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“TIME” IN JEWISH HISTORY
By Rabbi Martin M. Weitz
Beth Hillel Temple, Kenosha, Wisconsin
Orthodox Jews, Seventh Day Baptists and Seventh-Day Adventists raise definite objections to calendar reform—not to a world calendar as a whole, but to the loss of the seven-day sequence of weeks. The author examines these objections in this series of what he picturesquely calls “Footnotes on Time Among Forgotten Jewries.”
IT MIGHT prove interesting to attempt a survey of differing calendric customs for “marking time” within one world community in order to understand fully that days and their ways can survive as variant cultural lags with different cultural values in different times and places in the same world religion.
It would be resultful, then, to trace some “days” in the calendar of Israel and to observe what they were and are in and near Palestine, Babylon, Egypt—major arenas in the life-pattern of Israel. Let us begin our “footnotes” with “New Moon” and “Sabbath,” among Israel’s oldest historical and religious events.
As far back as the time of David, we observe a new moon celebration implemented with sacrifice enacted by his clan. The new moon was never mentioned among earlier older Hebrew codes, for the fourteenth or nineteenth day of the month was designated as a Sabbath, with the first day as the new moon and the fourteenth day as the full moon. That Babylonian names are basic for the Hebrew calendar, and more specifically, that the fifteenth day of every month was known as Shapatu, was a discovery made by Dr. Pincus.
The seventh day, as Sabbath, must have come from very early sources. The number seven was sacred and the Sabbath was full of restrictions, both among the Hebrews and the Babylonians. The Babylonians, however, have similar restrictions for the fourteenth, twenty-first and twentyeighth days as well as the seventh. Such a day prohibited a ruler from tasting roast flesh, wearing a robe or clean apparel, from mounting a chariot or announcing a decision. A soothsayer could not express an oracle nor could a physician do any healing—a practice considerably modified with humanitarian intent by the Hebrews, for, in Hebraic law, any great law could be set aside for the preservation of human life.
Such data as a background suggest that the Sabbath evolved from an irregular and four-fold monthly experience to a regular weekly event. That it became a “day of reckoning” for the whole Babylonian culturezone (including the early Hebrew culture), which embraced the Fertile Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, is evidenced by
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available references to major and minor peoples other than the early Hebrews, major ones such as Assyrians, and minor as Samaritans.
The Samaritans were really on the “rim of the wilderness,” for they had little of direct relationship with Israel though much cultural osmosis occurred. They were completely lost to the area from which the Assyrians had uprooted them. The Samaritans have been dually influenced by early Assyrian-Babylonian exposures, as well as by later Hebrew patterns. Samaria, in a way, forms a barometer of calendric change, especially in the first centuries of its life, because new festivals invaded its partially familiar calendar. Especially since its emergence in 722 B.C.E.,* until 520 C.E., when it reached its zenith in population, power and influence, Samaria religiously and culturally, if not politically, maintained a separate and semi-independent life which extended to its colonies in various parts of the Near East, North Africa and Europe. (In a letter, Obadiah Yareh Da Bertinoro, a distinguished Italian rabbi, observes that no less than fifty Samaritan families resided in Cairo, Egypt, as late as 1490, when he sojourned through Egypt and Palestine, it was his opinion that 500 Samaritan families were extant in the world in his day. A scant 100 families remained in 1930.) Often the Samaritan group enacted measures deliberately to confuse erstwhile co-religionists who disowned them about the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, 450-40 B.C.E. (?), even as the erstwhile co-religionists shunted them out of the Jewish heritage by the deliberate adoption of the Assyrian block letters for the Hebrew alphabet and the incorporation of Babylonian names for the months instead of the Aramaic words used by both.
Citations as far back as 163 C.E. state that Samaritans set up false signals to confuse Jewish neighbors in their celebration of the New Year rites. Because of this, Rabbi Judah (163-93 C.E.) abolished fire signals and substituted messengers, free from Samaritan interference. It is unlikely that the Samaritans adopted Babylonian names for the months, especially when their opponents did so in order to emphasize the cleavage. Thus the Samaritans retained the older method of numbers for months, a method indigenous to their new homes and current among the Israelite peasants who remained and whom later they absorbed.
Another instance of Samaritan development of their own calendric practices, as a result of strained relations with the Jewish community in Judea, is the feast of in-gathering—the Feast of the Booths. The solemn cutting and sacrifice of a first sheaf of the new crop was a meaningful rite connected with the “day after the Sabbath,” which was identified with and which followed the last of the so-called Mazzot Festival Days, according to Morgenstern in his Supplementary Studies in the Calendars of Ancient Israel.
Samaritans observed what we know as a later Sadducean custom and adhered to the older practice of reckoning a 50-day period from “the day after the Sabbath of the Mazzot Festival until the Sabbath Festival.” A specific record is found II Chronicles 30: 1, 10, indicative of differing attitudes on the part of Samaritans and Galileans toward the central religious authority of the Temple in Jerusalem. This initial rift was deepened with time and with later apologetics and polemics in Judaism
* B.C.E. means Before Common Era. C.E. means Common Era.
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and Christianity. A common attitude toward the central sanctuary, however, according to some scholars, can be traced to about 300 B.C.E.
Other divergences by Samaritans from the changed and standardized calendar fixed by Judeans are: celebration of the Sabbath from midday Friday until midday Saturday, adhesion to the ancient rather than revised reckoning of the Passover; celebration of a festival now lost and almost forgotten, the “day after the Sabbath”; complete refusal of identifying the New Year Day with First of Tishri (September-October), as well as hesitation of utilizing Babylonian nomenclature for months. Perhaps the Samaritan refusal of the second Passover recorded in II Chronicles 30: 10 is due to their objection of redating the Passover, for fear of rechanging their sacred fast (according to J. Jeremias’ Die Passahfeir der Samaritaner). Samaritans and Sadduccees, in earlier centuries, and Karaites and Falashas, in later centuries, retained earlier festivals, dates and usages for the most part, whereas Rabbinic Judaism used renamed months and emended early usages so as to become preservative forces for Israel.
Another indication for early divergence exists in references to Shiloh, a city compared to Samaria. According to Judeans, both these cities, Shiloh and Samaria, were notorious for intemperance, inasmuch as Israel, directly north of Judea, was a vine-cultivating area easily given to excess, even as was Samaria, successor to Israel’s soil and “spirits.” Thus feasts of vintage meant more in the north of Palestine even with the Samaritans who occupied that area after 722 B.C.E. than with the Judeans of Southern Palestine. No doubt Babylonian influence was felt for centuries in certain festivals and rites of fertility but not in names of the months. (When Nazarite orders arose even in the Samaritan milieu to protest Northern festival excesses, they emerged from the none-too-fertile hill country to Judea to emphasize the semi-pastoral simplicity known to early Israel.)
Here is an excellent transposition of cultural lags in the Hebrew calendar. The Judeans, before the Babylonian Exile (586-520 B.C.E.) followed a simple, semirigid calendation, unpalatable to Northerners. About this time, however, and because of the presence of Samaritans and an assumed need for self-immolation, the Judeans —now Jews—after their Exile in and exposure to commercial Babylon, greatly shifted the calendar. They renamed months, revised some contents from their original simplicity by way of Babylonian loans, whereas the Northerners—now the Samaritans— became the defenders of the older but simpler version of the calendar, free from Babylonian names, but now unpalatable to Judeans!
Celebration of the Jubilee is another instance of how a late group, the Samaritans, follow the earlier version, while the earlier group, the Judeans, evolve a better but later version. Samaritans calculated the seventh year of release differently from the Jews. According to the Talmud, the seventh year of release is dated from the conquest of the land and from tribal distribution, which it claims took fourteen years. This occurred in the year of the Creation 2489, an experience followed by 850 years or 17 Jubilees between that event and the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. The last Jubilee occurred on the tenth day of Tishri in the fourteenth year after the destruction of Jerusalem.
Samaritans, however, insist, in their Book of Joshua, that the first Jubilee was simultaneous with the crossing of the Jordan and they cite 2794 instead of 2489 as the first Sabbatical cycle. It may be that this is the earlier as well as the simpler reckoning, for the Talmudic calculation may be centuries later than the citation in the Samaritan Book of Joshua. Evidently later than the Samaritan Bible is the Talmudic ruling for finding the year of release: “Add one year and divide by seven the number of years since the Destruction of the Second Temple, or add two for every century and divide the total sum by seven.”
A parallel conflict with its impress on calendation is evidenced in the order of the services and in the Bible cycle of readings. The Samaritan cycle is more imperfect than that of the Jews. In their Taulidah (Chronicles), they ascribe computations to one Eleazer, later expanded by a high-priest at Damascus, Jacob ben Ishmael (d. 1346?), and so relayed to 1856, when their high-priest Solomon died. This “Chron
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icle” (an apology for Samaritan interpretation) begins its account with the traditional calculation of festivals and jubilees on the assumption that such chronology was direct from Adam to Pincus and through him to the Samaritan priesthood. This Chronicle is not a mere date-line for the calendar; it is the “life-line” for the priestly dynasty. But upon examination, its chronology is disturbing and dates misleading.
Early Samaritan records are simpler and their cycles have more order than chaos, especially for the first month and for the seven Sabbaths following Passover (March-April), on to the Feast of the Harvest (September-October). Divisions for the seventh month (September-October), including all the festivals through the Harvest Feast, are likewise organic in early Samaritan records, as are contents on circumcision, marriage and burial. All these records were compiled into the Defter, which was the first and foremost liturgy in Samaritan life. It is a composition by various authors of different times and, unlike Al-Taulidah, it is a “liturgy,” a basis for major events, as birth and death in the life of the individual or crops and solstices in the life of the community.
From both the “liturgy” and the “chronicle” it is evident that the Samaritans were not bereft of all their ancient pre-Palestine practices before their abduction by Assyria, even as they were not wholly “introduced” to Israel’s religion though they did retain zealously Israel’s earlier and comparatively simpler calendric content.
Another instance of a whole movement, this time within Jewry and not near it, which was slightly influenced by Samaritan procedure and nearly disrupted the Jewish calendar by a change in observance of days rather than days themselves, was Karaism.
From the Eighth through later centuries, Karaism as a Jewish movement insisted on the “strict construction of the Constitution,” so to speak (the Torah or Law), rather than the “loose interpretation” thereof (the Talmud). Karaites professed to follow the Bible literally to the complete neglect of rabbinic injunction. Actually, they incorporated much of Rabbinic Judaism, either directly or in change, but they also borrowed profusely from “out-groups” of pre-Medieval Jewry, such as the declining Samaritans and the rising Saracens. After the death of their founder, Annan, in 780 C.E., his views, although impractical for daily life, were followed with but slight concessions to daily demands. After the Tenth Century, however, Karaism spent itself because of a too rigid adhesion to the discipline rather than the spirit of the Torah or Law.
Calendrically speaking, the Karaite observance of the Sabbath and feast days is of special interest. They considered such days Memorial Days during the existence of the Temple but no longer binding at all, since the loss of the shrine in 70 C.E. Fortunately for the Jewish calendar and Jewry, Karaism was “lost” before the days were, which it discountenanced. (Among its more palatable beliefs, however, was its insistence that “resurrection of all dead” was allegorical, not actual, that the Temple was a part of the past rather than the future in the life of Israel.)
Sabbath observance was a most sombre as well as solemn experience among Karaites. They allowed no light nor fire; they permitted no departure from the home; they prohibited even light burdens on the Sabbath. Sabbath practices strangely paralleled other “Jewries,” as the Falashas of Ethiopia and the Bene Abbes of Libya. (A most interesting
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calendric practice among Karaites was the act of circumcision, performed at the close of the Sabbath, so that healing might begin on Sunday.) They were equally rigid in their prohibition for food preparation on holy days and their insistence that mazzoth, the bread of affliction, be made of barley; that the first of Tishri be a day of self-castigation rather than of trumpet-blowing and self-declaring; that the first of the year be the first of Nisan (March-April) not Tishri (September-October),—a practice “loaned” from the Samaritans (?); that Pentecost (in May-June) be celebrated on Sunday; that Chanukah (in December) be struck from the calendar; that Purim be a two-day fast instead of a one-day feast (preceded by a minor fast) ; that the seventh and the tenth instead of the ninth day of Ab (July-August) be fast days for loss of Jerusalem; and that the new moon be fixed by the earlier, simpler, but more confusing method of observation rather than computation. Annually, observes Bertinoro, the few families that lived in Cairo, in 1490, would send messengers to Jerusalem to observe the month of spring. Because of dependence on observation for intercalation, some Karaite communities would add a month while others would not!
Computation displaced observation as early as 165 C.E. in Babylonian Jewry when Samuel, an astronomer and scholar in Nahardia, rearranged the calendar. Feasts were not lifted but shifted from their former places in the calendar when he computed a cycle for 60 years. Mar-Samuel,' in Babylon, also computed a solar reckoning of 365 days and six hours as the basis for the calendar. Rab-Adda, another Babylonian, determined the year as 365 days, five hours, 55 minutes, and 25 and 5/27 seconds. A later authority in the same area, Saadiah (892-942 C.E.), revised calendar rules by computation.
These are instances of how Babylonian rabbis in early centuries of the Common Era departed from older lunar-premised cycles, by way of solar reckonings, how they accepted early Babylonian equivalents for names of months, introduced by the Exile but established with later rabbinic fixation of the calendar; and also how Samaritans and similar “out-group” Jewries were left in their own orbs, rather unmoved by the vital changes experienced among Jewries of Babylon, Palestine, Egypt, etc., via the “Oral Law” interpretation of Rabbinic Judaism and calculated systematic calendation.
During all these processes of calendric construction, it is not strange to find that the pattern which influenced Babylonian Jewry during and after the Exile (586-520 B. C. E.), and again after the loss of Jerusalem (70 C. E.), percolated to all corners of the Babylonian-Persian zones of empire, thus reaching half-forgotten Jewries, distant, isolated, semi-primitive Yawists, who used Babylonian names for their months. One of these, a “lost world” in Israel, an island in the Nile, was the Jewish colony of Elephantine, which lost all ties with Jerusalem in its Egyptian life, but which used Babylonian names for months at the same time and perhaps even earlier than they were in vogue among the Jewries of Palestine and Babylon.
This Nile colony might have first utilized Egyptian names, for many recovered
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papyri suggest but a limited infiltration of Babylonian influence through Egyptian or Jewish missionaries or soldiers, which displaced earlier Egyptian nomenclature. Certain papyri, dated 408 B. C. E., according to Morgenstern, indicate that Jews of Elephantine wrote to the Persian governor of Egypt (for Egypt was in the Persian Empire then), who no doubt was acquainted with the Babylonian as well as the Egyptian cycles and names, yet who probably cited Babylonian rather than Egyptian names for months. Such “months” could not have come to Egyptian Jews by way of Palestine, for the Jews of Elephantine used such Babylonian names for months long before their citation in the Biblical saga. This island colony, inhabited by Jewish mercenaries in the employ of the Pharaohs, was settled long before the rise of the Persian Empire—certainly before its invasion of Egypt. This Jewish colony flourished, probably as early as 640 B. C. E., under Egyptian and not Persian-Babylonian control. Here is an excellent illustration of how two calendars—at least as regards their names for months—Egyptian and Babylonian, vied with each other for adoption by an incoming group of hired Israelites. A special papyrus (numbered 30) contains the Babylonian and corresponding Egyptian names for all months but Tammuz and Mar-hehwan, which occur without corresponding Egyptian terms.
