1950 – Page 6 – Old Magazine Articles

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…

Explaining Abstract Art
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

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

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:

Explaining Abstract Art
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

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

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:

‘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.

The Proxy Wars
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

On June 24 [1950] Soviet Russia dug deep into her bag of tricks and came up with a new one – war by proxy. Today, still sadly unprepared for satellite warfare, the US may yet profit by tragic experiences – so that even possible defeat in Korea will not be totally without gain. What has been learned and how this knowledge might be used in future satellite wars is discussed here.

A Pox on Both Your Houses…
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Washington’s growing impatience and distrust with both Chiang Kai-shek’s island nation and the communist thugs on the mainland was reaching the high-water mark during the earliest days of 1950 when President Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893 – 1971) presented that administration’s China policy:

No official military aid for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government, either on the island of Formosa [Taiwan] or anywhere else. No hasty recognition of the Communist Chinese government of Mao Zedong. No attempt to stop further Russian advances in Asia except through ‘friendly encouragement’ to India, French Indo-China, Siam, Burma and the new United States of Indonesia…