February 1953
In This Issue
Explore the February 1953 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington
Venezuela
Payroll Prosperity: Will American Labor Go Conservative?
Associate Professor of History at Harvard, OSCAR HANDLIN seeks to answer a question which is fundamental in any blueprint of our economy. Will American labor, some of whose leaders once flirted dangerously with Communism, follow the line toward Socialism? Or will they prove to be a property-minded conservative force in the years ahead? Mr. Handlin is the author of Boston’s Immigrants and This Is America, studies of the new blood streams in this country; and his latest book, The Uprooted, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1951.
Children's Ward
The doctor and the hard-driven nursing staff in a large metropolitan hospital have little time for the emotional reactions of the parents who come, as it were, on probation to spend a short time with their sick children. The story which follows is a true one written by the mother of a boy born with a congenital defect which could be remedied only after a series of operations. On three different occasions the youngster was on the danger list.
Crime Does Pay
In the your 1951, seven out of every ten crimes were unsolved, says VIRGIL W. PETERSON, Operating Director of the Chicago Crime Commission, and for those criminals who were let off or who got away, crime does pay — and pays far too well. Mr. Peterson supports his argument with names and cases in the Chicago metropolitan area — the turbulent area which he has had under professional scrutiny since 1942. But the evidence presented to Judge Proskauer of the New York State Crime Commission of the crime and extortion in the docks makes it appallingly clear that Chicago is not in a class by itself. Mr. Peterson’s most recent book, Barbarians in Our Midst, was published last summer under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.
London
Kersten, Himmler, and Count Bernadotte
Historian and scholar now teaching at Christ Church, Oxford, H. R. TREVOR-ROPER has emerged as the foremost British authority on the closing months of the Nazi regime, a reputation well earned by his book, The Last Days of Hitler. In the article which follows, he throws the spotlight on a mystery man, Felix Kersten, who was for a time Himmler’s personal doctor and whom members of the Dutch government recently nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Two Songs: For Roy and Mary Campbell
Socrates on Trial
American philosopher IRWIN EDMAN was born in New York City in the sunlight and shadow of Columbia University and there he has lived all his life teaching and writing the books (Philosopher’s Holiday is his most successful) which have helped to strengthen the philosophy of others. We turn to him for an authoritative and illuminating account of those days in Athens when Socrates, rejecting the idea of exile, faced the final and most dramatic decision in his life of reason. This is the fifth in our series of biographical essays dealing with the turning points in the lives of famous men.
Winter Etchings
Jody Rolled the Bones
RICHARD YATES went straight from his prep school into the Army, where he served as a rifleman in the closing phase of the war in Europe. There followed what he calls an unimpressive series of newspaper and publicity jobs in New York: — brightened by the evening courses in Creative Writing which he took at Columbia. In 1951 he plunged into free-lancing and since then has been living and writing abroad.
Our Propaganda in Asia
FLEUR COWLES, wife of Gardner Cowles, the publisher, came to her editing after a highly successful decade in advertising. She was one of the first American women to enter the liberated countries at the war’s end, and her work as special consultant to the Famine Emergency Committee furthered her interest in Europe’s response to American ideas. Two years ago she traveled extensively in South America gathering source material for her book, Bloody Precedent, a comparative study of two Argentine dictatorships. Recently she and her husband made a tour of the Orient, where they were appalled at the misunderstanding of American democracy. Her article contains the gist of the remarks she made to the Overseas Press Club on her return.
This Business of Giving
The corporate contributions for the year 1952 may have exceeded $300 million, writes F. EMERSON ANDREWS, who has been Director of Publications for the Russell Sage Foundation since 1928. In his article, Mr. Andrews analyzes what proportion of these gifts comes from the gigantic corporations and how much is given by small companies, and he seeks to answer that key question of whether the donor corporations will attempt to control those agencies to which they are now contributing. Corporate giving, he demonstrates, as it grows in size and experience, can fill a unique place in the scheme of American philanthropy.
Two Love Poems
Do American Schools Educate?
Headmaster of the Grammar School in Bristol, England, and contributor to numerous British periodicals, JOHN GARRETThas long been concerned with the problems of educating the young. Last year, as a Smith-Mundt Fellow in Education, he had the opportunity to visit our schools, and from his firsthand observation he has struck at the weaknesses and underlined the strengths of secondary education in America.
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Books: The Editors Like
Reader's Choice
The Proud Kate
The Next Million Years
When the Gods Are Silent
Love for Lydia
My Uncle, Joseph Stalin
Accent on Living
Foreign Sports Cars
This is the fourth in a series of motoring subjects in these pages from DENNIS MAY, well-known authority on British automobiles.
Basic Basic
ALDEN H. SMITH served as an Army interpreter in French and Japanese during the war. He lives in Tuckahoe, New York, and is Vice President of the Magazine Institute.
Progress
Those familiar with the slogan “Guinness is good for you” will be interested in the fact that the famous brewery in Dublin is replacing its oak vats with aluminum vessels. Some of the vats are over one hundred years old. — Aluminum News
Sex Life of the Pumpkin
JOHN OTT, JR., gave up banking in Chicago and organized a company which produced “timelapse" motion pictures. In the following article he describes an exceptional difficulty he encountered in photographing a pumpkin.
Hearing With Both Ears
JOHN M. CONLY is a former New York and Washington newspaperman, now on the staff of High Fidelity Magazine. “They Shall Have Music” is a quarterly feature in the Atlantic.