Even as the Elephantine colony could choose between two competing calendars, one predominatingly solar and the other decidedly lunar, so too is it probable that another element determined matters. It is just as likely that Jews already in Babylon since 586 B. C. E., had influenced Darius II (known as Nothus, 424-405 B. C. E.) „ possibly about 419, “in the seventeenth year of Darius,” to extend his edict not only to allow the return of Jews to Palestine, but also to permit the practice of a standardized calendar for the sake of religious and cultural unity. This is a measure which would unify Jewry, an already loyal group throughout all Persian satrapies, by means of a cycle of time containing Babylonian-Persian names for months and regular Jewish festivals permanently affixed therein. This influence in time may have penetrated even beyond the physical zone of Persian power to the more distant out-posts of Jewry, as far as the forebears of the Falashas on the highlands of Ethiopia. These were in some respects a long-time settlement of early temporary colonies, as the Elephantine site on the Nile, and thus were responsible for much conversion of and comingling with native stocks. It is altogether probable that these invading mercenary soldier-settlers of Egypt were Israelites, transferred by the Pharaohs from sites such as the Elephantine isle to the headwaters of the Blue Nile and Lake Tzana (named in later centuries after the Constantine of Ethiopia who introduced Coptic Christianity about the third century). It is probable that these Judean soldiers in the employ of Pharaohs spread early Judaic influence, syncretized with primitive practice about them, as far inland as the Pharaohs held sway, even into Ethiopia. We know that Judaic practices were used even before the introduction of Coptism and it is possible that the numerous semi-Judaic festivals, now observed by Falashas, had their origin in this synthesis of early pre-exilic Israelitish patterns with primitive tribalisms of the immediate environs. Such patterns were crystallized after the adoption of Babylonian names for months and before the completion of the Bible canon. The Falashas use some Babylonian-named months, and also use the Pentateuch as their only blueprint for life. Again this is indicated in that they know no Hebrew and nothing of the Talmud.
The same synthesis which developed among the Samaritans emerged after a fashion among the Falashas and in comparatively parallel centuries. For the Debtera, the priestly order of Falashas, is strongly similar to the Defter of the Samaritans. The Samaritans and the Falashas may not have influenced each other in the least, but both cultivated a common life-pattern amid the cracking of great empires, when Jewries elsewhere crystallized a “Mobile Center” in Law, Calendar, etc. This mobile center held them in unity but left such groups as Falashas and Samaritans as isolated “out-group” semi-Judaic communities rather than Jewries.
A word or two about the Falashas—Dark Jews of the Dark Continent—and their calendation. Falashas, in common with Ethiopians, speak the native tongue, and use their sacred speech, Gheez, for the Orit, their Holy Writ. They have no Hebrew books. They know nothing of Purim or Chanukah—very important events in the
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Jewish, calendar elsewhere. Their Sabbath is considered to be a female deity and it is an example of early Mosaism plus the primitivism of the Ethiopian highlands, for Sanbat Kadmai—Sabbath—is a rigorous observance. Sabbath is the kernel to the Falasha calendar and was a “reality” prior to heaven or earth. Sanbat is an angel over the sun and the rain—the two climatic powers of the region—who will lead them to Jerusalem under the guidance of a Messiah, a Falasha version of Elijah. They sanctify the new moon by fasting and utilize only four Babylonian names for months: Nisan, Ab, Lui and Teshran. Festivals are fixed in a lunar-and-solar calendar year which adds a month every four years, whereas the regular Jewish calendar carries seven intercalated months every 19 years. An effort toward syncretism is apparent, too, in the fast days which occur invariably on the tenth of each month (an advance notice of the Day of Atonement?), the twelfth day of the month in honor of Arch-angel Michael and the fifteenth day as a remnant from Passover to Pentecost, reminiscent of the “day after the Sabbath of the Mazzot Festival until the Sabbath Festival,” cited earlier in this article.
The yearly celebration of the Passover is an example of how their whole calendar goes astray, for on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth days of Nisan, Falashas irregularly but religiously eat only sparse Shimbera-bread and slaughter their Pascal Lamb at the sunset of the fourteenth day. Different communities venture their own calculation by observation for the Passover Festival! Thus, Falashas may celebrate the same festivals in different places weeks apart. On Tabernacles (September-October) they do not enter booths customary with Israel generally, but they do eat matzohs (unleavened bread), an experience unknown in other areas except for Pass-over (March-April), which is cited by Morgenstern as a Palestinian practice in early pre-Christian centuries. The festival of in-gathering—the last day of the ninth month —is a forgotten festival in the tegular Jewish calendar, but is one quite alive among Falashas, for on such a day they ascend mountains to pray and fast and offer gifts to their own order of Nazirites.
Their calendar is measured by fast rather than feast days. Not only are the tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth days of each month fast days, but also the second and fifth days of each week. A special fast season of their calendar is the first-to-ninth day of Tammuz, in commemoration of the loss of the First Temple, but strangely enough they make no provision for the Second Temple which is an event that happened after the forming of their own pattern.
Other minor and major Jewries had calendric vicissitudes, just as different experiences affected them as a people. Little is known of the Chazars, a people of unknown origin who maintained an independent kingdom from about 620 to 1015 C.E. They lived in the Crimea before the rise of Russian monarchy and their leaders adopted Judaism much in the same manner and about the same time as Clovis’ conversion to Christianity. Chazars, as Samaritans and Falashas, combined Judaic or rather Mosaic “laws” with native customs, even as the Indians in Latin America synthesized indigenous Indian belief with invading Catholic ritual. Although the Chazars maintained independence for five centuries, it is doubtful if Judaism, outside the royal family, really received more than lip service. The calendar and its festivals were probably accepted indiscriminately because of “royal command.”
“Jews with the queues” might be another name for the Tio Kino Kia-wan, a small group of Jews who were—for they no longer are—Chinese in nationality and Jewish in religion. They may have emerged as a small group of Jewish traders whose missionary influence on their immediate
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neighbors brought about a self-contained religious community. No exact date is known for their appearance in China, but some records suggest a time as early as the Third Century B.C.E. Brief references to them appear in Chinese literature and often they are mistaken for Mohammedans. Specific references to them are made in 1229 and 1254 C.E., in connection with taxes and army service in local insurrections. Their entire community existed at Kai Fung Foo, about a synagogue in which 70 families worshipped. A record dated 1489 reports that the earliest residents there had come from Western lands, that an earlier structure had been built in 1163 C.E., that the founder of the Ming Dynasty had awarded them land and honor in 1139, and that festivals were observed, some of which are partially Chinese in derivation. Their calendar suggests a Sino-Judaic synthesis, with Jewish content reflective of Babylonian Jewry, because Babylonian months and many Talmudic practices were known to them.
From the above references to Jewish communities, both large and small, in ancient days, and their relation to “days and ways” of the calendar, we find that many of them had common points of departure, and that such departures led to further change in calendation or to a deeper retention of earlier and simpler calendation. In either instance, calendric changes were often parallel with life-adjustments and such adjustments proved most fruitful calendrically when old festivals were retained but revitalized with new spirit in the format of new calendation.
Even as the Jewish calendar itself was a balance of various Jewish calendars of the past and is now a standard lunar-solar framework, so the common and uncommon festivals and calendric practices among existing “out-group” Jewries, as Samaritans and Falashas, remind us of what the Calendar of Israel might have been. They serve as a further reminder a that it can be changed today, if necessary, even as it was done previously and that it might have continued with confusion although picturesquely had it not been faced with crisis and conquered by change.
Whenever Jewish communities have dwelt outside of Palestine they have been minorities and often have followed a religious calendar entirely different from their secular calendar which was similar to the people among whom they dwelt. This is exemplified as early as the Elephantine colony in Egypt and as late as the diminished Samaritans in their Arab environment.
If the World Calendar in no wise sacrifices the week as is charged by many co-religionists it may indeed be another great reform worthy of consideration. If it sanctifies the week additionally in that it can reintroduce an ancient Jewish practice—a instead of 2Jf hour “coverage” for major rest days and festivals, it may well be time to lengthen again the one-day and one-week festivals by one-day for each. Thus Passover would be celebrated by all for eight, not seven days, and New Year’s, for two, not one
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days. Orthodox Jewry celebrates eight and not seven days for Tabernacles and Passover, and two, not one, for New Year and Pentecost, in order that Jewry all over the world shall be able to celebrate these festivals simultaneously. This practice of a lengthened festival in general is proposed in part by The World Calendar in its Year-End Day and Leap-Year Day, so that on each of these instances there would be two days of leisure celebrated simultaneously by the world-at-large.
Speaking for ourselves only, some of us differ with all orthodoxies, when we accept the Bible as “Man’s account of the Divine” rather than “the Divine’s account of Man” and the calendar as man’s instrument for measuring time instead of as a divinely ordained system of time. “God’s time” is no longer an adequate charge to be made against calendar revision, for “God’s time” has been tampered with for centuries—even as mistakenly labelled “God’s ways” were disturbed by social welfare, birth control, and efforts for peace in the modern world. “God’s ways” to one may be “God’s ills” to another. It would be best not to cite one for contempt of court if he simply disagrees with the other litigant in the case under question. “God’s time” has even been heard as a charge against the international date-line. The crossing of the international date-line and its change of an entire day is a practice which according to some originally interferred with “God’s time,” but what is it now but a scientific reality in the laboratory of life?
We find from perusal of the history of Judaism that rigid restrictions as advanced by Karaism lost influence, even in behalf of the Sabbath, and that the liberal interpretations gained strength. Rabbinic Judaism ever permitted infringement of any or all rituals or laws, affecting even the Day of Atonement, if it meant salvation of life.
If manifold revisions can be cited in the past, not for convenience but for necessity, it may well be within the spirit of the “liberal interpretation” of our “constitution” for Religion-and-Culture, Judaism, to think through anew the problem of double-day Sabbaths every week (to insure Saturday for the Jew and Sunday for the Christian), lengthened Jewish festivals every season, and an improved world calendation in the form of a Year-End Day every year and a Leap-Year Day quadrennially.
However, these two days, according to many, would disrupt the sequence of weeks and would prove disturbing to dissenting minorities who believe in the Divine Law and who fear that a shift in the Sabbath would violate God’s Sabbath. To them it is more than a struggle over a day; it is the Day that is the centrality of their “way to God.”
Many elements within Jewry itself, one of the three minorities mostly involved, have changed even their days of Services from Saturday to Sunday and have shortened festivals by a day. If a universal two-day Sabbath by way of the five-day-work week could be established within the framework of The World Calendar, mayhap many Sunday Services current in Liberal Judaism would revert back by preference to Friday evenings or Saturday mornings, thus saving the seventh day as the Sabbath for those who so prefer.
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Thus far, Orthodox Jews, Seventh-Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists raise definite objections, not to a World Calendar as a whole, but to the loss of the seven day sequence of weeks. From what we know of the changes of the calendar, especially in the past, the alternations of even the Jewish festivals and the varied interpretations for the “lost” and “lifted” days, we realize that the Calendar, even as the Bible, is not in a special way inspired but in a special sense inspiring. As the Bible may be man’s human blueprint for divine goals, so the Calendar may be man’s chronicle of time to achieve such goals through the leisure of a double Sabbath Day, security in a five-day-work week, and spirituality in the Sabbath (Saturday, Sunday, or both). The interruption of the sevenday-week sequence, in our humble opinion, does not violate spirituality, if one accepts our definition of it as “man’s assertion of his highest purpose,” or the “enshrinement of one’s highest aspirations” by means of “personal therapeutics”—comfort and solace for individuals—and “social dynamics” —challenge and change, even calendar change. The World Calendar makes available more rest on more days, proffers symmetry upon the current calendar, and encourages a “liberal construction” rather than a “strict construction” of our religious “Constitution.”
OBITUARY NOTES
ANDREW W. MELLON, former Secretary of the U. S. Treasury, died on August
26. He had long been in favor of calendar reform, and had publicly advocated international action in its behalf.
T)OBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON, Director of the Hall of Fame at New York University, and poet of long renown, died on October 14. His interest in calendar reform dated from the year 1934, when the matter was brought to his attention by Bishop Manning.
Other members of The World Calendar Association who have died during the past few months include: Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Little Rock, Ark.; Col. W. C. Babcock of Washington, D. C.; Rev. Dr. William S. Young of Los Angeles; Ogden L. Mills, former Secretary of the U. S. Treasury, New York City; Rev. Dr. Francis H. Sprague of Boston; Prof. Frederick S. Dunn of the University of Oregon, and U. S. Senator Nathan L. Bachman of Chattanooga, Tenn.; Judge E. E. Good, of the Nebraska Supreme Court; W. R. K. Taylor, member of the New York Stock Exchange; Charles S. Smith, salesman, Hopkinsville, Ky.; Miss A. Marie Boggs, Bureau of Commercial Economics; B. C. J. Loder, Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, The Hague; Frank B. Kellogg, former Secretary of State, St. Paul, Minn; Newton D. Baker, former Secretary of War, Cleveland, Ohio.
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DISCUSSION OF LEAP WEEK
By P. W. Wilson
Formerly Member of British House of Commons
A T the Dayton Conference of the Federal Council of Churches, held ZA in December, there was a valuable and instructive discussion of what is meant by calendar reform. By an important decision, the Federal Council accepted the principles of The World Calendar, and the occasion was a subject of comment in the press. Whereupon a number of distinguished Rabbis of the Jewish Community sought an opportunity of stating their position. In response to their request, an invitation was given them to appear before representatives of the Federal Council in New York City.
The tone and temper of the discussion was a welcome contrast to what, a few years ago, was the attitude of some calendar reformers towards the opposition of Seventh Day Adventists, certain Jewish and other minorities. It was with the utmost respect and sympathy that agelong beliefs, observances and susceptibilities were taken into careful consideration.
A problem has to be solved and it is well that the problem be clearly understood. The purpose of what follows is not controversy but a friendly and cooperative approach to what, after all, is a situation in which there is a common interest.
For thousands of years, the Jewish community throughout the world has been honorably associated with the calendar. It is to the Jew that mankind owes the Sabbath—that merciful provision of one day rest in seven which has become an industrial right as well as a spiritual, and cultural privilege. Nor would it be easy to mention any contribution to health, to sanity, to happiness more beneficent for people of all races and religions than the Holy Day in every week. Any attempt to eliminate the Holy Day, whether of the Jew, the Christian or the Moslem, from any week anywhere, will be resisted by all who have ever advocated The World Calendar. As a trustee of the Rest Day for Man, universal and never to be interrupted, the Jewish community deserves the unshaken support of all reasonable and responsible people.
The Jewish community is also a factor of importance in the promotion of international brotherhood and, within the range of its influence, this community stands for peace. Of that inter-racial and inter-religious solidarity—the ability of man, despite all dissensions, to work out a destiny that shall be of common advantage to all mankind—calendar reform is an expression, and it may prove to be a very significant expression.
The inclusion of trusted Jewish leaders within the developing comrade
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ship of calendar reform is thus a consummation devoutly to be wished, and three questions arise. First, what is agreed ? Secondly, what differences await discussion? Thirdly, what is the larger issue involved?
Over what would be the perfect calendar, there is no debate. Everybody is of but one opinion that, according to logic, there should be one calendar for this planet, in which every year, every quarter, every month, every week, every hour, every minute and every second, respectively would be of uniform length. Indeed, zealous exponents of the decimal system might be tempted to add that all these divisions and subdivisions of time should be related to one another by multiples of ten so that everybody would be able to count the clock on his fingers!
The Hebrew Scriptures have taught us, however, that we have to live in the universe which God created, that God is above all systems and sovereign over all uniformities. It is not He Who fits into our scheme. It is we who have to fit into His scheme, and the Calendar is an adjustment of time, as we understand time, to His arrangement of the sun in the heavens and the stars in their courses.
That adjustment is, even today, far from perfect, and in his dealings with the Eternal, the spirit of man will not rest satisfied until perfection, so far as he can conceive of it, swallows up imperfection, nor is there anything in Hebrew annals that tolerates an ideal less exalted than this. The Scriptures—Law and Psalm and Prophecy—are an everlasting Magna Carta of the Best that man in his most exalted moments can ask or think.
The Jewish people are not to be held responsible for the anomalies and irregularities of the Gregorian calendar. No religious community— Jewish, Christian, Moslem, whatever it be—has a reason for upholding what originated in the Paganism of a Roman Empire that has disappeared. A proposal to arrange the months of the year according to simple commonsense—to get rid of a February with 28 days and other absurdities— challenges no faith and wounds no feeling. Everybody—according to the measure of his interest in the subject—favors such an adaptation. Nobody —up to this point—has any reason to be against it.
Over the simple arithmetic of the year, there is little room for argument. Here it is a question, not of opinion, but of the multiplication table and, with clear logic, Rabbi Moses Hyamson, who has devoted years to this problem, sees what is mainly important to calendar reform. The workable year must consist of 364 days or 52 weeks of seven days, and four quarters of 91 days. Within the quarters, the months of 31, 30, 30 days— included in the World Calendar—would correspond.
