December 1950
In This Issue
Explore the December 1950 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Build and Be Damned
Every motorist is aware of the monotonous new communities, the clusters of little pastel houses, which have mushroomed up overnight within a thirty-mile radius of most American cities. Have they been planned with forethought or simply with a rich profit in mind? Robert Moses, who puts the question, is an authority on parks, highways, housing, and municipal and state planning. In his thirty years of participation in New York's city and state governments, he has served every governor since Al Smith and both Mayors La Guardia and O'Dwyer. He has recently completed a report for the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on its needed public improvement.
Dorothy Wordsworth: The Perfect Sister
Dorothy Wordsworth, though never a poet herself, had the distinction of being the indispensable sister for two men of genius. For a portrait of her —of what she was and of what she was not —we turn to George Mallaby, author of a volume on Wordsworth, who graduated from Merton College, Oxford, in 1923; served as Secretary of the Joint Planning and Intelligence Committee during the Second World War, and is today a key figure in Western Union and Assistant Secretary of the Ministry of Defense.
The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Turkey
The Golden Funny Book
Pirates, Ships and Sailors
Lance and Cowboy Billy
The Quiet Noisy Book
When I Grow Up
The Watch Goat Boy
All About Marjory
Cats
Rip and Royal
Henry Huggins
Paul Revere and the Minute Men
The Pony Express
Marie Antoinette
Bob Clifton, Jungle Traveler
Little Britches
To Tell Your Love
Whaler 'Round the Horn
Surfman, the Adventures of a Coast Guard Dog
Hidden Trapezes
This Month
Hunting Season
DAVID L. GRAHAM taught English at the University of Georgia and served in the Navy during the war. A former Philadelphian, he now divides his time hetween Freeport, Maine, and New York.
House Guest Etiquette
New Long and Short of It
SCOTT CORBETT has contributed to various magazines and served in the Rainbow Division during the war, when he was news editor of the Division’s newspaper. A native of Missouri, he now lives in New York. His book The Reluctant Landlord, published by Crowell last May, will shortly be made into a moving picture.
Stuffing the Turkey
“Even to the children, a Christmas turkey without stuffing is unthinkable.”
Football
A Christmas Dinner
Founder and proprietor of the Cordon Bleu Restaurant and Cooking School, DIONE LUCAS is celebrated for recipes which result in wonderfully enticing dishes, yet which call for no preternatural skill on the part of the cook. Perhaps the best-known example of this kind, of cookery is her Poulet à la Kiev. She is the author of The Cordon Bleu Cook Book and is widely known for her regular appearances on television.
The Atlantic Report on the World Today: The Philippines
Faith for Freedom
BARBARA WARD, whose editorials in the London Economist marked her as a brilliant young journalist, has recently married and is now on her way to Australia. A leading Roman Catholic, whose buoyancy and faith put fresh heart in others, she has written this exhortation which we hope will be translated into the free tongues o the Western world; it will stand as the concluding chapter in her new book, Policy for the West, to be published by W. W. Norton and Company next month.
Steel for the Future
If our conflict with Russia is to be fundamentally one of production, then then can be no doubts about our resources. In answer to those who have been apprehensive about our steel capacity and our supply of first-grade iron ore. BENJAMIN F. FAIRLESS, who has been President of the United States Steel Corporation since 1938. has made this firm and reassuring analysis of what we are banking on for today and for the future. “ The American steel industry today.”he writes. “can match the output of every foreign steel plant in the world, ton for ton„ and still hare 14 million tons left over. “ That is a record to be proud of. Can we keep it up?
George Moore
“A man must be judged by what is fine in him, not by what is trivial.”So writes SIR MAX BEERBOHM in this essay which gives us a hearing, seeing likeness of his friend George Moore. A master stylist whose drawings and first editions are collectors’ items, Sir Max lives today in his home in Rapallo, whence, thanks to the wire recording of the BBC, his voice is occasionally to be heard throughout the English-speaking world.
Ode to the Ambivalent
The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington
If, in the Foggy Aleutians
The Everlasting Quartet
As one of the founders of Story magazine, to which he devoted more than a decade of intensive effort, WHIT BURNETThelped to discover such writers as William Saroyan, Tess Slesinger. Allan Seager, Richard Wright, and Eric Knight. In the evenings which he takes off from his writing and editing. he is an impassioned member of a string quartet, an addiction which explains how he came to urite the delightful fantasy that follows.
Seals in the Ballroom
After graduating from West Point, CHARLES W. THAYER resigned from the Army in order to prepare himself for a post in our Foreign Service. He went to Moscow to learn Russian, and there in 1934 he became one of the assistants of Ambassador Bullitt. In all he spent eight years in Russia; it was a time of more gaiety and less tension than today, as the experiences recounted in his forthcoming memoir, Bears in the Caviar, will show. The book is to be published early in the new year by Lippincott.
Must 65 Be Fatal?
ROLLO WALTER BROWN was born in southeastern Ohio, in the mining region which he has written about in his novels, As a boy he worked on a hill farm, in a clay mine, and occasionally in a coal mine. He studied law. but preferred literature and the contemporary scene. For twenty-five years he has been a busy free-lance author. He has the American gift of inviting confidence, and in his biographical volumes. Dean Briggs, Lonely Americans, and Harvard Yard in the Golden Age, he has drawn illuminating portraits of some of the big elders of our day.
Standards of Living in Asia
GERARD SWOPE, who was President of the General Electric Compan y from 1922 to 1940, and again from 1942 to the end of 1944, is one of the most beloved elder statesmen in American industry. In 1938 we published in the Atlantic his authoritative findings about the cost of living in Europe, and in June, 1940, his second analysis. “The Cost of Living in South America"; in 1950 he visited one country in the Near East and seven in the Far East, and here is his revealing comparison of their cost of living with ours.
