot make money. This is obviously why there is unemployment amongst graduated engineers, journalists, architects and clerks. Fortunately, the Irish, acting on the advice of the Reverend Swift, have contrived a solution, in the form of higher student fees. These will soon do away with the obnoxious surplus of educated Irish. The Business World “Short Term Housing Policy” the paper has some ideas about what it should be. I continue to wonder if the paper is paying attention to the technical press. “Youth in the Mines” The young “optants” being forced into coal mining really should be going down into the pits singing the praises of the wise elders who sent them there. After all, they are to have, in effect, a wage increase, and there is to be training, and medical examinations (compulsory physical training?). It will be admitted that safety is not the best. One in four boys under 18 used to be killed or injured during their employment before the war, and during it, the number has tended to increase. Perhaps an unreasonable and morbid fear of death is the reason that youth employment in the pits fell from 108,000 in 1930 to 66,000 in 1940? No, more likely it was the lack of security and low wages, which the paper is prepared to address by any means not requiring wage raises or guarantees of future employment. Perhaps there should be youth clubs in the pithead villages, while a comprehensive national solution to the problem of decaying industries is sought. Business Notes Latins are excitable. “Higher Wages –Less Coal” The most recent award of an increased minimum wage in the pits has not met the demands of better-paid miners for a commensurate increase, and they are upset. It is all very well for them to demand a higher wage, though. Who is to pay for it, apart from coal-users? “Building Society Interest Rates” If it is to be seriously expected that we are going to build as much housing as is required, perhaps something should be done about pushing mortgage rates down from their current 5%, as the Halifax Society has just done, in going to 4.5%. “American Building Methods” Lord Portal, Minister of Public Works, has commissioned a study which shows that American housing costs are a comparative 75 compared with 100 in Britain, in spite of American wages being between 3.5 times as high as British (craftsmen) and twice (labourers), and construction materials similarly more expensive. The explanation is much higher American productivity the study says. Looking at the comparison of cost of building materials (100 to 110—160), I would suggest that the more likely explanation is that the study was cooked. And now I turn to the monthlies: Aviation, February 1944 This month’s line editorial has a new format. I had to page over three times to find James H. McGraw, Jr.’s signature on “Free Enterprise: Incentives and Taxation.” Junior wants us to know that there are three ways of making a living: getting on someone’s payroll; “lending one’s savings to business interests;” and “starting, or helping to start, a business enterprise.” “Three of four of us fall into the first group. We are job-holders.” Is this an editorial“we?” Or is Junior included? As he also enrolls himself in the next two groups, it may well be the editorial we. On the other hand, he does work for, own, and manage McGraw-Hill, so he does belong in all three categories. The point is that, after the war, the Federal Government will have to raise each year about 20 billion in taxes, three times the amount required before the war, and six times that required in the Twenties. In the Twenties, Federal tax receipts were about twice as large as total corporate profits in a good year. After the war, they will be tree times, and it will be that much more difficult for the Federal government to raise revenues without discouraging investment. Or, as Junior puts it, “diminishing the number of jobs.” “We must understand the forces that determine the level of employment and consider the tax progam in relation to other measures designed to create jobs.” Junior prefers income taxes to “hidden” consumption taxes, and calls for a “somewhat” progressive tax system. Among other suggestions (lower corporate income taxes, lower rates on dividends, reducing the high income marginal rate to 60 of 50%, income averaging, extending depreciation times), Junior calls for the elimination of excise taxes, even at the expense of high income taxes, in order to promote consumption and provide a market for “our vast industrial capacity.” Aviation Editorial Leslie E. Neville, “Jet Propulsion spurs More than Imagination” While it will be a while before there are jet bombers or helicopters all over the place, much progress has been made. But Germany is in the hunt, too, so more details than that are not to be revealed. That said, speculation is fine, and every effort should be made to push forward towards their “fullest utilization in the achievement of human progress." America at War The paper does not go in for prediction, but General