January 1953
In This Issue
Explore the January 1953 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Israel
Men Must Choose
The year after he came down from Oxford, ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE was a student in the British Archeological School at Athens. His sojourn in Greece had this effect: in the Athens cafés he became aware of current international affairs; and as he worked on the ruins of ancient civilizations, he began to ponder upon their relationship to our time. In 1915 Mr. Toynbee entered the service of the British Government; in 1925 he became Research Professor of International History at the University of London. Meantime his books were taking shape. In 1922 he jotted down on a half sheet of writing paper his bold original design for A Study of History and he has been writing at it ever since. Six volumes have already been published and there are more to come.
Versailles (Petit Trianon)
Alicia Markova
Alicia Markova is an English-born ballerina and perfectionist who seems to defy time. Ten years ago John Martin called her the greatest living ballet dancer, and the praise she has received from the press this year as the guest star of the Ballet Theatre rises to same superlatives. She and AGNEES DE MILLE met in England in 1933; since then they have danced on the same bill and each has respect for the ether’s talent. With the warmth and professional appraisal which made her book, Dance to the Piper, so illuminating, Miss de Mille here analyzes the secret of Markova’s perfection.
More Imports Needed
“Can the Republicans do what the Democrats have failed to do —~ namely, provide our foreign policy with an adequate economic foundation?" To find a constructive answer to this question, we turn to a leading American economist, SUMNER H. SLIGHTER,Lament professor at I harvard University, and it is his conclusion that “rarely has a country been so well situated to give great help to the rest of the world by policies which would also enhance its own economic welfare.”But will we do it?
Iran
The Making of The Magic Mountain
“The physician assured me that I should be acting wisely to remain there for six months and take the cure. If I had followed his advice, who knows, I might still be there! I wrote The Magic Mountain instead.”
Prologue
Adventure
Last year, before he left his sanctuary in Dublin for an extended tour of the United States, FRANK O’CONNOR was asked how he wrote his short stories. Said Mr. O’Connor,“With me it’s a difficulty of temperament. Mine is lyrical, explosive. I write a story with a feeling of slight regret for poor Shakespeare’s lack of talent and wake up with a hangover that makes poteen look like cold water. Then, having cursed life and forsworn literature,I start rewriting. If I can work up the Shakespeare mood often enough I may get it right in six revisions. If I don’t I may have to rewrite it fifty times. This isn’t exaggeration.”
Jefferson and Civil Liberties
What was the high moment in the career of Thomas Jefferson? Was it the writing of the Declaration of Independence or was it his election as President, which, as Henry Cabot Lodge says, “definitively determined that ours should be a democratic republic"? CLAUDE G. BOWERS, author of Jefferson and Hamilton and The Tragiclira and for the past thirteen years our ambassador to Chile, is f irmly of the opinion that Jefferson’s election was one of the turning points in our national story, and that Jefferson’s courageous stand against the Alien and Sedition Laws set an example which should be burned into our conscience today. This is the fourth in our series of biographical essays dealing with the decisive events in the lives of famous men.
Cognac for Breakfast
ANN MASTERS was one of the youngest women executives in banking when she left this field to start a career in writing. She edited a publication for school children in New York and later moved to Connecticut, where she come a feature writer for the Bridgeport Sunday Post. At present she is associate editor on an industrial newspaper in Bridgeport. The article that follows results from two years which Miss Masters spent gathering material in Europe, mostly in France, with Rose C. Feld, author and journalist.
My Son: Leavetaking
The Morning and the Evening
A native of Memphis, Tennessee, JOAN WILLIAMS had her first short story published in Mademoiselle as a winner in its College Fiction Contest in 1949. She graduated from Bard College the following year and since that time has worked in a New Orleans bookstore and at Bard College as Assistant Director of Admissions. Miss Williams is now living in New York, where she is on the staff of Look Magazine.
Thomas Merton: A Modern Man in Reverse
From his background of Christian scholarship and monastic practice, the VERY REVEREND DOM AELRED GRAHAM, O.S.B., has written the only full-length appraisal of Thomas Merton that has so far been printed. Dom Graham, who was born in England in 1907, became a Benedictine at Ampleforth Abbey in 1930, spent four years at Oxford. and in his books, of which Catholicism and the World Today is the most recent, as in his work for the London Times, has revealed his deep interest in the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and democracy. He is now Prior of Portsmouth Priory in Rhode Island.
The Revolution in Books
Since the war, the book trade has been jolted out of its usual course by the runaway of paper-bound books, which this year will sell more than 260 million copies. For an accounting of this phenomenon, we turned to DAVID DEMPSEY, one of the Editors of the New York Times Book Review. A graduate of Antioch, class of 1937, Mr. Dempsey served as a combat correspondent with the Fourth Marine Division; he collaborated in the preparation of two volumes of war history and then did free-lance work in New York before joining the staff of the Times.
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Books: The Editors Like
Reader's Choice
The Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Lying in State
Spring in Spain
Accent on Living
The Great Hoax
PATRICIA G. LAUBER is an editor of Scholastic Magazines. A Wellesley graduate, she devotes her summers to travel and gathering material for light sketches.
The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington
Cat
Art and the Man
E. V. KNON is the former editor of Punch, and “Art and the Man" is reprinted from that magazine by permission of its proprietors.
Tourist in Austria
JOAN M. WALKER recently returned from a year in Europe, of which six months were spent in Austria. She is a native of Illinois, and now lives in New York, where she is engaged in television work.
Record Reviews