There is one difficulty and only one difficulty to be considered. Some may think that the difficulty is of great importance. Even they must admit that it stands alone. That difficulty is the length of the year.
The astronomical year consists of 365% days approximately, and a
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calendar year of 364 days thus falls short by 5 days in 4 years. According to the present calendar, there is one day added for three years and two days added for the fourth or Leap Year. In a World Calendar, how would those extra days be accounted for ? That is the question over which the Jewish Rabbis express a genuine concern.
The position may be explained, perhaps, by a simple illustration. Suppose that a person lives in a house that has one clock. It cannot be regulated and it gains just one minute a day. It has thus a tendency to go fast. How should such a clock be adjusted to astronomical time?
One plan would be to let the clock run on, say for a month, and then stop it for a half an hour. Another plan would be, every night, to stop the clock for a minute. Which plan would be best?
Obviously the second. By adjusting the clock every day, its error is kept strictly within one minute, and one minute is not much of a deviation from scientific punctuality. But a clock that may be 10 or 20 or 30 minutes fast, is seldom in accord, even approximately, with correct time. For catching trains and keeping appointments, it has ceased to be an exact instrument of workaday chronology.
The calendar is a kind of clock and if the year in the calendar consists of 364 days, it means that the clock goes fast. It gains 5 days in 4 years and has thus to be adjusted to astronomical time. The question of the calendar is thus identical with the question of the clock—is it to be set right at long intervals or is it to be set right at short intervals?
A plan to which Rabbi Hyamson draws our attention, consists of an adjustment of the calendar, not each year, but after a term of years. This plan requires either a Leap month, so-called, or a Leap week.
First, let us look at the Leap Month. If 5 days are gained in four years, it follows that, in 28 years, 35 days will have been gained. It is thus suggested that, every 28 years, there should be inserted in the Calendar a month of exactly 5 weeks; and let us see how it would work. At midnight of December 30th, the last day of the new Calendar year, there would begin—not January 1st, but Leap Month 1st; and only at midnight of Leap Month 35th would January 1st commence.
All of us are aware that it is difficult to set a watch by the sun dial or to tell the time on the seashore by the tide. This plan of saving up days for 28 years would be a similar separation of the calendar from solar time. A clock that has stopped entirely is at least right twice a day. This calendar would only be right three to four times in a century.
Its error would accumulate to a maximum of no less than 35 days— and we do well to consider what such an error would mean. In 1582, the calendar—previously arranged at the Council of Nice in 325 A.D.— was 10 days ahead of the vernal equinox. That error was less than a third of 35 days. Yet Pope Gregory XIII thought that it was sufficiently serious
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to be corrected. According to the proposal for a Leap Month, the calendar, eight years after each correction, would show an error greater than that which, in 1582, had accumulated in more than 1200 years and at the adjustment, a year of 364 days would suddenly become a year of 399 days!
An alternative plan provides for a Leap Week. The extra days accumulate, year by year, until a complete week has been obtained. That week is then inserted—like Leap Month—between December 30 and January 1.
The magnitude of the maximum error in this case is less than 35 days. But it is, in fact, as serious. A day is added for every ordinary year and two days are added for Leap Year, which arrangement works out in more than one way. Take the following progression:
1 + 1 + 14-2 + 1 + 1 = 7 days
The week is there accumulated in 6 years.
But let us put the progression thus:
1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 8 days
In this case, six years yield 8 days, not 7, while five years would only yield 6 days. We have thus to run on to a second week thus:
1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 14 days
It thus requires 11 years to obtain a complete week or weeks and, in fact, two weeks are required to adjust the calendar, not one. Thus the years, corrected by Leap Weeks, would be of three alternative durations— 364 days, 371 days, and 378 days.
There have been measures taken with a view to eliminating the variable Easter. The Leap Month and the Leap Weeks would involve variations far more inconvenient than Easter has been in their effect on human life. The solstices and equinoxes, as solar anniversaries, would vary by as much as 14 days, and the nautical almanac would be thrown into a confusion that might be a danger to shipping.
It is no merely personal opinion that the Leap Month is fantastic and that the Leap Week is impossible. In 1931, the League of Nations, after full consideration, issued a report on calendar reform in which this particular device was described as “inferior to the existing calendar.” It was added that such a plan “cannot be considered at all.” The verdict must be accepted as final.
In The World Calendar, the adjustment of the year is annual and no large error is allowed to accumulate. There is Year-End Day annually after December 30th. There is Leap Year Day, quadrennially, after June 30th. The discrepancy between calendar and astronomical time is thus kept within the irreducible minimum which is possible according to the essential circumstances of the case. It will thus be seen that there must be some reason—which he holds to be a strong reason—why Rabbi Hyamson
prefers a Leap Month or a Leap Week to a Leap Day. About that reason, there is no mystery. He holds that Leap Day changes the progression of the weeks and so interrupts the continuity of the Jewish Sabbath.
There are those who, greatly daring, have argued that a passage in 44^//	Leviticus—XXIII 15-16—reveals Moses as a calendar reformer. Does
not the language suggest that the law-giver treated seven weeks as 50 days and so introduced a Year Day into the Hebraic festivals? The passage is carefully explained by Rabbi Hyamson in a different sense. Still, it does not appear entirely to exclude such an interpolation of a day. In any event, it gives the impression that there cannot be anything of moral obliquity in such an inserted day.
Time—as a great and highly honored Jew, Albert Einstein, has made clear—is by no means so simple an element in existence, whatever our
existence may be, as we are apt sometimes to suppose. Let us suppose that a man uses one of the weeks of his life in order to fly round the
world. If he flies east, he reduces 7 days of his life to 6. If he flies west, he extends 7 days of his life to 8. Yet it would be difficult to suggest that such a man, giving thanks in a synagogue for his safe return, was failing to keep the Sabbath merely because, for him, the Sabbath had ceased to be a seventh day in his calendar.
Let us imagine for a moment that the whole world fell asleep one evening and did not awaken until the day after tomorrow. Would this mean that the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob would withdraw the shadow of His wings from those who are, in body and soul, the children of Abraham? What is it in the synagogue that has endured through the ages? What are the depths of emotion, of loyalty, of faith, of worship that, through the centuries, have inexhaustibly sustained this society of man for whom is reserved some destiny yet to be fulfilled? Surely they are not to be measured by a detail of chronological exactitude.
The learned Rabbi has insisted that the word Sabbath does not signify only a day of rest. It signifies Rest itself and the principle of Rest thus emphasized by Hebrew tradition, is no outworn principle. We have today the five-day week. That short week is not destroying the Sabbath. On the contrary it is associating Jew and Christian in a double Sabbath, human and divine, which both are able to celebrate in unison.
And so with the Year and Leap Days. These also are days, not withdrawn from the Sabbaths of the Year but added unto them. They are among those Holy Days which man may use as holidays.
According to The World Calendar, in so far as it affects the matter at all, the Jewish Sabbath is set in a strategic position. It remains what it has been—the day on which every week ends. It becomes the day on which every quarter ends. More important than all, it becomes the day on which
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every year ends. The place of the Sabbath in such a year is impregnable.
No ecclesiastical organization is more sensitive over ritual and times and seasons than the Roman Catholic Church. No organization has to consider a more bewildering complexity of festivals. In dealing with the calendar, the Church has displayed caution. But she has been more than careful to refrain from attaching faith to dates. Eternity, not time, is, as all mystics are assured, the measure of religion.
Through all ages, the Jewish people have concentrated their minds on life itself. That has been the glory of the Hebraic mission—life and home and happiness defended against the oppressive encroachments of power. If it can be shown that calendar reform guarantees 52 fixed Sabbaths in the year and safeguards those Sabbaths within every year, and if this acceptance of the Sabbath can be extended as a blessing to all mankind— might it not be worth while for the guardians of the Sabbath to consider this opportunity of leadership along the path of well-being for all people ?
NOTES FROM CALENDAR HISTORY
By A. K. Clevenger, Civil Engineer, Claremont, Va.
DECISION between the various proposals for calendar reform is a comparatively easy matter for anyone who realizes one clear lesson of history—that all true progress comes from gradual change. The only practical change in our calendar is one which proposes no undue upheaval.
Delving into calendar history, I have been particularly interested in the question of when the calendar first became public property. We know, for instance, that for thousands of years the priests guarded it as one of their most valuable secrets. They kept the records of the heavenly bodies and the time measurements which came from these records, as the sole property of the temple. Rulers and statesmen, merchants and farmers, had to consult the priests when they wanted to know about future dates— when to travel, marry, plant, hunt, and so on. The temple doled out the lucky and unlucky days, cast horoscopes, kept family records, measured days, weeks, months, quarters.
Only gradually did the calendar emerge from a mass of weeds which had grown up with it, weeds that were superstition and sorcery and augury and conjecture.
Perhaps the first group to become “calendar wise,” outside the priesthood, were the Roman lawyers, who were a species of left-handed priests handling all the “unholy” or civil matters of law, as distinguished from matters of the “holy” or temple law. Their clients consulted them to ascertain the proper days for commencing law suits.
The secrecy of the calendar had lasted a long time. But finally came the dawn. Sometime about 315 B.C., Cneius Flavius, son of a freedman and scribe to Appius Caecus, the edile, conceived the idea of making the law calendar public. He struck off copies of it and hung the copies around the forum, white tablets which stirred up such public interest that Flavius was made a praetor, the first freedman to be thus honored. The lawyers set up a great hue and cry, fearing that the publicizing of the calendar would ruin their business. But the calendar was out of the temple to stay. The blow that this democratization of time dealt to the patrician classes was noted by Livy, who spoke of the reward given to Flavius as an indication of how “a faction of the lowest people is gathering strength to destroy sacred things.”
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AGAINST EXTRA DAYS!
By Dr. Abraham Adolf Fraenkel
Professor of Mathematics, Einstein Institute, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
The following article received from Jerusalem is a clear statement from a distinguished thinker. While it does not represent the views of the Journal of Calendar Reform, it is offered to Journal readers in a spirit of fairness, with factual comments.
THE movement for Calendar Reform and its principal bearer, The World Calendar Association, has great merits, and the realization of many of its aims should be desirable. The differences between the lengths of a month, which are being neutralized by the Reform, derive historically from contingencies and give rise to inconvenience in practical life. The Christian Churches seem to face positively a relative stabilization of Easter for about the second Sunday in April. That would involve great practical advantages; on the other hand, the historical arguments (the coinciding of the Jewish Passover with the first full moon after the spring equinox, and the relation between Easter and Passover according to the Concilium of Nicaea) cannot be decisive1.
On the other hand, I wish to justify the opinion that serious arguments are in opposition to the extra days and to the discontinuity in the sequence of weeks, implied by the extra days2; arguments of such importance, that they might prevent the introduction of The World Calendar within a reasonable course of time—a fact everybody would be sorry for. The arguments are based on three aspects: the chronological, the religious and the practical one.
Chrono logical: Astronomers in particular3, but also historians4 have often stressed the point of how regrettable it would be, if the periodicity of the week of seven days, which has been undisturbed since thousands of years, were interrupted. We know that a Monday of many centuries ago
1	As stabilization of Easter is solely a religious matter and outside the reform of the civil calendar, The World Calendar Association leaves this matter to the religious authorities for decision.	c
2	The one or two extra days were conceived by an Italian, Catholic priest, AbbS Mastrofini, in his booklet dealing on the matter, 1834 ; it received three Nihil O^statsSna two Imprimaturs of his bishop.	,
3	The International Astronomical Union, Commission 32, in 1922, approved the extra days in the new civil calendar and favored the 12-month revision. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1932, Page 78. The British Astronomer Royal, Dr. H. Spencer-Jones, approves The World Calendar. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1938, Page 65. Dr. William E. Castle’s questionnaire to members of the National Academy of Sciences, which includes astronomers, showed that 76 per cent favored the new civil calendar. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1942, Page 10. Resolution approving The World Calendar by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1936, Page 55.
Truslow Adams, foremost American historian, favors the new time-plan. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1937, Page 113. Dr. Dixon Ryan. Fox, President of Union College, Schenectady, New York, states : “Future historians would thank us if we could place the dates s° that the weekday and the month-day always came together. For example, if an historian finds the date September 13 he immediately knows that it was on Wednesday in the middle of a week. This might give a different interpretation to an event than would be given if the date rfi°U,d kn°W haPPened Erectly after a Sun^y,” See Journal of
N.B,
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differs from a Monday of this year by a number of days divisible by seven1. Furthermore, the weekday is the same for the people of the various nations and religions. (Cf. also Professor W. L. Kennon in this Journal, 1940, p. 183.) This universality and periodicity would be definitely disturbed by the extra days. It may be sufficient, moreover, to refer to what has been pointed out by Professor S. Brodetzky (of Leeds University) : The Jewish Foi'um, Vol. X, p. 374, 1927.
Religious: I am not authorized to express a view about the attitude of Christian Churches to an interruption of the seven days period by extra days. Many symptoms show that, in any case, the Holy! See takes a negative position in this matter. Indeed, it has always expressed its view in respect to a relative stabilization of Easter, intrinsically excluding the absolute stabilization implied by extra days. (Cf. the article of Abbe Chauve-Bertrand, this Journal, 1941, p. 10.)2
The attitude of the Jewish faith is diametrically opposite to the conception inspired by Dr. H. W. Bearce’s article (this Journal, 1940, p. 106). Transferred from Saturday to the Hebrew Sabbath, the extra days would mean a clear violation of the biblical commandment, to count six days3 in every case and to rest on the seventh—a commandment which is kept so rigorously as to produce a large literature in respect to passengers crossing the Pacific in the one or the other direction (change of date)4. Dr. J. H. Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, as well as Dr. I. Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, have therefore expressed public protest against any reform containing extra days, both orally and in pamphlets.
It is true, as Dr. Bearce mentions, that for their own religious purposes the Jews use their own calendar, a luni-solar calendar which is most interesting from the mathematical point of view. Nevertheless the extra days vitally affect the observing Jew who keeps away from work and business on Saturday (which is, by the way, only half a working day in many countries) ; his Sabbath would coincide every year with another weekday.
1 In chronological reckonings the day is rarely mentioned, merely date, month and year.
2 The Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, at Geneva, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church have approved The World Calendar. The Western European representative of the Eastern Orthodox Church has approved it also, and the Vatican has frequently said that there exists no dogmatic objection to calendar reform.
During the pontificate of Pope Pius X, the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce received, in 1912, the following statement: “The Holy See declared that it made no objection but invited the civil powers to enter into an accord on the reform of the civil calendar, after which it would willingly grant its collaboration in so far as the matter affected religious feasts." See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1942, Page 81.
The former Lord Archbishop of Canterbury has officially declared himself in favor of calendar reform. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1936, Page 13.
Abb§ Chauve-Bertrand states: “Everything living develops and changes; we must be continually abandoning something of the past in exchange for something better in the future ; the most ancient and venerable of traditional institutions must themselves be modified from time to time ; and more than once people have regretted that reforms did not come about When they were first desired.” See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1941, Page 14.
• There are many instances, particularly preceding the war, where industries and laborers worked five days only and not six as commanded in the Bible.
« The International Date-Line not only changes dates but incurs also the loss or gain of a day in the week.
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Last, not least, the Moslem1 peoples would not think of changing their weekly day of prayer, Friday, on account of any convention of the Western countries: The Indian Moslems2 (almost 100 millions of active propagandistic tendencies) not more than those of the Near East and Africa.
Finally, in respect to the practical and political aspect of the problem, it may be sufficient to quote one example which clearly shows the difficulties of the introduction of extra days into life: the British administration in Palestine and India. The Government of Palestine has among the officials of its central and local departments Moslems and Jews as well as Christians (these being either Europeans or Arabs). The administrative work of the various departments is therefore distributed in order that the Moslems have their weekly holiday on Friday, the Jews on Saturday and the Christians on Sunday—an arrangement which is, naturally, achieved not without some difficulty. The relation between the Moslem and the Jewish days of rest, it is true, would not be affected by the proposed Reform, each of the two creeds preserving their custom of counting weekdays. On the other hand, the extra days would imply a change in the position of Sunday every year3 (in leap years even twice), and would compel the Government to change the whole organization of work annually, a process which is almost impracticable. A similar situation would arise in India where, besides the Hindu religions, Islam and Christianity play an important part.