Eisenhower does. “With our attacks backed by full home-front support, the General says, the Nazis will fold in 1944 with no further ifs or howevers.” This will be accomplished, the paper grudgingly admits, with a large “walking army.” Airpower advocates have lost their chance to win the war with bombing alone. Nevertheless, air power is the main margin of victory, through strategic bombing and tactical. In the strategic field, recent times have seen the introduction of feint attacks and bombing through overcast, which is less accurate than visual bombing, but, “to put it grimly, gets within city limits.” The paper notes that this innovation (whatever it is) will be important to postwar civil aviation. Bombing will get ever heavier. The UN built 150,000 a/c in 1943, and could “better 200,000” in 1944. The air war in Italy suggests that tactical air power is less effective than it was in 1940, because soldiers, “especially German soldiers,” have lost their fear of airplanes. The big move against Japan is under preparation right now. It only looks like an island-hopping campaign because of relative lack of resources, but we still note that while bombing Japan is in the cards, it will not be done via either Chinese or Russian bases. Which leaves…? Aircraft production in 1944 will not “much” top 10,000, but weight per worker will increase from 28lbs/month in 1941 to 60 in 1944, with employees in the industry at 1.6 million plus in 1943 compared with 48,000 in 1938. 14.9 billion in value was procured in 1943, 7.2 in airframes, 4.2 in enginers and propellers, and 3.5 in spare parts. This was up double from 1942, and characterising the industry as a “20 billion dollar business,” people are being accurate if everything is toted up. However, there will be a 2 billion cut in the aircraft production budget in 1944, notwithstanding the 110,000 a/c production foreseen by T. P. Wright of the Aircraft Resources Control Office. This, note, is down from some projections of a 12,000 a/c/month projection still held in some quarters. But the B-29 is huge, man, huge. On the West Coast, 26,636 warplanes were delivered last year, up more than 50%, with airframe weight up 72%. This is especially remarkable given the manpower shortages on the West Coast. Some financial highlights: Beech did 97 million in book last year, up from 29 million the previous year; Boeing wage rates are up 27% since Pearl Harbor; Consolidated Vultee made lots of planes; So did Curtiss-Wright; Douglas deliveries are valued at 1 billion dollars and employs 200,000. Packard delivered $350,000,000 worth of Rolls-Royce engines, 150% of highest sales figures for automobile engines in a peace year. Herb Powell, “’43 Output Doubled the Miracle” tells us that, well, we doubled the miracle of production, or more. Although the numbers also suggest a levelling off at under 9000…The increase in money cost tracks weight better than numbers, though. Edward M. Greer and Harry J. Marx, “Pressure Control in Aircraft Hydraulic Systems, Part II,” is a full discussion of unloading valves. The rest of editorial in this number is taken up by Aviation’s “Aircraft Directory of 1944.” On the basis of what I have seen this month, I would greatly appreciate full coverage of Japanese developments, as they, unlike the Germans, appear to be pursuing extensive prototyping. It will be very interesting to see if they can defeat a super-bomber offensive with their new planes. Unfortunately, the Japanese air forces have not extended their cooperation to the paper, and I move on to Fortune. Once again, the Luce papers have put together a very interesting feature story, although unfortunately not nearly so optimistic a one as the story of the "cold war." Fortune, February 1944 An aviation-themed cover, but as my Fortunes are in a great stack on the old reading desk in the morning window of the den, I see the Chesterfield Cigarettes ad on the back cover of the January number as I contemplate the title, and it is far more interesting in the sad and wintry mood cast by the February rains. Bottle blondes smoke Chesterfields. I just bet they do, boys.) “Fortune’s Wheel” looks back on the first issue of the paper in February of 1930 and notes an article on a “A Budget for a $25,000 Income in Chicago." Even the paper is slightly embarrassed at the kind of periodical it was trying to be at its launch, as it wryly notes that the article might have been much ado about nothing with a federal income tax of only $830! Letters to Fortune include “a representative sample” of letters from Jack and Heintz’s 7600 "associates." The manuscript of the Fortune article was sent to the company for comment, and read over the loudspeakers on the factory floor. The staff is upset about all the vile calumny &tc. “We have kept unauthorised absenteeism down to zero,” writes one Edmund J. Pohnay. Yes, Mr. Pohnay, you have, and we salute the firm for its innovative use of the word "unauthorised." This might be a case for "honesty engineering." He is so honest