February 1952
In This Issue
Explore the February 1952 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
The Soviet Family
A Two-Way Street
Who Runs the Gambling Machines?
Ever since taking office, GOVERNOR ADLAI E. STEVENSON of Illinois has earned a larger than local reputation for his power to speak out on problems which most politicians prefer to leave alone. In the article which follows he punctures the double standard of gambling in this country; he makes it clear that reputable citizens who play slot machines in their lodges and country clubs are playing right into the hands of the bigger gamblers higher up. Before his election in 1948. (Governor Stevenson served as assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1941 to 1944, assistant to the Secretary of State in 1945, and a delegate to the United Nations in 1946 and 1947.
Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry, the French poet and essayist, was born in 1871 in the small town of Cette overlooking the Mediterranean. His childhood was made memorable by the light and sea of a coastwise village and by the magnificent architecture of Genoa, where he spent his vacations. Italy, whose language and literature he soon mastered, became his “other country.”After his military service, his friendship with André Gide, Pierre Louÿs, and Stephen Mallarmé became a pivotal influence in his career. He turned away from the study of law and began to contribute to the Nouvelle Revue. To his son, FRANCOIS VALÉRY, We are indebted for this intimate and perceptive portrait of a poet’s preoccupation, which has been translated for the Atlantic by Esther P. Shiverick.
Hungary
The Light Within the Darkness
DR. ELLIOTT DOBSON is the pseudonym of a physician who is practicing today and who began to lose his eyesight in his thirty-third year. Now in total darkness, a specialist in the field of internal medicine, he handles his large practice, teaches at one of our leading medical schools, and serves as a staff member in a large metropolitan hospital. His article is drawn from the book When Doctors Are Patients, edited by Max Pinner, M.D., and Benjamin F. Miller, M.D., which Norton will publish in April. Other chapters, by Dr. Fredric Wertham and the late Dr. Abraham Myerson, will appear in subsequent issues of the Atlantic.
Ten Per Cent of Your Life
It is inevitable that RAYMOND CHANDLER,who has written pungently for the Atlantic on many subjects, would have some lively opinions on the function of the literary agent. Journalist, screen writer, and novelist, Mr. Chandler speaks from long professional experience. He is widely known as the creator of Philip Marlowe, the indestructible hero of The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and countless radio programs, and he is one of the most accomplished dialogue writers of the films.
The Buffalo Wallow
JACK TENNISON sold his first short story to the old Youth’s Companion. ”The check,”he writes, “was fifteen dollars, and this created some commotion in Company I, Volunteer Infantry, 1898.” Since then his stories have brought him an O. Henry Memorial Prize; and one of his novels, The Day of Souls, a story of pre-earthquake San Francisco, was called by Damon Runyon “the best, truest thing ever written about the city that was.”
The Burial (For Martha Hillard Macleish)
The Schuman Plan: A Blow to Monopoly
A lawyer and a man of action, WILLIAM J. DONOVAN,Chairman of the American Committee on United Europe, rises in defense of the Schuman Plan. Colonel of “The Fighting 69th" in the First World War, he was three times wounded and was decorated with the Congressional Medal and the Légion d’Honneur. He has explored China on his own, distributed relief in Poland, and traveled in Siberia. In 1940 he went on the first of the secret missions for President Roosevelt which were to lead to his command of the OSS.
Through the Drift of Years
The Deer: Lifeblood of the Barrens
FARLEY MOWAT made his first trip to the Barren Lands in 1935 when, as a boy of fifteen, he saw the great herds oj reindeer, “a half-mile wide river of caribou flowing unhurriedly north.”It was a sight he never forgot. On his discharge from the Canadian Army after six years in the Infantry, he decided to return to the unmapped sanctuary of the Barrens and study the migration of the deer. lie flew to Lake Nueltin with enough supplies for a stay of several months, and teamed up with Franz, a young Cree-German trader, who took him to the Ihalmiut, a vanishing clan of primitive Eskimos. This is the second of three articles drawn from Mr. Mount’s forthcoming book, People of the Deer (Atlantic-Little, Brown).
They Never Break the Law
A native nf Greenville, Mississippi, and a graduate of Yale, DAVID L. COHN followed the American axiom that only a young man can afford to retire. He scored a quick success in the retail trade of New Orleans, inrested his earnings in a chicken farm, and then net on, to enjoy and report on the world. He is the author of a penetrating study of the White and the Negro entitled Where I Was Born and Raised; a critique of our tariff policy, Picking America’s Pockets; and two volumes of entertaining reminiscence. Love in America and The Good Old Days.
Last Voyage
Frank Davison was the owner and manager of Hooton Aerodrome in Cheshire, England, and the director of several aviation companies as well as various nonflying concerns. In 1937 he took Ann on as a pilot and two years later they were married. When the war started, the government put a stop to civilian flying and requisitioned their aerodrome. Frank then turned his hand to running a gravel quarry in Flintshire; but rising wages, wartime shortages, and other complications put him out of that business and into farming. Last Voyage is ANN DAVISON’S story of what happened when they got tired of wrestling with the land.
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Reader's Choice
The Season's Difference
Back to Mandalay
Sybil
Spark of Life
Accent on Living
I'll Shift for Myself
KEN PURDY is editor of True, and an authority on motor racing and the road performance of automobiles. He now is working on an article which will size up speedway racing as exemplified by the 500-mile fixture at Indianapolis. If will appear in one of our spring issues.
We Love
Escorting the Cow
RIXFORD KNIGHT, who lives in Jamaica, Vermont, has provied Accent on Living readers with the more exotic fcts about goats, pigs, and hens. He now takes up a point of etiquette which has long tormented all thone who own a cow.
Read All About It..
JOHN M. CONLY a former NewYark and Washington newspaperman who is now an associate editor of Pathfinder.“ They Shall Have Music" is a quarterly feature in the Atlantic.
Record Reviews