It seems that these arguments, among others, have influenced the representatives of Great Britain at the League of Nations, many years ago, to adopt a negative attitude in respect to the Calendar Reform proposed4.
Let us summarize: There are all reasons for and none against a Reform, which gives precisely 13 weeks to every quarter (except the last, containing one or two supplementary days), in order that every quarter should begin with the same weekday; this would hold as well for the second and for the third month of every quarter.5 (The 365th day, as well as the addi-
1	Mohammedan Turkey officially approved The World Calendar containing the one or two extra days, and Moslem Afghanistan for all international purposes. Fourteen countries have approved the civil World Calendar, among them eight Roman Catholic, two Protestant, one Eastern Orthodox, one Buddhist, and the two Mohammedan countries.
2	Indian Hindu approval has been obtained through The Reverend Swami Omkar: “It is easy to see how happy this arrangement of The World Calendar is for all humanity—regardless of religion or race or nation. It is another step toward the universal brotherhood of man. The World Calendar has therefore my wholehearted approval and support.” See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1939, Page 29.
3	See footnote 2, Page 126.
4	Great Britain’s Answer, April 22, 1937: “The Government of the United Kingdom are of the opinion that any consideration of the draft Convention would be premature pending further discussion of the principle involved in the reform of the calendar and of the particular method of reform to be adopted. They consider that the time will not be ripe for any further examination of the matter by the League until propaganda by those in favor of the alteration of the calendar has achieved more widespread and solid results than it has hitherto. His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom remain of the opinion that, until the fixation of Easter has been achieved internationally, no useful purpose is served by attempting to proceed with the larger question of calendar reform.” No fixation of Easter can be had in our changeable calendar ; the decision for a fixed Easter rests with the churches rather than with governments and secular groups. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1937, Page 134.
3	At the League of Nations’ Conference in 1931, the minutes show that the majority of opinions were for a perpetual calendar that included one or two extra days. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1942, Pages 8 and 41.
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tional day in leap years, could be inserted in December). Consequently, the whole year’s calendar is defined in a simple and conspicuous way, if the weekday of the New Year is known.1 Furthermore, if the Holy See and the other Churches agree to a relative stabilization of Easter, this could be fixed for the second Sunday of April, i. e., between the eighth and fourteenth of April. To postulate more than that, would mean less—it would mean the postponement of the Reform as a whole ad calendar graecas, for chronological, religious and practical reasons!
OTHER JEWISH OPINIONS
DR. JULIAN MORGENSTERN, one of the most eminent American authorities on the Jewish calendar, and President of The Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, from which a great majority of American rabbis have been graduated, wrote The World Calendar Association, February, 1942, giving his point of view, reprinted here with his permission.
“In principle, I am in sympathy with the project of The World Calendar Association, particularly if it is not at all the purpose of the Association to interfere unnecessarily in the religious calendars and ceremonial observances of various sects. I believe that it would be expedient for the Association to emphasize this fact over and over again. . . .
“With regard to the traditional Jewish religious calendar, the great difficulty in the way of correlating The World Calendar with it lies in the fact that The World Calendar would throw the traditional Jewish Sabbath out of place, in six years out of every cycle of seven years. I fear that this is an insurmountable obstacle for Orthodox Jews. I have given thought to the matter and see no way in which this obstacle can be surmounted. Otherwise, there is no difficulty whatever in the recognition and employment of The World Calendar by Jews for civil purposes.
“Of course, should our Government ever officially recognize the civil World Calendar, American Jews would accept this calendar readily and employ it for civil purposes. It would then become their responsibility to find a way to harmonize their traditional religious observances with the new and now official calendar.
“They have faced this problem before and found a solution.* And I have no doubt that they could do it again if the need arises.”
Other opinions are of value such as those of Rabbis Ephraim Frisch, Martin M. Weitz, Edgar Siskin, George Solomon and Dr. Abraham Cron-bach.
“I rise to discuss the paragraph which has to do with the calendar changes. I am not an authority on the calendar, and have not studied the question of the effects the proposed changes in the calendar will have on the Sabbath. I am speaking with the greatest sympathy for our Orthodox brethren. I think there is entirely too much magnification of the importance of this issue. I think it misrepresents us to the world. If the world is going to be benefited by the change of the calendar as proposed, then we Jewish people of the Reform wing at least ought not to stand in the way.
“I am speaking with due reverence as to what a divinely ordained Sabbath means to me; it means that the human mind and human society thought out under Divine inspiration a day of rest. The mathematics and the calendar of it does not mean so much to me, and I do not think they mean much to my colleagues. As to the wanderingness of
1	On this premise there could be no perpetual calendar.
8	See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1933, Pages 111-114.
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the Sabbath, it may have wandered before, for all I know; I think it did in the process of calendar changes. We are interested in a great institution and idea, and not in its geography or in its time location; and I do not think we would suffer any serious consequences if once a year the Sabbath was an Elijah—a wanderer.”—Rabbi Ephraim Frisch.
“The Sabbath evolved from an irregular and fourfold monthly experience to a regular weekly event. ... If The World Calendar sanctifies the week additionally in that it can reintroduce an ancient Jewish practice—a 48 instead of 24 hour ‘coverage’ for major rest-days and festivals, it may well be time to lengthen again the one-day and one-week festivals by one day for each. Thus Passover would be celebrated by all for eight, not seven days, and New Year’s, for two, not one days. Orthodox Jewry celebrates eight and not seven days for Tabernacles and Passover, and two, not one, for New Year and Pentecost, in order that Jewry all over the world shall be able to celebrate these festivals simultaneously.”—Rabbi Martin M. Weitz.
“I am in favor of any kind of intelligent progressive calendar reform. The question of tradition doesn’t particularly trouble me, especially when balanced against the social benefit which might conceivably derive from some effective calendar reform.”— Rabbi Edgar Siskin.
“I am heartily in favor of calendar revision and see no reason why Liberal Rabbis (and, for that matter, Orthodox as well) should not approve. The calendar has undergone change from time to time, not always wisely. This proposal is considered and sensible and affects no principles.”—Rabbi George Solomon.
“I am with you in the matter of calendar alteration. . . . When you come right down to it, what the Orthodox Jew wants is not so much one day of rest in seven as a day of intervals with which the Deity will be satisfied. With increasing obliviousness to tradition Jews will eventually be prepared for calendar change.”—Dr. Abraham Cronbach.
Simplification
By Enoch Karrer
SIMPLIFICATION of the calendar is a good idea. There is no reason why on petty grounds such as myth and worship of the Past, we discommode ourselves and make necessary continuous expenditure of nervous energy every day of our lives. Men have changed calendars before to suit their present needs and philosophies. Such changes have sometimes been in the direction of simplifications whose benefits we have inherited; sometimes not. We have the same rights, the same incentives, and equal abilities, to better our customs, habits, and social structures; yea, it is our duty to make them more fitted to our new world, not only for ourselves but for the sake of those to follow. Such mechanical things may seem insignificant and bothersome to make, but they have tremendous spiritual effects.
A new calendar for a new world is befitting the times.
To simplify our calendar may be a first step in taking hold of other things we have inherited, and that, although requiring change, we cannot change because we hold them in awe, or reverence, or by habit, or in fear. Some of,these have kept us from fully and effectively arriving at and trying out the most ideal form of government; namely, a representative democracy. To mention a few: uniform price of things, a uniform price for a new world, a uniform system of measurement, a simplification of our monetary system, a simplification of language.
Would it not be a wonderful consummation to get a calendar reform a-going in or before 1945?
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CALENDAR REFORM—AND WHY
By Elisabeth Achelis
President of The World Calendar Association
Address Before the Amateur Astronomers Association, November 4, 1942
IANCELOT HOGBEN, in his illuminating book, Science for the Citizen, । devotes the entire first chapter to the coming of the calendar with these significant words in the opening sentence:
“. . . up to the present philosophers have only interpreted the world, it is also necessary to change it.”
and further are these trenchant observations:
“The recognition of the passage of time now became a primary necessity of social life .... man learned to measure things. He learned to keep account of past events. . . . The arts of writing, architecture, numbering, and in particular geometry, which was the offspring of star Ibre and shadow reckoning, were all by-products of man’s first organized achievement, the construction of the calendar. . . .
“Science began when man started to plan ahead for the seasons, because planning ahead for the seasons demanded an organized body of continuous observations and a permanent record of their recurrence.”
Here we are told clearly and directly that science began with the need for planning and recording the seasons in an organized manner for man’s daily social and civil needs. This is a surprising statement, isn’t it? How many of us associate the birth of science with the seasons—the calendar?
Now the calendar has always been based on three immutable laws of nature: the day with its inflexible alternating light and dark periods; the seasons, of which there are four in the temperate zones; and the year, which completes the annual circuit of the earth’s journey around the sun.
Man’s constant concern has ever been to keep the calendar in accord with these basic laws of nature, and were it not for two other elements that have entered into it, our time-system would be comparatively simple and natural. But the month and the week, which are outside of nature’s laws, have complicated it. Not until today is the real problem of our calendar being solved, and this is the subject of my talk to you tonight.
The month, although it originated with the four phases of the moon, has been an independent time-unit for more than 60 centuries. Previous to this epochal change, the moon calendar of 354 days had been man’s time-system practically throughout the entire world. There are people today who are still using this ancient calendar, hoary with age. It was only upon careful observation and study, through many hundreds of years, that man gradually became aware that the moon had no relation whatever to the seasons. With the ever increasing need for planning and producing more crops for the better nourishment of the people, the careful recording
Journal of CALENDAR REFORM
Consider The World Calendar TODAY for a better, more ordered World TOMORROWI
FIRST QUARTER
PRESENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR
1944
PROPOSED WORLD CALENDAR
FIRST QUARTER					
JANUARY	FEBRUARY	march
S W T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F Si
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2526 27 28 29 30 31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 23 24 25 26 27 28 29	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30 31
	a	ECOND QUARTER	
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2324 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 2122 2324 25 26 27 282930 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
THIRD QUARTE		
JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	8 M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 .30-31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1314 IS 16 17 18 19 202122 23 24 25 26 272829 3031	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 2021 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
		FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S MwT W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 2930 31	.12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 2324 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 2829 30 31 *
This calendar haa 52 weeks and must borrow from another week to complete the year. This causes the calendar to ehanpe every year and is responsible for Its confusion. Also note varying number of days in each quarter.
FIRST QUARTER				
JANUARY.	FEBRUARY	MARCH
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031	12 3 4 9 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
SECOND QUARTER				
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 **
THIRD QUARTER			
• JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 > 28 29 30
FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031	e	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
* A WORLD HOLIDAY. DECEMBER W, the Year-End Day. an extra Saturday, follows December 30th every year. *★ A WORLD HOLIDAY, JUNE W, the Leap-Year Day. another extra Saturday, follows June 30th in leap years.
THE WORLD CALENDAR
THE WORLD CALENDAR of 12 months and equal quarters is a logical rearange-ment of our present calendar. Every year is the same and begins on Sunday, January 1.
THE YEAR is divided into equal quarters of 3 months—13 weeks—91 days. The months are arranged in 31-30-30 days: each month has 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. The various time units all agree at the end of quarter-years.
* THE 365th DAY at the close of every year is the Year-End Day, the extra Saturday, December W (the old December 31). ** The 366th day, the Leap-Year Day (the old February 29) is placed in the midyear on another extra Saturday, June W. Both are World Holidays.
This year is significant because the last four months are identical in both the old and new calendars. With Sunday, the old December 31, becoming the extra Saturday, December W—a World Holiday—The World Calendar could begin the new year on Sunday, January 1, 1945.
YOU have the opportunity to apply this calendar and observe its benefits YOURSELF in the last four months of this year.
The Last Four Months of 1944 Are Exactly The Same in Both Calendars
A NEW CALENDAR FOR A NEW WORLD
VOL. XIV FIRST QUARTER, 1944	No. 1
4 TTENTION of the readers of the Journal of Calendar Reform is ZA directed to a different presentation of the calendars on the inside of the front cover. It shows clearly that this year 1944 is significant, because the last four months in the Gregorian calendar are fortunately identical as to days and dates with the last four months of The World Calendar. Beginning Friday, September 1, through Saturday, December 30, the calendars are interchangeable. Then the old December 31, a Sunday, becoming the new December W, an extra Saturday World Holiday, the new World Calendar would begin on Sunday, January 1, 1945. This indicates clearly how easy the change is. No dropping or adding of days is required.
There are many people keenly aware of the need for and the benefits resulting from this improved new calendar of equal quarters of 13 weeks, months of 26 weekdays plus Sundays, and the World Holidays that bring accuracy and stability to the ordered and well-balanced arrangement.
In war, peace and in all postwar planning this new reliable calendar is of the greatest value and commands recognition. To continue working with the planless, disordered and vacillating Gregorian calendar hardly seems a wise policy. Civilization would have to fumble as in the past, handicapped and hindered, because of the continuous and unwise use of the present extremely awkward and unsatisfactory calendar.
New buildings are not erected on outworn and insecure foundations. New conditions do not thrive on changeable and confused schedules. To deny this is to be blind to the fundamental law that like begets like, faulty foundations beget faulty results and good foundations beget good results. The tomorrows depend upon the acts of today.
There is a rule that progress is made slowly and does not come full blown into our lives. Gradually advancement is made, first by a few then by the many. For example in the realm of time, Roman Catholic countries alone adopted the Gregorian calendar; American and Canadian railways, Standard Time; and European railways and the Armed Forces, the 24-hour clock. These separate improvements were not universally accepted at once. Nations, groups, organizations and individuals would do well to consider the benefits of The World Calendar as it affects their various affairs, preliminary to general world adoption.
JOURNAL	OF
CALENDAR REFORM
January, February, March
1944
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL	I
A WELL-NIGH PERFECT CALENDAR	Elisabeth Achelis 3
CANADIAN SOCIETIES HOSTS TO OFFICERS OF CALENDAR
ASSOCIATION	13
DEATH COMES TO NOTED CHURCHMAN The Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D. 18
WIDE AND GENERAL INTEREST IN WORLD CALENDAR CONTINUES
Emerson Brewer 20
BOOK EDITORS REVIEW NEW BOOK BY THE ASSOCIATION HEAD 23
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT HEAD AND MATHEMATICIAN
CLARIFY ADOPTION DATES	Elisabeth Achelis 27
LONDON EVENING NEWS CARTOON	31
INTERNATIONAL DATE-LINE SEEN AS FORERUNNER OF
WORLD CALENDAR Commander Wendell Phillips Dodge 32
WHAT DAY IS TODAY?	Frank C. Waldrop 40
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS	43
EMERSON BREWER, Editor published by THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC.
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING: 630 FIFTH AVE., N. Y. C. 20
FIRST QUARTER 1944
3
k WELL-NIGH
PERFECT CALENDAR
By Elisabeth Achelis
Abridged from an address given before the Ottawa and Montreal Centres of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, January 19, 20, 1944.
A LTHOUGH not a scientist, I feel deeply privileged to talk with you ZA this evening on a subject which is closely linked to science. The accomplishment of astronomy in the measurement of time, the calendar, is one of proud achievement. It deserves full and lasting praise. From the beginning of science, astronomers, first with the naked eye and later with super telescopes, have meticulously measured the movements of the celestial bodies and the planet Earth, better to ascertain the regular coming of the seasons and the accurate length of the year. From the earliest moon, star and Egyptian calendars down to the present Gregorian, the work has been admirably done. The calendar rests on a sound basis. We all realize that it is not as yet perfect. The calendar’s beginning should really harmonize with one of the seasonal beginnings, but this is not of immediate importance. The present need is to improve the internal arrangement, better to serve the present and coming generations.
That the Gregorian calendar does not meet present requirements is clearly proved by the astronomers themselves. They have substituted a more dependable and stable time-system of their own to offset the erratic Gregorian. I refer to the Julian Day method which eliminates entirely the weeks, dates, months and years in their time reckoning. Thus January 1 of the new year, 1944, was the 2,431,091st day, and the year will close on the 2,431,457th day. The astronomer realizes, however, that counting by days only would be extremely awkward for daily life, entailing unnecessary hardships and inconveniences. The method of counting by the varying time-units, as day, date, week, month, season and year, is too valuable to discard. But he does demand, and justly so, that there is planning and order in the arrangement of the calendar, which is woefully lacking now.