that the girls can't stop looking at him! Farm Column Ladd Haystead is back on his regular beat. His point is that we need a land-use policy? In 1935, Oklahoma had 213,325 farm operators, but nowadays the best guess is that there are 160,000, and contrary to what someone, somewhere might say, this is not because of tenants being tractored out, but because of all the erosion, as land was cultivated that should have been left in grass. And now it is happening again! “50 million acres of our lands are completely eroded, 50 million very seriously damaged, 100 million half or more of the topsoil is gone, and on another 100 million erosion is actively underway.” Therefore, Horace J. Harper, Professor of Soil Science at Oklahoma A&M thinks that we need a legislative land use policy. He suggests tax rebates for ranchers to encourage putting the land in grass. I am torn between launching a hearty "rafter cheer" and fear of giving the game away. Although there does not appear to be much scruple on that front over here right now, so perhaps I should just leap onto my chair right now. Not only that, but the lawyers tell me that the rebates will go through the leasehold agreements to us, instead of sticking to our tenants, as have the war's other windfall profits. Ad: The Bituminous Coal Institute assures us that coal miners are now well-paid, safe, living in fine homes, and not at all “in hock to the company store.” As some might believe. They are no more than 10% (well, 12%) in hock to the company store! Trials and Errors “The beginning of a war is no time to liquidate a war economy.” Eliot Janeway has bestirred himself to write a column, and on the night before Christmas, yet! Nation and readership can only be happy that he got his shopping done early. Or perhaps he has bethought himself of the bills come February. In the spirit of inversions logical in which specialises Janeway, he tells us that the upshot of the Teheran Conference is not that the war in Europe is about to end, but rather that it is about to begin! Russia has made a vague commitment to come into the Pacific War, and the British have made a vague commitment to a cross-Channel invasion some time in 1944. Japan will have to be defeated in time and at great cost, after Germany is beaten. Now we come to his point, which is that it is foolish for Washington to start liquidating the war economy at this point. It is an understandable foolishness, “[f]or Washington, having lost leadership and initiative in the country, is reflecting the war-weariness, the self-delusion, and the greed into which the home front has degenerated," and it will be admitted that it is not actually happening. The war effort is not actually being liquidated. The emergent surpluses of some goods, the end of seven day weeks in the shipyards, even unemployment in some marginal groups –these are simply to lead labour to prepare for the deflation it anticipates, as Washington has no plan for a program that “will absorb the impressive capacities being released for other use.” For example, back when the steel surplus came into sight, Don Nelson suggested that refrigerators might be made again. But now they are not to be made, because other raw materials are still short. Engineers could have designed refrigerators that did not use these materials, but no engineers were released for this work. The upshot is that “panic is reaching acute proportions on production lines, where people are slowing down because they are afraid to work themselves out of jobs.” This is hurting attempts to reduce turnover, the workers being so afraid of losing their jobs that they change jobs. Also, small business will be hurt worse than big business by cancellations, and big business will keep government-owned plants on good terms and drive small firms out of business. Janeway is, oddly, particularly upset that the US Steel plant in Utah might close and leave the West Coast dependent on Pittsburgh again. Except for Cousin H. C.'s plant, which has the advantage of being near where the people actually are. Finally, Janeway ambles to a conclusion. Of course Washington is not liquidating the war economy; but because it looks as though that is what is going on, the people are self-liquidating it! To conclude in true Janeway fashion, up is down! White is black! War is peace! Honestly. I could write a better national affairs column than this. The one sure thing is that if Eliot Janeway says that the war is long before us, while General Eisenhower tells us that it will end by Christmas, then Christmas it is! Kearney and Trecker ad tells us that the nation’s output per man hour increased 34% in the last 12 years, or 2.5%/year. Manufacturers who want to keep step and produce more peace products more cheaply must invest in machine tools such as the ones we make. Word to the wise. Insurance Company of North America tells us to “…Protect what you have” under this free enterprise system of ours. As I have already extracted a Curtiss Machine Tool and a "Youth Advertising" spread