1950 – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

U.N. Gripes
(Collier’s Magazine, 1950)

This editorial was one of the first of its kind and many more would follow on its heels. The opinions expressed would be repeated in American schoolrooms, barrooms, dinner tables and state houses all the way up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It was not merely the parents of draftees who wondered aloud as to the whereabouts of the U.N. signatories in times of crises, but practically the whole nation:

For two months the American and South Korean ground forces fought it out alone. For two months they fought without even the promise of help from other major powers…

American Women in the Early War
(People Today Magazine, 1950)

Standing before the United Nations General Assembly during the Fall of 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson reminded the diplomats that five years earlier, when the U.N. Charter was conceived, it was agreed that the institution should have a military arm with which to enforce its edicts.

Atomic Researcher Arrested in London
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

In January, 1950, a British scientist named Klaus Fuchs (1911 – 1988) was arrested for passing atomic secrets on to Soviet agents.

In his confession Fuchs admitted that the transfer of information began in 1942, shortly after he joined the [British Ministry of Supply] as a German Refugee.

What was Pathfinder Magazine
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was a pretty terrific news organ and to thumb through any of the issues spanning 1910 through 1922 you’ll get the sense that it had a heavy hand in influencing TIME, NEWSWEEK and any number of other magazines that came later. Established in Washington, D.C. in 1894, PATHFINDER earned its reputation as a genuine source for domestic and international news.

This article was written by its last publisher, Graham Patterson, and it served as both a history of that weekly as well as an obituary for its founder, George Mitchell – which is entirely fitting because the whole enterprise folded four and half years later. By the time its final issue rolled off the press in 1952 it had become the second largest news magazine in America – with a circulation numbering 1,200,000. With a record like that it seems odd that it went under at all.

Click here to read our collection of articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE.

The Continuing Crisis
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

[In Washington] the U.S. defense effort snowballed. Looking beyond the Korea showdown, the U.S. had to plan against new Russian surprises… There would be no appeasement, even at the risk of W.W. III. U.S. intelligence indicated a ten year Russian military plan designed to bleed America white. The aim would be to keep the U.S. in a semi-mobilized state for years.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

The Stalin ”Peace Plan”
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

This column will give you a quick understanding as to how 1950 ended:

Russian diplomats made valiant efforts. In Moscow, [Stalin’s adviser] Andrei Gromyko called Western envoys, urging Big Four talks to ‘unify’ Germany. In the U.N., Andrei Vishinsky protested Russia’s ‘devotion’ to peace and to the belief that capitalism and Communism could live in the same world… But while the Reds talked, Chinese Communists had swept into the Korea War. The Soviet military budget had soared . Russia’s submarine fleet had multiplied, it’s air force had expanded to 14,000 combat planes, its army was millions strong, and still growing.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

How the Soviets Would Have Attacked
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

There wouldn’t be any warning.

Long-range Soviet bombers attempt to knock out our key industrial targets by atomic bombing. Some fly the 4,000, miles from Murmansk across the roof of the world to our East Coast; others strike from bases in Eastern Siberia at California and the Midwest… Simultaneously, organized sabotage breaks out in aviation plants, shipyards, power stations, etc., to complement the work of the bombers.

Ground Zero: Washington, D.C.
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

When it became clear to all that the Soviets had the bomb – and Washington was the target – the egg-heads in D.C. decided it was time to disperse various government offices to the suburbs:

Given any warning at all, the National Security Resources Board now seems confident it can preserve at least a skeleton Government. But as for the run-of-the-mine Federal employee, he’ll have to take his chances amid the irradiated rubble…

Stepping-Up The Training
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

By the autumn of 1950 it became clear to the old hands at the Pentagon that the police action on the Korean peninsula was beginning to resemble a real war. With that in mind, thirteen military training camps that had been been barren for the past five years, were dusted off in order that they might once more begin training Americans for war. Two weeks later China threw her hat in the ring.

During this same period, the U.S. Navy took 62 ships that had been mothballed in order to launch the Inchon Landings…

This was Jack Benney
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

The Swedish Touch
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The Invincible Chinese?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Man, those Chinese are good soldiers… You can’t see ’em; you can’t hear ’em. You don’t know they’re there until they’re on top of you… They’re experts at camouflage and the best damn night-fighters I’ve ever seen. We could walk a company over the hill and see nothing. Then we’d look around and they’d be swarming on us like flies. It was just like they’d sprouted from the ground.

The Critical Situation in Korea
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Upon hearing the news of the Chinese Army’s appearance on the Korean peninsula, President Truman turned to his trusted advisers:

At 11 a.m. the President spoke first to General Bradley. How bad, he wanted to know, would the casualties be? ‘Very bad, I’m afraid, sir. It is too early for an accurate estimate, but our losses will be heavy.’ Then President asked how serious the situation was. ‘Critical,’ was Bradley’s terse response.

U.N. Dilemma
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

With the expansion of the Korean War, the United Nations realized that World War III was at their doorstep if they wanted to engage. Withdrawing in order to fight another day made sense – but such a decision was not without costs.

Explaining Abstract Art
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

WHY DO THEY DISTORT THINGS? CAN’T THEY DRAW? WHY DO THEY
PAINT SQUARES AND CUBES?

In an effort to help answer these and many other similar questions that are overheard in the modern art museums around the world, authors Mary Rathbun and Bartlett Hayes put their noodles together and dreamed up the book (that is available at Amazon) Layman’s Guide to Modern Art, and we have posted some of the more helpful portions here, as well as 17 assorted illustrations to help illustrate their explanations.

The authors point out that abstract images are not simply confined to museums and galleries but surround us every day and we willingly recognize their meanings without hesitation:

Lines picturing the force and direction of motion are a familiar device in cartoons… The cartoonist frequently draws a head in several positions to represent motion. Everybody understands it. The painter multiplies the features in the same way… Everybody abstracts. The snapshot you take with your [camera] is an abstraction – it leaves out color, depth, motion and presents only black-and-white shapes. Yet its simple enough to recognize this arrangement of shapes as your baby or your mother-in-law or whatever…

‘Uncle Ho Strikes Back”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Three years before the total French withdrawal from Vietnam, this one Frenchman summed up his comrade’s frustrations concerning their battles against the Viet Minh:

We can’t win a guerrilla war unless we have the support of the people. Frankly, we have not got it. Hitler or the Russians could conquer this country in two months with mass executions, wholesale reprisals and concentration camps. To fight this war and remain humanitarian is difficult.

The March from Chosin to the Sea
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

This is an eyewitness account of the fortitude and endurance exhibited by the freezing members of the 1st Marine Division as they executed their highly disciplined 100 mile march from the Chosin Reservoir to the Korean coastline – inflicting (and taking) casualties all the while. The account is simply composed of a series of diary entries – seldom more than eight sentences in length recalling that famous fighting retreat in the frozen Hell that was Korea. The journalist’s last entry points out that the number of Marine dead was so high, we need never think of the Battle of Tarawa as the bloodiest engagement in Marine history.

Movie Streaming was Invented in 1950
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

We were surprised to learn that the earliest television mavens recognized that television programming could be enhanced and customized when the signal is carried through telephone lines of individual subscribers – a perk that wasn’t made widespread for a few decades. The early concept was called Phonevision.