The desire for order and stability in the calendar has also been recognized by the industrial world, and due credit should be given it for initiating the modern movement to meet this need. The various International
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
Congresses of Chambers of Commerce and Industrial and Commercial Organizations urged an improved calendar in their biennial meetings in 1910, 1912 and 1914, and the Swiss Government in 1914 was requested to investigate the entire field in order that some international action be taken. The first World War interfered and it was not until 1923 that the question was placed before the League of Nations for consideration. This resulted in an international conference being held in 1931. After a week’s conference on the subject, which also included a fixed Easter date, the League of Nations at Geneva referred the calendar back again to the various governments for further study and consideration.
It was in that self-same year that your retiring President, Dr. H. R. Kingston, devoted considerable space in his annual report to the reform of the calendar. The two plans that survived the 500 submitted to the League were the 13-month plan of 28 days and four weeks to every month, and the 12 months of four identical quarters, each quarter having three months of 31, 30, 30 days respectively, better known as The World Calendar. Dr. Kingston noted that the League report indicated strong opposition to the 13-month plan and general sympathy to the 12-month arrangement. Ever since that year, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada has shown continued interest. It has proudly placed itself in the vanguard of the movement, from which it has never wavered. Such loyal consistency has been most encouraging to all who are working for an improved calendar.
In the Society’s attitude toward a 12-month calendar of equal quarters, it followed the conclusion reached by Commission 32 of the International Astronomical Union when it deliberated on the subject in 1922. The Union recommended a perpetual 12-month equal-quarter calendar on the 31, 30, 30 basis. Four years later, the Committee for Maritime Meteorology likewise favored the 12-month, perpetual, equal-quarter plan. The World Calendar thus rests on good scientific ground, which has been further strengthened by the endorsement given it by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other American scientific groups.
It is being said that this is not the time to change the calendar, when the world is in mortal combat and turmoil. Why should it not wait until after the cessation of arms and the postwar period? This can best be answered by the following:
Does a person who is ill wait until a future time to be cured? No, he does not. When the Commanding General of our Armed Forces discovered that the old system of counting clocktime by A.M. and P.M. led to confusion, did he wait until a more propitious time to adopt the better 24-hour system? No, he did not. When the Armed Forces discover that certain types of airplanes or instruments are outmoded and no longer the
FIRST QUARTER 1944
5
best with which to wage victorious warfare, do they wait for the end of the war to make improvements? No, they do not. When a business man or manufacturer experiences inefficiency and loss of production and earnings because of poor management or tools, does he wait for a future time to improve conditions ? No, he does not.
When errors, loss of product or earnings, and waste of time and material are discovered, the causes are remedied immediately to bring desired results. It is gross folly to do otherwise. No war is won by delaying improvements, and no success is achieved by clinging unwisely to outmoded patterns and systems.
And now when ideas and ideals are directed toward greater world cooperation with the purpose of building a better way of life for all peoples, it is obvious that the Gregorian calendar is at variance with these ideas and ideals. For, gentlemen, the calendar has gathered unto itself the barnacles of imperfections for 2,000 years.
You will agree with me that no system, however imperfect, should be discarded until we are convinced that the contemplated change is really an improvement and will stand up under scrutiny and test. The new time-plan should be one that best meets all requirements and takes into consideration all conditions. It should be global in aspect because of our more closely knitted world and should, for the most part, function universally. The perpetual World Calendar has proved itself capable of meeting these tests.
In its mathematical structure it is well-nigh perfect. Its 12 months are arranged into equal quarters of 91 days, each quarter is further subdivided into months of rhythmic 31, 30, 30 days, that total an even 13 weeks. Each quarter, beginning on Sunday and ending on Saturday, is a prototype of the completed calendar year that will always begin on Sunday, January 1, and close on Saturday, December 30.
To complete the year, however, the necessary 365th day is placed on an extra Saturday, after Saturday, December 30. It is called the Year-End Day or New Year’s Eve and is the new World Holiday, dated December W. This new holiday is as far-reaching in its benefit as was the leap-year day introduced into the Julian reform. And the leap-year day, the old February 29, becomes another World Holiday, placed on another extra Saturday—the Leap-Year Day, June W. Thus the calendar attains stability, retains the familiar 12 months, and maintains the accurate length of the 365-day year with an occasional 366th day.
Within The World Calendar are the one or two new World Holidays which, unique in observance, are bound to exert a unifying influence on all nations. In its physical aspect, the Year-End Day or New Year’s Eve World Holiday, coming between a Sabbath and a Sunday, completes and
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seals every year as to its exact number of 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months and 4 seasons. Thus there is present at the turn of every year no leftover of the old; the new begins with a clean slate, at scratch. The calendar ledger closes with the Year-End Day, December W, so that the ledger of the new year really begins with a new leaf.
In its broader aspect the new World Holiday, December W, becomes a great unifying day for all nations, peoples, races, governments and creeds. During its 24-hour-day observance, there will radiate a spirit of greater solidarity, of understanding, of amity and of good will. Whereas Christmas is the great Christian day of peace, good will to man, the new World Holiday may become, as its name implies, the all-inclusive World Day of universal brotherhood and unity, without interference with existing feast days. It may well be a step in the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of the tree of life that beareth 12 manner of fruits and yieldeth her fruit every month, and the leaves are for the healing of the nations. The World Holidays in their cumulative observances truly symbolize the healing leaves of nations.
Now let us contemplate for a few moments the direct advantages the new World Calendar will have on the war and home activities.
We have found that the exigencies of the war have already changed the clocktime to the 24-hour clock for the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces were quick to perceive the need of eliminating the confusion of the A.M. and P.M. method. In like manner, The World Calendar will permit greater precision, discipline, order and efficiency in the huge task of prosecuting the war, because of the better and more perfect correlation of all the various calendar units. We all know with what meticulous care war plans are blueprinted and carried out.
In one year the United States alone produced for the Allied armies 85 thousand planes, 60 thousand artillery weapons, 34 thousand tanks and almost 7 million small arms. These mountains of supplies piled up in North Africa, the Near East, India and Australia. And when the invasion of Europe is opened, the Army Service Forces will have the colossal task of supplying every item the invasion needs from tanks to safety pins. And closely following is the Dominion of Canada which has now become the fourth largest producer of munitions among the United Nations.
The responsibility of arming, feeding, clothing, fueling, transporting and healing the Army, and burying its dead, is the important function of' the Army Service Forces. It is this perfect and all-embracing planning, which correlates these various functions, that the Military calls logistics. This service in the United States is under the direct supervision of Lieutenant General Somervell, who has said: “Good logistics alone cannot win a war. Bad logistics alone can lose.”
FIRST QUARTER 1944
7
Therefore, what the General has said of logistics applies to the loose and slipshod methods of the Gregorian calendar. It has no plan, the various time-units are in constant disagreement, and it is certainly “bad logistics.” Our present calendar is costly and wasteful. It no longer efficiently serves the demands of war or the needs of the civilians at home.
While conditions on the home front are obviously different, they, too, would be greatly aided by an improved time-plan. Consider the difficulty of the manufacturer, the industrialist, the employer and also the wage earner in figuring how many weekdays or how many time-and-a-half or double-time days are in a month. Here the Gregorian calendar plays havoc with the best laid plans. Some months have four Saturdays and Sundays, thus less time-and-a-half and double-time wages are paid, whereas in months having five Saturdays and Sundays extra time-and-a-half or doubletime must be paid. When quarter-years vary in their lengths of days such as 90, 91, 92, 92 (this year being a leap year, 91, 91, 92, 92) additional inconvenience is encountered. All this inconsistency sabotages valuable energy, time, labor and money.
I should like to point out certain specific examples of the sabotage that besets almost every type of business. In 1942, Christmas came on a Friday. Newspaper publishers and their circulation-managers were at their wits end. The publisher did not know how many columns of news and advertising to anticipate for the Saturday after Christmas, because he did not know how many stores were going to open on Saturday and how many were going to stay closed. The circulation-manager was equally as frantic, because he did not know how many papers he would be able to sell, since he had no idea whether people would go to business, stay at home and rest, or go away for a three-day week-end. In consequence of all this, one New York newspaper, with a circulation that exceeds one million, discovered not only that their advertising lineage was off 65 per cent, but that they had overprinted 80 thousand papers. These were returned as useless waste. Had the perpetual World Calendar been in existence, with its regular order and agreeing days and dates, past records comparable from year to year would have better indicated the number of columns to print, the number of papers to publish.
With the constant wavering of the Gregorian calendar, October in 1942 had five Saturdays; and in the previous year, October had four Saturdays. There was thus a 25 per cent adjustment in Saturday’s figures alone. In 1943, in the United States, a further adjustment had to be made in that month because the Columbus holiday, October 12, which was celebrated on Mondays the two previous years, was celebrated on a Tuesday. And we all know a Monday holiday means a long week-end for many prospective store buyers
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Here is a more detailed example: the case of a well-known electric utility company that produced 220 million kilowatt hours in January, 1936, as compared with 258 million in January, 1937. This shows an increase of 17 per cent, but we discovered that January, 1936, had an extra Saturday and Sunday on which the day’s output is naturally less than on weekdays—30 per cent less on Saturday and 75 per cent less on Sunday. Making allowance for this extra week-end, the rate of increase became 21.5 per cent instead of 17.3 per cent.
For education, the general custom to open schools in the United States is on the Tuesday after Labor Day. With Labor Day fluctuating from September 1 to September 8, the irregularity of the opening dates for schools, year after year, is most inconvenient. Under the New York State laws, I don’t know what the laws are in Canada, a school year must include 190 teaching days to participate in the State school funds. The 190 teaching days cause difficulty when, for example, the school year opens on different dates each year. The first half of the year ending on January 25 contains 91 school days, whereas the second half ending on June 21 contains 95 school days. The so-called half-years or semesters, are far from equal and even, their internal arrangements are quite dissimilar. It is readily seen what a nightmare the Gregorian calendar is and how it causes all kinds of difficulties for the faculties and students in arranging schedules and vacations.
Wandering holidays add to the general confusion and uncertainty. Families are all too often separated at the vacation periods because these are observed differently in grammar and high schools, colleges and universities. And farmers who depend upon the help their sons and daughters can give them during vacations are at a loss to calculate this, because they change from year to year. With the perpetual World Calendar the regular schedule of holidays on agreeing days and dates will do much to smooth the way for educational, social, commercial and welfare activities.
The question arises, with the mention of holidays, as to how the one or two new World Holidays will be treated throughout the world. It is natural to suppose that the various nations will place these new holidays in the same category as their other holidays and maintain them on the same economic status. Each country is free to decide this question according to its accepted custom and legal requirement.
That the defects of the present calendar are recognized as serious detriments is clearly seen in the notable endorsements given The World Calendar by the three groups of Chambers of Commerce in England— the London, British and Empire—and by other Chambers in the United States such as the New York State, the Chicago Association of Commerce, the Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Galveston Chambers. In the labor
FIRST QUARTER 1944
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world, the Labor Conference of American States in Chile, 1936, approved it and in the same year the International Labor Office also recognized that “the present calendar is very unsatisfactory from economic, social and religious standpoints and that recent studies, investigations and reports have shown that there is a marked trend in favor of revision.” It thus recommended that the League of Nations study the whole question. In the educational field, the United States National Education Association and the World Federation of Education Associations also favored a world calendar.
Toward the last quarter of the 19th century when travel on Canadian, United States and inter-E uropean railroads was more general, some kind of uniformity in clocktime became increasingly urgent to avoid endless confusion and misunderstanding. I refer to Standard Time.
To a Canadian, Sanford Fleming, has generally been given credit for the idea in 1878 that a series of 24 time belts, each of 15 degrees, should circle our globe. However logical and practical, it did not win favor until in 1883 the railways in Canada and the American Railway Association took the initiative in adopting the new Standard Time. A conference held in Washington a year later brought the rest of the civilized countries into the fold, and it became international in use. The world was now more closely coordinated by the regular 24 time zones that brought order and stability to the clock throughout the world. It was instrumental in making the remarkably efficient and smooth performance of radio easier.
There are others, however, who have contributed toward the principle of Standard Time—notably in the United States, Charles Ferdinand Dowd. In 1872, he published a system that is identical with the Standard Time meridians in use today. Newspapers in the United States, in 1883, carried interesting accounts of the history of Standard Time and laid great emphasis on the work done by Mr. Dowd ever since 1869.
Gentlemen, there is usually more than one person to whom credit is due. In this instance, Canada and America are justly proud to give credit to two of their citizens for having provided mankind with the superior Standard Time system.
And this naturally leads me to give credit to another Canadian (by adoption), Moses B. Cotsworth. He contributed greatly in awakening the interest and showing the need for an improved calendar. His work was most valuable. Although his particular 13-month calendar plan has been discarded, as not being the best, every calendar reformer gladly pays tribute to him. He and his associates did the hard spade work which prepared the ground for the superior, more balanced and equalized calendar of 12 months and equal quarters—The World Calendar.
Today with the present war, international communication and trans
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portation by airplanes are expedited and increased everywhere, forming the world into one large organized body. No place on the globe is more than 60 air hours away. The uniformity of the calendar, as ordered and stabilized as Standard Time, becomes imperative. A perpetual new calendar, every year the same, and eventually in use throughout the world, is the natural complement to Standard Time.
Is it too much to hope that, in following the example of adopting Standard Time, Canada and the United States will again join in taking the initiative by adopting another time-measure—The World Calendar?
No improvement, however good, has been accepted without some opposition, and changing the Gregorian calendar is no exception. Certainly the scientific group has suffered much persecution and opposition in its many achievements. We need only to recall Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe, Copernicus and Galileo, and of more recent date, Bell and Edison, Pasteur and Madame Curie, who though derided and hindered in their sincere efforts to benefit mankind yet eventually achieved their goal.
Probably the greatest opposition to The World Calendar comes from certain religious orthodox groups. Their objections to The World Calendar arise from the fact that they see in the extra World Holidays an eight-day week, which violates their tradition of “the unbroken continuity of the seven-day week since time immemorial.” This alleged concept is not justified by historical fact. For it is known that in the ancient Israel calendars there have been three different calendars employed at different times and that the revisions of the calendar were “in all likelihood, of a thoroughgoing nature.”
Between the Biblical creation of the world and the days of Moses are untold years of conjecture and unproved theory. Even after the days of Moses it is generally conceded that the method of timekeeping was changed and altered. Later even, when the Christians changed the ancient Sabbath to Sunday for their day of worship, in commemoration of the first day of the week when the Lord rose from the dead, Christians all over the world at that moment of change experienced an eight-day week— the interval between the Sabbath of old and the Sunday, the new day of observance. We cannot accept such an arbitrary attitude that enslaves man to the past but rather seek open-mindedness and response to normal progress and development.
Here I am reminded of the story of Lot’s wife, a sad commentary on all those who, looking backward, stand still. The most notable historical example of opposition to change is, perhaps, that of the fiery zealot, Saul of Tarsus, who, waging incessant war against a new religion, became blinded by his zeal. Notwithstanding this, when light and wisdom came to him, he became its foremost leader. So may we hope for The World
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Calendar with its one or two World Holidays, that those who come to oppose will remain to approve.
The real fallacy of orthodox objection is that it does not recognize The World Calendar as a civil calendar. In revising the calendar it is not the intention to interfere with religious feast days and ritual. The Vatican in 1912 recognized this in a statement, and I quote:
“The Holy See declared that it made no objection but invited the civil powers to enter into an accord on the reform of the civil calendar, after which it would willingly grant its collaboration in so far as the matter affected religious feasts.”
Among some of the religious endorsers for The World Calendar are the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Methodist Council of Bishops in the United States; the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work at Geneva, of which the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America is a member. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, in a debate on the calendar before the House of Lords, 1936, declared: “I have found it impossible to resist the plea for reform ... I think it would be a real misfortune if this matter were allowed to drift.” And the Vatican has stated there exists no insurmountable obstacle to calendar reform.
The question of adoption now becomes all important. The opportune moment to put any new calendar into operation is at that particular time when the day, date, month and year coincide in both the old and the new calendars. By that simple method the transitional year of confusion (when the Julian year became operative), and the dropping of 10 days (when the Gregorian calendar became effective), will be avoided.
