Word: commandant
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9 (New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz conducting; Columbia, 8 sides; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky conducting; Victor, 6 sides). First U.S. recordings of the 1945 work which the high command of Soviet music damned as "ideologically weak" and "not reflecting the true spirit of the Soviet people." U.S. listeners will find the Ninth sometimes playful, often merely trivial and tricky, and never a match for Shostakovich's Fifth. Koussevitzky, speeding the slow movement, gets through it in one record less than Kurtz, but his performance is less satisfactory...
...Guide Problem. Simplest missiles are not guided at all; they are "preset" on a calculated course toward the target, as the V-weapons were. "Command" missiles follow orders (radio signals) from the ground, a ship, or a piloted aircraft. "Along-the-way" missiles carry equipment which detects deviations from an established course through space. "Homing" missiles are attracted, like moths to a street light, by the target itself. If the target gives off sound waves, light, heat, or electrical influences, the missile picks up the trail and follows it to the kill...
Arms & the Men. The Tribune is a tightly run command, but it is no one-man show. McCormick's army of talent is extraordinarily well paid, headed by high-powered brass...
McCormick starts each year with a baronial New Year's reception at the office. It is a command performance: his employees file past their morning-coated boss (a police dog mounts guard at his side), shake his hand, then pass on to the cigars and the punch bowl. Watching the show, his cousin, the late Captain Joseph Medill Patterson of the New York Daily News, once drily observed: "Bertie certainly likes to crack the whip and watch the serfs march...
...Maloney. They talk over the news and the Colonel's slants on the news. The rest of the afternoon the Colonel reads his mail, takes tea & toast, researches his weekly radiorations on forgotten U.S. heroes, sends off memos (signed "R.R. McC.") down his chain of command, and summons department heads to the sanctum. They have learned that it is well to lay a problem crisply on the line, get his decision, which is almost invariably prompt, and get out fast...