on this somewhat-hysterical theme, I content myself with summarising the conclusion that buying casualty insurance is related to efforts to prevent this country from being “bossed from outside,” or “undermined from within.” There is, I think, reason for the American casualty insurance industry to be concerned with the way things are going, but it is a somewhat perverse and paradoxical concern that will be quite entirely satisfied if the average American can be persuaded to start borrowing again, and, as tedious as I am on the subject, I believe that housing may be a way of persuading him to do this. As to the ostensible concern of the ad, The Fortune Survey for the month is all about labor unions. They are not popular. Except among Coloureds. Although they are more popular amongst people who vote Democratic than rich people who vote Republican. The Job Before Us This month’s topic is colonies. They’re bad, but the Luce papers feel the need to hedge their bets. The voice of dependent peoples will depend on the contribution they make. Then they reverse hedge. "Post-colonial powers" such as America, Russia and China (exclamation marks all around) expect dependent peoples to see progress under the benevolent tutelage of imperial powers. The Caribbean is a great experimental laboratory for sorting all of this out, and there America (or the Luce papers) have learned that racism is bad for interracial relations. Editorial “Public Regulation No Dilemma” It isn’t, you know. “What Should Germany Pay” War reparations require careful handling, especially as the landscape has been pretty thoroughly razed. “How’s Your Renegotiation?” The renegotiations/excess profit law is controversial! “Mr. Lincoln’s Formula” More about Lincoln Electric, the only company whose workers have received as much money as those at Jack and Heintz. Other articles “Two Billion People: A Portfolio Showing the Population of the World, Now, and in 1970” This is the gloomy article to which I referred. You will pardon me if I think the survival of the race a little more important than some of the other features in this number of the paper, such as a fine article on the wonderful character of the (very) late President Lincoln. This is a subject that is easily summarised in pictures, which you will see pasted to the back of the first page, unless this package was too much jostled in its Atlantic transit. Two billion people is a great many people, but not that much more than there are in the world today, and probably as many as there will ever be, if the chart is correct. A summary view is that in primitive societies, death and birth rates were both high, holding population at a virtual stasis. An improving economy brings lower death rates, and, consequentlally, rising population. In Europe, where the Industrial Revolution wrought a demographic revolution, population increased 189% during the Nineteenth Century in spite of high emigration rates. The skyrocket of US population is due to immigration as well as high birth rates. Yet during this period, the population of Asia increased by only 98%. In the second stage of the cycle, high levels of living begin to compete with reproduction. Social pressure and the independence of women, later marriages and birth control cut down birth rates until they again approach death rates and the natural increase diminishes. Industrial Europe, the British dominions, and the United States have reached this stage and their populations are growing more steadily and probably will become stationary or begin to decline in another generation. War will almost certainly accelerate the process of natural decline in Europe. The recent rise in birth rates in England and the U.S. presumably is the usual early-war phenomena (war brides, war babies). It will not greatly change the long-term trend. Of note is that Japan is also in the second stage of the cycle. It had a gradually declining birth rate in the thirties, and the growth of its population will terminate at about 75 millions in about 1970. Thus there is no racial exception. Asian countries can, and will, enter the "second stage," precisely as they achieve peace and progress. The Soviet Union, which alone has both an industrial economy and a rapidly increasing population, may defeat this general picture, and will continue to grow on momentum alone to over 200 million in 1970, with the graphical projection (pictured) showing 251 million. It does not take into account war losses. More than half the world’s population lives in Asia, but low levels of living, high birth and death rates, and overcrowding in the fertile river valleys complicates things. It is estimated that China has 450 millions. India is known to have 350. It is unlikely that these countries will enter the second stage any time soon, so the indiscriminate blessings of science mean that their populations will likely increase quite dramatically. India is projected by Hans Weigert, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, to reach 500 