Allow me to refer you to our good friend, H. W. Bearce, chief of the Division of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards, United States Department of Commerce. By transposing Sunday, December 31 of this year 1944, to the extra Saturday, Year-End Day or New Year’s Eve, December W, The World Calendar will begin the new year on Sunday, January 1, 1945. The next possibility would be Sunday, January 1, 1950.
In the face of all the advantages which I have stated and all the hardships we shall have to endure, I believe the delay has no justification and would prove lamentable. Apathy and indifference have no place in better planning for our modern world.
As the scientists of the old and the new age have ever stood in the foreground of new truths and progress, so may you today uphold their standard by approving and endorsing the perpetual World Calendar.
In the ardent desire and wish to organize and bring the world to saner, healthier and more wholesome conditions, your group can do no better than to sponsor The World Calendar—a plan that is ready at hand, that
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has been endorsed by 14 nations and many international and national organizations.
For the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada to study and endorse The World Calendar would in all probability lead to similar action by the Royal Astronomical Society of London, of which the Astronomer Royal, Dr. H. Spencer-Jones, has so splendidly given his approval. And in my own country, the American Astronomical Society and notably the National Academy of Sciences in Washington will certainly wish to take action.*
We stand on the threshold of changes in all ways of life among which belongs unquestionably The World Calendar. For Time to be really a healer, and we certainly have need of it in these catastrophic days, Time itself must be healed through its instrument the calendar, and aid in greater world cooperation, order, balance, stability and above all—unity.
* In this connection I would like to draw your attention to a questionnaire that, in 1942, Dr. William E. Castle, member of the National Academy of Sciences, sent to its 315 members on the desirability of adopting The World Calendar. Of the 168 answers received (more than half of its membership) 76 per cent approved this new time-plan.
“HERE IS A PRETTY MESS”
From The Varsity, Undergraduate Newspaper of The University of Toronto, Canada, December 3, 1943
UNNECESSARY holiday travel is deplored by the Transit Controller, but, since we live in a generally compassionate civilization, no restrictions are being imposed above those of the load limit of the available rolling stock. However, strong pleas are being voiced to avoid travel as much as possible over the holiday week-ends themselves.
New Year’s Day comes on a Saturday. The Easter term begins the following Monday. The question, therefore, arises: “Are patriotic students to deprive themselves of vital lectures and labs?” Students, for the most part, like to get what they pay for, and, although they may skip the occasional lecture, most will probably return to college over the week-end when they are requested not to travel. Their right to do this will scarcely be argued against by the Transit Controller. There is a strong element of necessity in it. But couldn’t this unfortunate dilemma have been avoided?
To the layman, unfamiliar with the technicalities of setting the year’s academic calendar, it would seem quite possible. Does it seem logical, even in peacetime, to allow more than a week in which to get home before the first of the two holidays and two days to get back? Christmas comes on a Saturday. Classes end two Fridays before. Except for the fact that it is not customary for it to do so, why could not the term have ended on the Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday before Christmas, thus allowing more time to return to college after New Year’s and avoid the holiday week-end rush?

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CANADIAN SOCIETIES
HOSTS TO OFFICERS OF
CALENDAR ASSOCIATION
INVITED to address the Ottawa and Montreal Centres of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Miss Elisabeth Achelis, President of The World Calendar Association, together with Emerson Brewer, the Director, made it a point to confer with World Calendar adherents in Toronto before the speaking engagements in the other two Canadian cities.
J. R. Gilley, Acting Warden of Hart House, University of Toronto, and W. R. Cowan, the Acting Comptroller of this student union, were hosts at a luncheon and a tea.
The luncheon, which was attended by a very representative group of people, was held at the Alexandra Palace Apartment Hotel. Those attending included:
Dr. Harvey Agnew, Secretary, Canadian Hospital Council; Past President, American Hospital Association.
Dr. R. H. Coats, Dominion Statistician (retired); Visiting Professor of Political Economy, University of Toronto.
A. B. Fennell, Registrar, University of Toronto; Secretary, National Conference of Canadian Universities.
Duncan B. Gillies, Advertising Manager, “Industrial Canada” (Publication of Manufacturers Association).
Otto Holden, President, Royal Canadian Institute.
Alan E. Hugg, Representative, Canadian Youth Commission.
D. MacArthur, Head of News Service, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Professor T. F. Mcllwraith, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto; Past President, Royal Canadian Institute.
A. W. Rogers, Secretary, Canadian Banker’s Association.
Dr. F. W. Routley, National Commissioner of the Canadian Red Cross Society. V. R. Smith, General Manager, Confederation Life Insurance Company; Chairman, Central Regional Committee, Chambers of Commerce.
Andrew Thomson, Assistant Controller, Meteorological Services of Canada. Drummond Wren, Secretary, Workers Educational Association.
After the luncheon Miss Achelis briefly discussed The World Calendar and its advantages, which was followed by a round-table discussion. Dr. R. H. Coats, with a few charming remarks, placed himself on record as favoring The World Calendar of 12 months because it was “the happy medium” between the present irregular Gregorian calendar and other more radical and disturbing types of time-plans.
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Later in the afternoon a tea was held in the Warden’s Study at Hart House. At this tea, in addition to Dr. Henry J. Cody, President of the University of Toronto, and Mrs. Cody were:
Mrs. Harvey Agnew, National President, Y.W.C.A.
Mrs. Grace Campbell, Acting Secretary-Treasurer, University of Toronto Alumni Federation.
Mrs. J. R. Gilley.
Mrs. W. L. Grant, Chairman, Canadian Committee International Student Service. Mrs. Munro Greer, President, Women’s Canadian Club.
Mrs. W. B. Horkins, National President, Independent Order Daughters of the Empire.
Miss Monica Mugan, Commentator, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Miss Ruth Northcott, President, Royal Astronomical Society, Toronto Branch.
Miss Marie Parkes, Acting Secretary-Treasurer, Students Administrative Council, University of Toronto; National Commandant, University Training Section Canadian Red Cross Corps.
Mrs. N. C. Stephens, President, Local Council of Women.
In commenting on Miss Achelis’ remarks, the Toronto Globe and Mail had the following to say in an article headed “New Calendar Helps Anniversary Forgetters”:
“On January 1, 1945, if all goes well for Miss Elisabeth Achelis of New York, the whole world will solemnly throw its 100-odd calendars into the Grand Canyon and start using her calendar.
“This is not to be treated with a light oh yeah, as many skeptics have already learned. Because Miss Achelis is a determined woman with an idea that makes sense.
“To relieve the suspense, the idea is this: The new World Calendar, as it has been named, divides the year neatly into four quarters of exactly 91 days each. This means that the first month of the quarter has 31 days, the second has 30 and the third has 30. There are 13 full weeks in each quarter, and precisely 26 weekdays, plus Sundays, in each month.
“Obviously the catch in this simplification is that 364 days aren’t enough. That’s where Miss Achelis rises to the heights. Triumphantly, she has decreed that following December 30, which is a Saturday, there will be another Saturday—a world holiday which to avoid confusion will be known as December W. The extra day of leap year is disposed of just as neatly. It becomes June W, following June 30.
“Since each date always falls on the same day, anniversaries will be easier to remember. For instance, the first of January will always be a Sunday, and Valentine’s Day will always be a Tuesday. February, which for 400 years has been a difficult month, will be relegated into obscurity as a plain 30-day month.
“ ‘The Gregorian calendar, which is the one in use now, is an unhappy family of time,’ Miss Achelis stated yesterday when she addressed a group
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15
of women at Hart House. ‘Nothing agrees, nothing matches. The months run wild in terrible disorder. We are trying to bring some order in this madness, some simple equality to make a happy family of time.’
“The calendar lady, who is president and founder of The World Calendar Association, was invited to Canada for the first time to address the Royal Astronomical Societies of Montreal and Ottawa. En route, she stopped off yesterday in Toronto to address influential men and women and sound out their reactions.
“The pity of the whole world, in the event of Miss Achelis being successful, will be reserved for those poor mites who right now are struggling with ‘Thirty days hath September, April, June and . . . ’ ”
The Toronto Daily Star, in the January 18 issue, had this to say:
“On January 1, 1945, if Miss Elisabeth Achelis of New York has her way, the jingle that starts ‘Thirty days hath September,’ will be out of date. No more will you have to work out a mathematical formula to discover whether Christmas will fall on a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Christmas Day in the New Calendar will always be a Monday. The year will begin with a new week, and every half-year and every quarter will have the same number of days.
“Next year is the best time to adopt the calendar, Miss Achelis says, because we can pass without a break from one system into the next. She pointed out that at the time of the adoption of our present calendar, just a little less than 200 years ago, 11 whole days, September 3-13, were dropped overboard. This sort of thing will be quite unnecessary if we change at the beginning of 1945.”
In Ottawa, the Capital of the Dominion, a luncheon was given for Miss Achelis and Mr. Brewer by A. J. Hills, long identified with the Canadian National Railways and now Chairman of the National Joint Conference Board of the Construction Industry, together with H. S. Southam, Vice President of the Southam Publishing Company and publisher of the Ottawa Citizen. Prior to the luncheon, in company with Mr. Hills, Miss Achelis and Mr. Brewer visited the Parliament buildings and met and discussed The World Calendar with: W. J. Turnbull, Principal Secretary to the Right Honorable W. L. Mackenzie King; A. D. P. Heeney, Secretary to the Canadian Cabinet; Scott MacDonald, Undersecretary of External Affairs; and Thomas Wayling of the Press Gallery.
At the luncheon, which was held at the Country Club, were:
A. D. P. Heeney, Secretary to the Cabinet.
Norman P. Lambert, Member of the Senate and former organizer of the Liberal Party.
Dr. T. L. Tanton, President, Ottawa Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada; Dominion Government Geologist,
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Percy J. Philip, Representative in Ottawa of “The New York Times.”
Grattan O’Leary, Editorial Writer and Radio Commentator of the “Journal.”
After the luncheon the party motored to the Government House, the official home of the Governor-General of Canada, the Earl of Athlone, where they registered in the guest’s book.
In commenting on the speech given by Miss Achelis in the Lecture Hall of the Museum before the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Ottawa branch, the Ottawa Citizen, under a caption which read “New World Calendar Would Allow Greater Precision, Efficiency,” said:
“Addressing a meeting in the Victoria Memorial Museum Hall, arranged by the Ottawa Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Miss Achelis said the time to change to the new World Calendar was now.
“ ‘No war is won by delaying improvements and no success is achieved by clinging unwisely to outmoded patterns and systems' she added, ‘we have already found that the exigencies of the war have changed the clocktime to a 24-hour clock for the armed forces, they being quick to perceive the need of eliminating the confusion of the A.M. and P.M. method.’
“Similarly in civilian life The World Calendar would overcome the difficulties of the manufacturer, the industrialist, the employer and the wage earner in calculating ‘how many weekdays or how many time-and-a-half or double-time days are in a month.’ Inconsistency in the present calendar sabotaged valuable energy, time, labor and money, she said, and cited specific instances where such ‘sabotage’ occurred.
“Dr. T. L. Tanton, Ph.D., president of the Ottawa Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, introduced the speaker, who was thanked by A. J. Hills.”
Following this introduction the editor of the Ottawa Citizen reproduced the text of Miss Achelis’ address in full.
Leaving Ottawa Thursday morning, these representatives of The World Calendar Association arrived in Montreal, Thursday noon, where they were met and entertained at dinner by Daniel P. Gillmor, President of the Montreal Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Together with Mr. Gillmor at a dinner, which preceded Miss Achelis’ talk given at the McGill University Amphitheatre, were the following executives of the Montreal Centre: Miss I. Williamson, Henry F. Hall, F. DeKinder, G. Harper Hall, DeLisle Garneau.
In discussing Miss Achelis’ address before the Montreal Centre, the Montreal Daily Star, January 21, 1944, said:
“Endorsation of The World Calendar by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada would in all probability lead to similar action by the Royal Astronomical Society of London, according to Miss Elisabeth Achelis,
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17
president of The World Calendar Association. Miss Achelis addressed members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada here last night.
“‘We stand on the threshold of changes in all ways of life,’ she said, ‘among which belongs unquestionably The World Calendar.’
“In its mathematical structure The World Calendar is ‘well-nigh perfect,’ Miss Achelis claimed. There are 12 months arranged into equal quarters of 91 days and each quarter is divided into months of 31, 30, 30. Each quarter will begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. To complete the year with the 365th day, there is to be a world holiday, known as December W.”
The Montreal Gazette, under a caption “Better ‘Time-Plan’ Seen Needed for Greater World Cooperation,” stated:
“Adoption of The World Calendar as an aid to greater world cooperation, order, balance, stability and unity, was urged by Miss Elisabeth Achelis, president of The World Calendar Association, at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada last night.
“Miss Achelis claimed that an improved time-plan was imperative as the present calendar was ‘costly and wasteful and no longer efficiently served the demands of war nor the needs of civilian life.’
“She described The World Calendar as being in its mathematical structure ‘well-nigh’ perfect. There were 12 months arranged into equal quarters of 91 days, each quarter beginning on Sunday and ending on Saturday, and each calendar year of 364 days beginning on Sunday, January 1, and closing on Saturday, December 30, she explained.”
The consensus of the above mentioned influential people, educators, government officials, scientists, publishers and business men, indicates a definite consciousness of the need for calendar revision. Canadians, keenly aware of the need for pre-postwar planning, were without exception enthusiastic in their support of a Dominion group which would foster The World Calendar plan in that sister country.

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DEATH COMES TO
NOTED CHURCHMAN
By The Reverend Henry Smith Leiper, D.D., Executive Secretary, American Section, The Universal Christian Council For Life and Work; Member, Advisory Committee, The World Calendar Association
THE Reverend Dr. William Adams Brown, Presbyterian minister, professor emeritus of the Union Theological Seminary, and a former member of the Corporation of Yale University, died December 15 in the New York Hospital, which he had entered as a patient on December 3,1943. He would have been 78 years old on December 29.
Dr. Brown became a member of the Advisory Committee of The World Calendar Association in 1938. In accepting this membership he said, “I am glad indeed to have my name associated with something in which I believe so much.” His death is a real loss to the Association.
Dr. Brown took an important part in the founding of the World Council of Churches. As chairman of the Joint Executive Committee of the American Section of this Council, president of the American Section of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, chairman of the Department of Relations with Churches Abroad of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and a member of the Executive Committee of the World Conference on Faith and Order, he worked increasingly and unsparingly to bring about greater cooperation among the churches of the world.
As president of the American Section of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, and concurrently chairman of the Joint Executive Committee of “Life and Work” and “Faith and Order,” a position he held until his death, he took an active part in all the calendar deliberations and resolutions passed by that body at its various meetings. He was a convinced advocate of a fixed Easter.
He retired from the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in 1936, after serving 44 years. It is noteworthy that a member of his family had been associated with the Seminary during its entire existence.
In 1942 Dr. Brown was given the great honor of representing the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America at the enthronement of the Most Reverend William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury in London.
He led the American Section at the Oxford World Conference on Faith and Order in 1937, at which Miss Achelis was an associate delegate. The
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19
following year he was an American delegate to the Ecumenical Conference at Utrecht, the Netherlands, a conference of church representatives of the provisional committee to frame a constitution for the World Council of Churches. Dr. Brown was the author of more than a score of books, nearly all of them on religious subjects. He wrote a highly significant autobiography several years before his death, A Teacher and His Times, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940.
OBITUARY NOTES
THE MOST REVEREND GEORGE WINSLOW PLUMMER, Primate and Metro-x politan of the Holy Orthodox Church in America and Archbishop of New York, died January 23, 1944, in St. Luke’s Hospital after a four-day illness. His age was 67.
Born in Boston, Archbishop Plummer was graduated from Brown University in 1900 and also attended the Rhode Island School of Design. He had been a theatrical electrician, a police reporter for the old New York Journal and had also been associated with the Cosmopolitan and the Delineator, as a young man.
Archbishop Plummer had been a member of The World Calendar Association since 1932.
ANDREW FLEMING WEST, 90, dean emeritus of the Princeton University Graduate School, died December 27, 1943, at his home on the Graduate School grounds. He had been professor of Latin for 45 years.
Since 1934 Dr. West had been interested in The World Calendar Association. At the time of his resignation from active work in 1927, The New York Times, commenting editorially, said: “He still keeps and will keep to the end of his days the Deanship of Classical Studies in America.”
A controversy over the Graduate College between Dr. West and the late Woodrow Wilson when the latter was president of Princeton ended in a victory for the former. The controversy became nation wide, and in 1910 Isaac C. Wyman, upon his death, left $2,000,000 for the carrying out of Dr. West’s plan. To this was added $500,000 by Colonel William Procter.
/^URTIS H. VEEDER, a member of The World Calendar Association died December 27, 1943, in the Hartford, Connecticut, Hospital. He
been 82 years old in January.
since 1931, would have
Mr. Veeder, an inventor and manufacturer, was president of the Veeder Manufacturing Company of Hartford until his resignation in 1928. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Mr. Veeder at 18 years of age built what was then a new type of bicycle, which he later sold for $1,000. Among other of his inventions are bicycle saddles, a bicycle cyclometer, automatic casting machines and a liquid tachometer. In all, he held 95 American and 74 foreign patents.
OKS
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WIDE AND GENERAL
INTEREST IN WORLD CALENDAR CONTINUES
By Emerson Brewer, Director, The World Calendar Association
ORGANIZATIONS as diversified as is commerce and industry itself, groups made up of executives, business men and professional men representing practically every phase of endeavor, have within the past two months either formally passed resolutions endorsing The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters or voted the formation of committees to study this new time plan.
Indicative of the wide divergence of interest of those organizations which have passed resolutions is the Chicago Association of Commerce, embracing chambers of commerce and business organizations in greater Chicago, on one hand, and the Suffolk North Association of Ministers, a Massachusetts religious organization, on the other.
Probably the most varied of all is the membership of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, which includes men interested in steel, oil, shipping, merchandising, manufacturing and the various professions.
Manufacturers, fabricators of war materials as well as durable goods for present consumption, are conscious of the need for a stable calendar. This was pointed out by H. G. Malin, Secretary of the Manufacturers’ Association of Delaware County, Chester, Pa., an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers. The resolution of this Association follows:
“RESOLVED, That this Association does hereby favor and endorse the adoption by international agreement of the proposed World Calendar, re-arranging of the present Gregorian Calendar into four equal quarters of 91 days each and providing for an unnumbered day immediately following December 30th of each year as a World Holiday, and for the intercalation of an extra day (also a World Holiday) next following June 30th of every fourth year; the first month of every quarter to commence on a Sunday and have 31 days, and the two succeeding months of every quarter to have 30 days each; and
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Delaware County
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21
member of Congress and the Two Senators from Pennsylvania
be advised of this action taken by the Association.”
Inspired in part by A. C. Darmstaetter, President of Darmstaetter’s, one of the leading stores of Lancaster, Pa., the Pennsylvania Retailers Association endorsed The World Calendar and recommended that the parent group, the National Retail Dry Goods Association, continue with their study of calendars as the various time plans affected retailing and retail inventories.
Last year the Directors of the National Retail Dry Goods Association, meeting at the Hotel Pennsylvania for their national convention, instructed Lew Hahn, Executive Secretary, to appoint a committee to make this study for this large national organization. The report of this committee has been delayed and that some action be taken to expedite this move was the feeling of the Pennsylvania Retailers Association.
Dan Ferris, Executive Secretary of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, under the auspices of which practically all of America’s amateur and interscholastic athletic events are conducted and supervised, has notified their members and affiliated members of the endorsement of The World Calendar by this large organization.
The location of the organizations which recently have passed resolutions favoring The World Calendar of 12 months is in itself a picture of the broad national interest in this change.
Other organizations which passed resolutions include:
Lions Club of Pittsburgh
Danville, Kentucky, Chamber of Commerce
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Chamber of Commerce
Cumberland, Maryland, Chamber of Commerce
Chillicothe, Missouri, Chamber of Commerce
Hagerstown, Maryland, Chamber of Commerce
Palatine, Illinois, Lions Club
Portales 20-30 Club, New Mexico
Akron, Ohio, Toastmasters Club
Penryth Club, Toronto
Williamsburg (Brooklyn) Kiwanis Club
Camden, Tennessee, Lions Club
Association of Professional Engineers of the Province of New Brunswick
Many organizations have appointed study committees to investigate The World Calendar and to report their findings to the Board of Directors.
Here, too, the interest is broad and the membership all inclusive, ranging from employers in the manufacturing field to members of chambers of commerce and accountants.
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Among those which have appointed study committees or have the appointment of these committees as a part of the agenda of the Board of Directors is the American Newspaper Publishers Association, a group composed of the owners and publishers of daily papers throughout the United States. In regard to this appointment, Linwood I. Noyes, President and Publisher of The Ironwood Daily Globe, Mich., said: “I will be glad to present your thought and will write you following our next regular board session.”
The support and interest of these men, who with radio station operators have such a part in molding public opinion, marks the development of general public interest that has been very gratifying to The World Calendar Association.
Grant Stone of the Cleveland Press, and President of the International Affiliation of Sales and Advertising Clubs, conscious of the need for such a calendar has appointed a study committee made up of James E. Shaw, of Buffalo, Chairman; Lee Trenholm, Toronto; Paul Rathert, Pittsburgh; Carl Abbey, Jamestown, N. Y.; C. E. Cole, London, Ont.; and Joseph T. Labadie, Windsor, Ont.; and the report of their findings will be made at a later date.
Other organizations, committees of which are giving thought to The World Calendar, include:
American Institute of Accountants
Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Chamber of Commerce
East Providence Business Men’s Association
Vernon, Texas, Chamber of Commerce
Midland, Texas, Chamber of Commerce
Oconto, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce
Montpelier, Idaho, Chamber of Commerce
Industrial Bankers Association of America
Geneseo Civic Club, Kansas
Associated Employers of Oregon, Inc.
Elizabeth, New Jersey, Chamber of Commerce
Independence, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce
Olean, New York, Chamber of Commerce
Wisconsin State Chamber of Commerce
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal Centres
Canadian Chamber of Commerce
GMO
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BOOK EDITORS REVIEW
NEW BOOK BY THE
ASSOCIATION HEAD
The complete comments on the book, The Calendar for Everybody, by book editors and critics associated with newspapers and magazines from coast to coast are too many to record here. The first review with which the survey opens is from the Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind., typical of those received in this office. It is gratifying to the author to note in reviewing these criticisms that all of the critics were sympathetic, interested and felt, to quote one, that the writer had established not only a good argument for The World Calendar plan but had written an interesting history of calendars in general. Excerpts from other publications follow the Journal-Gazette review.
UTT is amazing how long mankind will sometimes allow itself to be | handicapped or inconvenienced by institutions or arrangements of its own making. An excellent example is our present calendar.
“Some few years ago Elisabeth Achelis had her interest unexpectedly aroused in the deficiencies of our calendar and soon became so convinced of the need for change as to devote herself to the matter.
“A thorough study of the development of the calendar from its beginnings (4236 B. C. or 3251 B. C.) through its various changes followed. And in these pages the important facts are recorded. Perhaps the most valuable function of such a book as this is to show the calendar for what it is—a man-made instrument full of inaccuracies at first, later changed several times to rectify the errors, sometimes altered to feed an ambitious person’s vanity or not altered because of a group’s prejudice. In short, so thoroughly a human product as to have no sacrosanct qualities whatever.
“Several plans have been promulgated for a new calendar that would be an accurate and also a simpler and more convenient recorder of time than is ours. Miss Achelis points out the difficulties our Gregorian calendar presents to some industries, accountants, banks, etc.
“The World Calendar is presented by the author as one that best fits our needs. It divides the year into quarters, each quarter composed of three months, the first one of which has 31 days and the other two have
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30 days, so that each quarter has 91 days. A world holiday, December W, the year-end day, an extra Saturday, follows December 30 every year to make the 365th day. In leap years there is another world holiday, June W, the leap-year day, which follows June 30 and is another extra Saturday. Such a calendar makes every year the same.
“Calendar-makers need not be dismayed for instead of making new cheap calendars every year they can spend their time and effort on creating artistic effects. ‘They can be fashioned in gold or silver, bronze or marble, with precious or semi-precious stones. They can be made elaborate or simple, stationary on the wall, or portable for desk or table use, wallet or purse.’
“Miss Achelis enumerates the benefits which The World Calendar brings to science, religion, industry, home, labor, agriculture, government, statistics, education, law, finance, radio, transportation, summer enterprises, entertainments, history.
“The proper time to change is ‘when both the old retiring and the new incoming calendars glide smoothly together.’ ‘The next easy progression will be Saturday, December 30, 1944, when both the old and the new calendars meet.’
“Mixed in with the sanity of the discussion is a much deeper feeling on the part of the author. ‘The world holidays, each coming between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday, are like the hands of God stretched out from ageless time to welcome both the Saturday and the Sunday of rest, prayer and worship in closer relationship. Like the rainbow bridge that arched the sky after the flood with the promise of better days to come, so the new calendar shines forth, after hundreds of years flooded with disorder and discord, and promises better days to come through the two new world holidays. They form a rainbow bridge of many colors whereon peoples of all climes, customs and faiths join in a spirit of greater fellowship and friendship. The world holidays are the friendly handclasps of time.’
“The time is ripe for this much needed change. Read this little book and see the reasonableness of it.”
In discussing Miss Achelis’ book, The Calendar for Everybody, the Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, Canada) book editor wrote:
“Why should we adopt a new calendar? Because it is time we modernized our civil calendar and brought it into tune with the times. The present one is full of drawbacks and eccentricities. The World Calendar will give us the most perfect time measurement yet devised.
“In civil life, the new perpetual calendar would bring many improvements. To take but one phase of civil activity—government—The World Calendar would lighten the task substantially. The fiscal year would be
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gin always on the same day and date. It would materially simplify comparisons of statistics. The records on customs receipts, income taxes, internal revenue collections and interest paid or received, will be more easily computed. And for the various government departments which require accurate quarterly financial statements, the advantages of The World Calendar, with its equalized quarterly divisions, are apparent. The same considerations apply to every other branch of modern activity.
“Miss Achelis feels very deeply the merits of the new calendar. She says it will ‘contribute towards making a better world, making life more beautiful, and making my fellowmen happier.’ After reading her book one begins to catch that mood of inspiration one’s-self.”
The Calendar for Everybody should be in every school library, writes the book critic of the Richmond Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) “because it deals with the subject of general scientific interest and popular importance with its vital knowledge of man’s attempt to measure time.
“This story of the calendar, from the beginning of calendar history to the present time, presents in popular form the summarized arguments for a common-sense calendar, and points out the imperfections of the Gregorian calendar to justify the adoption of The World Calendar with every year the same—no changing of the order of days and holidays in the week, which now causes a world of confusion from year to year.
“The book of 19 chapters includes an account of the failure in 1937 of the League of Nations to adopt the new calendar advocated by The World Calendar Association, and endorsed by 14 nations. This new ‘Calendar for Everybody’ is so called because every human interest—all institutions of present-day civilization would be greatly benefited by the simple time-clock of the world—benefited in the saving of time, energy and money.”
“The World Calendar is undoubtedly a sensible one,” writes the book critic of the New York Sun. “The proponents of The World Calendar are still waging a vigorous fight for its adoption. Miss Elisabeth Achelis, who gave this system of time reckoning its name in 1930, is out with a new book on the subject.” The columnist then explains in some detail the general plan of The World Calendar.
“In The Calendar for Everybody, Miss Elisabeth Achelis, The World Calendar’s sponsor, argues for its adoption and,” says the book editor of the Columbus Citizen (Columbus, Ohio), “very completely has recorded all calendar history, demonstrating how easily it has been changed many times, and how easy it would be for us to abolish the present unsatisfactory system.”
“This is a day of planning and efficiency,” says the Atlanta Journal
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(Atlanta, Georgia), “and here is a proposal for a well-ordered new calendar and an exposition of its advantages.”
The New York Times says: “Miss Achelis states the case for a World Calendar in The Calendar for Everybody. The book is her latest contribution to this universal idea of measuring time for all years and all peoples. She is practical in her argument but reverent in handling . . . the most ancient of all expressions of nascent civilization, an agency for which during thousands of years religion has been the trustee.”
In a syndicated column, appearing in many newspapers, another book critic writes: “Miss Elisabeth Achelis has written a New Year ‘must’ book under the title of The Calendar for Everybody and inasmuch as she has devoted her life and fortune to calendar reform for more than a dozen years she is able to go clear down the line in furnishing satisfactory proof that the new world needs a new practical and commonsense calendar and that The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters is just what the world needs.”
The Calendar for Everybody, Elisabeth Achelis, 1943, G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 2 W. 45th St., New York 19. 141 pages. $1.50 cloth.
CHRISTMAS GREETINGS A PROBLEM
By George Dixon
From “Capital Stuff” The Daily News, New York, N. Y., December 7, 1943
IN accordance with the traditions of diplomacy, there should be an exchange oi Christmas greetings between the gentlemen who signed the blunt “Roosevelt” (no first name or initials) and the equally emphatic “Stalin” to the Teheran pronouncement issued today, dated December- 1.
But this raises a delicate problem. The Russian calendar does not run in step with ours. Christmas in Russia is celebrated on January 7, because the Orthodox Church still adheres to the old Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar. On the other hand, the Communist state, for official documents, uses, as does the English-speaking world, the reformed calendar of Pope Gregory, established in 1582.
So far as the holy celebration of the birth of the Saviour is concerned, the land of Stalin holds this on January 7, and, among the religious, in much the same manner as we celebrate the day here—a tree for the children and exchange of gifts among adults. Like Christmas, Easter in the land of the Soviets falls on a different date— the first Sunday after the first full moon in Spring.
There are two Soviet holidays of more importance than Christmas and Easter, however, but virtually equal—in the eyes of the Soviet—the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, celebrated November 7, and May Day, May 1.

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GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT HEAD AND MATHEMATICIAN CLARIFY ADOPTION DATES
By Elisabeth Achelis, President, The World Calendar Association
EVER since I first advocated The World Calendar it has been my steadfast conviction that the interest of everyone would best be served were The World Calendar to be adopted with the minimum of disturbance. Such a time comes this year, 1944, on Saturday, December 30, when there is a natural blending of the two calendars. The following day, the old December 31, would become the new December W, the World Holiday; and New Year’s Day, January 1, 1945, observed on a Sunday, would initiate The World Calendar as our new time recorder.
Wishing to know whether any other dates would be suitable for the adoption previous to January 1, 1950, “the next available date,” I wrote to H. W. Bearce, Chief, Division of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, for information. This action resulted in an article written by him that was published in the last issue of the Journal, the Fourth Quarter of 1943.
As a result of this article, a letter was received from one of the longstanding members of the Association, B. F. Yanney, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, in which he pointed out the fact that the dates suggested by Mr. Bearce were correct, but adoption on those dates would cause serious complications resulting in the need for an adjustment of one or two days. This letter was immediately transmitted to Mr. Bearce for his confirmation. Mr. Bearce responded confirming Professor Yanney’s statements.
A letter was then written to Professor Yanney requesting more detailed information on the subject, to which Professor Yanney replied more explicitly.
Firm in my conviction that the adoption of The World Calendar should be accomplished without disturbance or unnecessary adjustments, and convinced that this information will be of extreme importance to all those who are interested in calendar reform, I am reproducing the correspondence from both Mr. Bearce and Professor Yanney.
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Wooster, Ohio, January 13, 1944 Elisabeth Achelis, President The World Calendar Association
International Building, 630 Fifth Avenue
New York 20, N. Y.
Dear President Achelis:
Permit me to say a few words in reference to Mr. Bearce’s proposal, page 164 of the Journal, Fourth Quarter, to the effect that the date Sunday, July 1, 1945, “would serve admirably as the starting point” for the third quarter of The World Calendar.
In the first place it must then be evident that the first half of The World Calendar for 1945 would have to include as its January 1 the last day, that is, December 31, of the Gregorian for 1944. Furthermore, contrary to what the proposer states, the last day of the old Gregorian year could not possibly be made a part of The World Calendar for that year. For, there are 184 days in the Gregorian calendar from July 1 to December 31, inclusive, while only 183 days are needed to make up the last two quarters of The World Calendar. What to do, then, with December 31 of the Gregorian year 1945? Well, the only thing that can be done is to make it the first day of the new World Calendar year, 1946. And so on.