million in 1970, and China, grant a quick victory by either Chiang's sorry lot or the Communists, will grow even higher, albeit in continuing immiseration until a virtuous dynasty finally emerge. Picking numbers of the chart, I see that we expect peak populations of 39 millions in France and “England and Wales,” 45 million in Italy, 55 million in Germany, 77 million in Japan, 145 million in the United States, the noted 200 or 251 million in the USSR. Nor is this all. The idea of “momentum” in connection with the forecast rise of the population of Russia holds everywhere. As birth rates and death rates fall, the population of second stage countries will get older. Conventionally, population distributions are “age pyramids,” but in France and in England and Wales, they will by 1970 be closer to lozenges (France) or ellipses (England and Wales.) I confess to feeling a cold grip on my heart as I read. The American real estate market has been based since time immemorial on the premise of continuing population growth. There is room for more people, hence need for more homes. Where ranches and forests stand now, farms tomorrow. Farms today, suburbs tomorrow. Suburbs today, row housing and high-rises tomorrow, and so on. But what when the population levels off, or even begins to decline? It will not affect our situation in 1945, as buyers have not taken these frightful possibilities into account, but it does hint at troubles in 1970. The one ray of hope here is that Fortune, in a typically American outburst of blind optimism, drafts great arrows of population movements on a world map, showing Russians to Siberia, and the Chinese to Turkestan. The thought here at the paper is that it disapproves of the overcrowding in the parts of these countries where people want to live, and supposes that the allure of the frontier will draw the population to places where no-one would ever want to live. (At least, that is how I remember the Trans-Siberian, though perhaps your memories are conditioned by that lovely Buryat girl...) The thought here, as evening gives way to night here in Santa Clara at the end of a long day of compositing is that the arrows should point the other way. It may be inconceivable to the paper that the Chinese or, God forbid, the Indians, move in any numbers across the oceans to an aging Europe, never mind America, but it is not as though our family will hesitate to sell them ranches overlooking Santa Clara! . London Cable “The American Invasion of Britain Raises Some Social Problems” Americans are over-paid, and the girls like that. It is the end of the world. Or, wait, no, that was silk stockings. Now we have nylons, and we really are in the end times. Now I must bring this around to sensitive matters. There has been considerable progress with your Christmas present. Bill and David have been drawn into a project to equip one of the new motor landing craft with a version of it for certain uses during the island-hopping campaign. They express, however, serious concerns about the fragility of the medium. They appreciate why the Admiralty chose it in the first place, but believe that an alternative must be found. You will be aware, none more so, given the work of your unit, that it is not being used where less demanding applications allow a simpler material. At this juncture, we have a dead drop from Fat Chow, who confirms access to German work on a viable alternative. It is likely, avoiding specifics, that he will be able to get hold of a sample on false pretexts, at least as long as his luck holds out and he does not run into an actual Kalmyk prince in Berlin. I shudder to think at what might happen then, and it does not help that "Mrs. J. C.'s" sister has forwarded back an excised version of the tender letter Fat Chow sends her. Our hearts, as it were, are in our throats. So: it now occurs that the reason that Wong Lee's son is to be permitted to progress to his commission is the same old seedy side of the American colour bar. The high ranks of the United States Navy are well aware that they cannot put scrubs and career lieutenants in charge of civilians who combine the talents needed to run vessels such as the special-purpose LCMs with the social handicaps that have kept them from reaching higher ranks themselves. (You may, from your own acquaintance, insert the expected anti-Semitic slurs here.) Nor, of course, is the experience of Tarawa any recommendation for putting a lower grade of man at the helm of such a vessel. Thus one looks for a tall and handsome, nobly-maned, athletic young man with, say, a summa cum laude in electrical engineering from Berkeley who have somehow not taken a United States commission as yet. Naturally, one finds them under the englobing trap of skin of the wrong colour. Well, then, if one has such material to hand, might one not use it to command a particular L(anding) C(raft) M(echanized)? I am not so foolish as to think that our friends within the navy can have Wong Lee's son placed in command of so sensitive a project in San Francisco Bay, of course. But if the basic type were to be replicated overseas, if another of the same class were found to be required off Formosa, then would he not be the obvious candidate? (I rather like the symmetry in advancing the clan's fortunes by a little harmless double-dealing off Formosa again.) Given carte blanche to assemble its equippage on the far side of the world, and I think it reasonably certain that we will be able to produce a prototype of the equipment of which we have crooned promises to our noteworthy friend in New York, all out of Government Issue equipment! (Allowing for a moment that the Reich is a government, and that we get our sample from Fat Chow.) The upshot is that you will find in these papers a contract for the refitting of Sparrow as an LCM tender at Vancouver. The rest, including the refitting of my cabin, I leave to your agents. Especially as I am now tapped to traipse the country in Cousin H.C's service again.

Heilige Roemisches Reich Deutches Nation. There are many ways to go in translating this, and the absolute worst way would be to follow Voltaire, that dastardly Franco-Prussian apologist.

This is not actually the case. If you look at a medieval survey like the Doomsday Book, you will see that regions are broken down, ultimately, into the number of functional units they contain, not area. (Which medieval surveyors would have had difficulty measuring, anyway.) For the Domeday book, it is "hides" they contain. A hide began as a unit of land sufficient to support a household and later became a tax unit. In either case, a grant of feudal rights was of a number of hides in a given riding/hundred/wappentake, etc. It then devolved on a household. And guess what? Actual households didn't enjoy property rights over a square of so many meters on a side. Rather, they would have fields up and down (arable dry/arable wet), forest rights, commons rights, gathering rights and so on. In the feudal economic mode, it didn't matter, because the lord was interested in the fees, not the real estate. Now, one's opinion of the actual value of the "feudal mode" heuristic aside, we have substantial data about how this played out when it came time to turn "feudal" land rights into surveyed map rights during the Early Modern/Enlightenment, and it was a godawful mess. The King of France's Chambre des Reunions claimed vast tracts in western Germany on the basis of maximal interpretations of the map extent of feudal rights. Now, you will say that this doesn't change the fact that a lord would have a regional base, often with a castle and everything. And this is true! a castle has to be somewhere. It is just that the more rich and powerful a noble family is, the more widely dispersed around the kingdom will be its property, not least on the basis of a desire to achieve proximity to the royal court. Since you object to the example of Nassau-Orange, which I personally thought was a pretty good fit to the Dune-like atmosphere that Steve was going for and which well illustrated the perils of taking feudal titles as regional administrative blocks, how about the Earls of Arundel? Arundel is a small and important fief, as it is at the pass on the road across the Weald from London to the Sussex ports, convenient for someone sailing for the Seine and Paris. The title of Earl of Arundel might have been created for Roger de Montgomery, better known as the Earl of Shrewsbury, or sometimes Earl of Shropshire. That's a long way from Arundel, but, of course, William wanted both strategically vital Arundel and Sheffield in the fractious north in the hands of a trusted lieutenant. Moving on, the title was recreated for Roger d'Aubigny, Earl of Lincoln and of Arundel. Once again, the same family held a fief in the far north of England and an hour's drive south of London. And notice that Roger himself was born in a castle in Norfolk to an East Anglian peer and the daughter of the Earl of Norfolk. Throw in an appanage on the Welsh frontier, and you'd get the four corners of old England! Nor is this kind of dispersal in any way unique. We all know that the Hohenzollern are the family of the Kings in Prussia, which is today a Russian enclave on the Baltic coast of Poland. but they got that title by leveraging their rights as Electors of Brandenburg (Greater Berlin), and they earned the right to cal themselves "Electors" when they were burg-grafen of Nuremberg. The one advantage of this stop is that at least a straight line through Berlin to Nuremberg points towards the original Castle Zollern, down in picturesque Swabia, from which the house was raised to greatness by their neighbours, the lords of the Habichtsburg. Etc, etc. I am not trying to scold Steve for having bad fun here. I'm just pointing out that the "feudal model," in which kings are served by powerful lords who draw their revenues from lands granted by the king, is just about the worse system possible for creating localised power blocs similar to modern states and provinces.