There are other complications that I see involved in this departure from the hitherto publicised policy of The World Calendar Association, viz., to cause in the inauguration of the new calendar as little disturbance as possible in the old. Let what I have presented be sufficient, at least for the present. Above all, I do not intend to get mixed up in a controversy and so jeopardize the splendid work you and your Association have accomplished.
Most cordially yours,
(Signed) B. F. Yanney
Washington, D. C., January 31, 1944 Professor B. F. Yanney Wooster, Ohio
Subject: Calendar revision
Dear Professor Yanney:
Miss Elisabeth Achelis, President of The World Calendar Association, has sent me a copy of your letter to her under date of January 13, 1944, and I am glad of an opportunity to comment on your criticism of my article that appeared in the Journal of Calendar Reform, Fourth Quarter 1943.
While it is true, as you point out, that my plan of putting The World Calendar into effect on July 1, 1945, would result in shortening the year 1945 by one day, that should, perhaps, not be regarded as so serious a matter as to rule it out of consideration. It will be recalled that 11 dates were dropped out of September 1752, thus shortening that year by 11 days.
In fact, shortening the year 1945 by one day would have the advantage of “taking up the slack” that has accumulated as a result of having our Gregorian leap years slightly too often, and would correct the calendar in that respect for a period of some 3,300 years.
I am, however, inclined to withdraw my further suggestion that the change to The World Calendar could properly be made at any time when The World Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar are in agreement, for example, Friday, March 1, 1946, or Wednesday, May 1, 1946, since to make the change on either of these dates would result in shortening the year 1946 by two days. That, admittedly, would not be desirable. It would be better to wait until the change could be made at the beginning of a year, as on January 1, 1950.
I am grateful to you for your having brought the matter to the attention of Miss
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Achelis, and pointing out the desirability of making the change to The World Calendar at such a time that not only will there be no interruption or discontinuity in the days of the week, but also that there will be no change in the length of the year.
Respectfully,
(Signed) H. W. Bearce
Chief, Division of Weights and Measures
Wooster, Ohio, February 13, 1944 Miss Elisabeth Achelis, President The World Calendar Association
International Building, 630 Fifth Avenue
New York 20, N. Y.
Dear Miss Achelis:
This letter is in compliance with your request made in your supplementary letter of February 8, 1944.
I assume that there is now agreement on this statement: July 1, 1945, of the Gregorian Calendar, and July 1, of The World Calendar, do not synchronize, even though the day of the week in each case is Sunday; for in the first instance the day is yearday number 182, while in the second it is number 183.
The proposal to adopt The World Calendar on July 1, 1945, starting on that date with the beginning of the third quarter of the new calendar and dropping one day of the Gregorian year (it is not stated which day is to be dropped), is a rather abrupt departure from the Association’s principle of simplicity, stressed from its very beginning as a motivating power in securing general acceptance. I think it unnecessary to rehearse what has been said all along about the ease and smoothness with which The World Calendar could be inaugurated at the beginning of a year whose Gregorian calendar starts with Sunday. Then later it was discovered that the transition could be made also with little necessary adjustment at the end of a leap year which itself ends on Sunday, of which the current year is an example. Instances of the Gregorian style of calendar year beginning on Sunday, since the organization of The World Calendar Association, were 1933 and 1939.
This matter of when to inaugurate the new system is, in my opinion, still of primary importance. I think it is generally conceded that a Gregorian year starting with Sunday is the best type from which to make the transition to the new calendar. But to make the transition proposed, by mutilating both the Gregorian year and the first World Calendar year, bristles with complications. In the first place it is unprecedented to drop a day from a particular year in anticipation of an error of one day still three thousand years, or more, away. And it is no adequate justification of this to claim that years in the past have thus been shortened. In those instances errors had accumulated to a number of days. They had to be dealt with. They might have been annulled in another way, as suggested by an English scientist and reported on page 182 of the latest Journal of Calendar Reform. But the real point is that the problem was on hand then and there. We are not facing such a problem, the error still unprovided for by the Gregorian rules amounting at present to a rather small fraction of a day. Furthermore the proper place for this problem is in the hands of astronomers, and, on this matter, I quite agree with you in what you said in your address before the Amateur Astronomers Association, November 4, 1942. (See last paragraph, page 131, Vol. 12, Journal of Calendar Reform).
I am not familiar enough with fields of thought and endeavor outside of my own specialty, mathematics, to give in detail the specific complications that the proposed irregularity would create. Before starting this letter I re-read much of what has appeared in the columns of the Journal, including your articles and published addresses; Professor Bristow Adams, “Popular Acceptance,” “Voice of the Colleges,” with spe
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cial reference to what is said under the caption, Astronomers; James Truslow Adams, “Historian Looks at Time,” and Dr. H. Spencer-Jones, F. R. S. (Of special note is this: “Proposals for the reform of the calendar do not affect the year, as determined by the Gregorian calendar.”)
I think this will suffice, and I hope I have made my point of view clear. Above all things I do not wish to become involved too deeply in controversial matters. My paramount interest is in a successful launching of The World Calendar.
With all best wishes, I remain
Cordially yours,
(Signed) B. F. Yanney
In view of the fact that adoption of The World Calendar on Sunday, July 1, 1945, would cause the loss of one day, and on either Friday, March 1, or Wednesday, May 1, 1946, the loss of two days, which would result in complication and disturbance, it now becomes clear to us that in the interests of greater harmony and more general acceptance, we can consider as possible dates for the adoption of The World Calendar only those that do not involve the loss or the addition of days.
This is possible, as previously mentioned, at the end of this year, when both calendars agree on Saturday, December 30, and the following day, the old December 31, could be the new December W; and the beginning of the year, January 1,1945, could become the first year of the new time-plan.
Should, however, the 1945 adoption prove impossible, then I strongly urge that action be taken in 1947 (which in the United States is not a presidential campaign year), and nations and civilians will have three years to prepare and get ready for the actual operation of The World Calendar on Sunday, January 1, 1950.
----Your 1944------------
Calendar
CALENDARS are scarce. To help meet the demand, a
Sunday Dispatch calendar, with a record of important dates in 1944, is presented in Page SIX.
Cut it out, paste it on cardboard, and you have your record for the year complete.
From London Dispatch Nov. 7, 1943
Smiling Through . . . By lee
[No. 2,895] COMPLEX NEW YEAR
“ Now that’s a nice calendar* madam. Prewar. But if you remember that Mondays are Sundays until Tuesday, February 29, it will do nicely for 1944.”
Reprinted from the London Evening News, Dec. 30. 191/3
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INTERNATIONAL DATE-LINE
SEEN AS FORERUNNER OF
WORLD CALENDAR REFORM
By Commander Wendell Phillips Dodge (Ex-Lieutenant-Commander, V.S.N.R.)
An observer of world-wide experience, explorer, journalist, former Naval officer, an expert in international affairs, of world trade and sea power, Commander Dodge speaks with authority on maritime matters. He has edited many leading magazines in this country and abroad, including the fine old Strand Magazine and The Wide World Magazine of London, and for many years was prominently identified with leading metropolitan newspapers.
WITH postwar planning uppermost in the minds of the peoples of the earth while the present terrific global war still remains a long calendar problem, serious consideration of the adoption of the new World Calendar is timely since the last four months of 1944 are identical in both the old and the new calendars. And it is far-reaching in its benefits—for industry, for labor, for finance, for agriculture, for science, for law, and for government. Likewise, and particularly so, for shipping and world trade.
Does not the psalmist tell us that a thousand years in the sight of the Lord is but a day, and a day a thousand years ? And at the dawn of creation “God divided the light from the darkness” and “called the light Day and the darkness he called Night.” That evening and that morning inaugurated the first day, and three days later the calendar had its beginnings: Sun, moon and stars were ordained “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”
Man will endure and survive after the present un-Christian, un-Godly global war, as did the Patriarch Noah the flood. So, too, may man be expected to reform his calendar, even as Noah’s first calendar served to give assurance that no such catastrophe in the future ever would be permitted “while the earth remaineth.”
It is but natural, then, that everything vital concerning the calendar should issue from the sea—the ocean, incentive to colonial expansion, the great path of transportation; the ocean that comprises two-thirds of the
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earth’s surface, relegating the lands to a marginal position facing its vast expanse.
And so, it is to the maritime world that the calendar means so much more than to all other of man’s activities.
More generally observed far and wide than the Ten Commandments of some three thousand years’ history, the calendar also is older. For the calendar, preceding law, has been a writ where the law has yet to be accepted and enforced. Yes, the calendar is of remotest antiquity—the earliest man at once realized the value of time and its reckoning. Archeologists are not aware of any primitive people, capable of sculpture, who have failed to attempt some measurement of time.
Philip Whitwell Wilson, for one score and one year on the editorial staff of the London Daily Neros and a special correspondent for The New York Times in Paris when our paths crossed, in a highly informative and intensely interesting book, The Romance of the Calendar, writes:
“Can it be said that during the millennia of man’s recorded activities, however many of these millennia there may be, anything has been elaborated that, in its field of uninterrupted continuity, is comparable with the calendar ?”
And in his treatise on Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars, Professor S. Langdon of Oxford informs us that “the calendar is the framework of any civilization, the time index for all business transactions and religious observances, the rule by which all daily life is regulated.”
In order to pass as quickly as possible through history, suppose we had arrived in a Far Eastern port prior to that vicious long-planned attack on Pearl Harbor and entered the house of a Hindu soothsayer to peer into a crystal ball. Here we would see the calendar pass in review—I take you to P. W. Wilson’s narrative:
“. . . you will see dim and clouded reflections—shaven priests in their slow parades within the shadows of the Pyramids—the majesty of Babylonian monarchs—the ancient scholarship of a China that has faded with the centuries into the prehistoric—Maya maidens advancing in processional dance to the terraced shrines of Yucatan—Hebrew rabbis studying the priceless scrolls of their Mosaic law—Popes in the Vatican consulting the most venerable of their learned ecclesiastics—astronomers in their observatories filling volumes with their geometrical calculations—captains of industry examining graphs and charts of production and consumption and costs—seamen in their ships whose safety depends on the accuracy with which they use their Nautical Almanac—”
The Nautical Almanac deals with two systems of time—solar and sidereal. The first is reckoned by the successive transits of the sun over the Greenwich Meridian and is divided into 24 hours, each of which represents 15 degrees longitude. All clocks and timekeeping systems throughout
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the civilized world, including as well Japan and Nazi Germany, are kept on what is called Mean or Civil Time.
This is based on the motion of a mean, or imaginary, sun, which always moves at the same speed and crosses the prime meridian every 24 hours on the instant. Around the world divisions are called local civil or local mean time, based on the longitude of the place and the transits of the sun over the local meridian.
These local meridians have been standardized so that the local time, or zone time, is changed in periods of one hour, corresponding to 15 degrees of longitude for each hour change of time. Thus at San Francisco the standard meridian is 120 degrees west and the local time eight hours earlier than Greenwich Time, because it takes the sun eight hours after crossing the meridian at Greenwich to arrive at the 120th meridian west of Greenwich. The standard time at Manila, based on the 120th meridian east of Greenwich shows the local time as just eight hours later than at Greenwich because after crossing the meridian 120 degrees east it takes the sun eight hours to arrive at Greenwich.
Due to the ellipticity of the earth’s orbit, however, the sun does not actually move at this uniform speed, varying about 16 minutes either behind or ahead of the mean sun. This introduces what in navigation is called Apparent Time. The difference between Mean and Apparent Time is given in the Nautical Almanac for each two hours of Greenwich Civil Time and is called the Equation of Time. This is used to correct the readings of chronometers, which must, of necessity, keep Mean Time.
At the instant of Greenwich Noon, the date is the same all over the earth.
And according to Greenwich Time the 180th meridian indicates midnight—a day ends and a new day begins. This meridian is known as the Date or Calendar Line—the International Date-Line. And right here is the real compass direction leading to practical calendar reform.
Both the clock and the calendar have been receiving the attention of experts from the beginning of recorded time. Homer’s day consisted of but morning and evening. Five periods—dawn ending at sunrise; the time of sacrifice lasting until noon; full light continuing till sunset; the rising of the stars, and the time of prayer closing the day at midnight—filled out the day of the ancient Persians.
Astronomy has shown that the earth rotates on its axis with almost precise regularity, and that the stars are so infinitely distant from the earth that their direction in space is constant day by day, whatever be the earth’s position in its orbit around the sun. This provides a perfect unit of time known as Sidereal Time, which never varies.
By drawing a meridian, north and south, through any point on the earth’s surface and noting when a star passes the meridian, then waiting
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until the earth in rotating passes the meridian again, the interval between the two transits of the star across the meridian is a Sidereal Day.
A Solar Day is the same as a Sidereal Day with the sun substituted for a star—the period of 24 hours elapses while the meridian through a point on the earth’s surface passes the sun and returns to the sun. That is, they are the same except for a fundamental difference. The one is a constant, the other a variable. With the earth revolving in an ellipse round the sun and with the axis of the earth tilted at an angle to the plane of the earth’s orbit, the Solar Day lengthens and shortens during the year. A sundial indicates that day only agrees with clock time on four dates in the 12 months of the calendar year.
This brings us to the proposed modern calendar which is based upon the solar year of 365 days with a 366th day “intercalated” every four years—and with the 365th, as an extra day, giving a year of 364 days as a base, the year to be divided into four quarters of 91 days each. Well, I’ll stop right here and leave this planning to The World Calendar authorities, and content myself with a brief recital of the practical use of such a changed calendar to the maritime world of shipping and communications.
When America entered this war our Merchant Marine fleet totaled only 10,500,000 deadweight tons. By the end of 1944 we may have as much as 50,000,000 tons. Those two simple figures reveal the scope of the greatest shipbuilding and ship operation story in the history of the world.
If a rough translation is made, the United States may have five ships on the high seas where once we had only one. The shipping services may employ five men where in prewar days they employed only one. We will have a merchant fleet equal to or greater than the combined fleets of all other maritime nations.
No one would deny that this nation has assumed a tremendous obligation to American taxpayers and to the world. These vessels are tremendously vital, not only for the sake of our economy, but they are also vital to all nations. They will help set right the things so torn asunder by the misfortunes of war. They will serve as vehicles to carry the materials which will be required desperately in all corners of the globe.
The immediate problem of foresighted and thinking men is: What will this country do with such a tremendous fleet ? How will it be employed in the wisest manner ?
It cannot be impressed too strongly that this is a maritime nation, and always has been. This is a country with 7,000 miles of coastline. It has at least 60 good-sized cities along those coasts. Its very economy long has been based upon trade—not trade just in the sense of exchanging goods, but in the broader sense that so many of our world relationships have long depended upon ships—American ships.
Yes, this nation’s shipping is perhaps its most vital industry. It affects
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everyone in the United States, either directly or indirectly. In its very operation the American Merchant Marine is a great consumer of materials and services produced in this country. Our vessels use fuel, food and equipment of all sorts in tremendous quantities and require many different types of services for their continued operation and upkeep.
The money being spent on our huge shipbuilding program is circulating freely throughout the nation, with a substantial portion of it finding its way to many of the states in the country’s Western sector, states where shipbuilding a few years ago didn’t mean much in the way of employment or dollars.
Some $56,000,000 worth of ship parts are being built in Denver, which is a mile above sea level, with eight ironworking concerns and a number of subcontractors engaged in fabricating hulls, bulkheads and deck sections for fighting ships and merchant vessels.
Another area that is enjoying the benefits of millions of shipyard dollars is the Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico section, which, with only 23 per cent of the country’s population, is producing 50 per cent of our copper, 97 per cent of domestic molybdenum, virtually all of our supply of vanadium, 24 per cent of our lead and 20 per cent of our zinc—all of these metals being highly essential in shipbuilding.
Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Arkansas have over 200 manufacturing concerns that are filling contracts for ship parts and fittings that cost upward of $170,000,000. These four states, normally considered as nonshipbuilding, are producing zinc, lumber, cement, wire rope, cable, sisal, galley ranges, tugboats, barges, Diesel engines, electrical equipment, invasion barges and buoys.
Those are some of the reasons why so many of us are deeply concerned about the employment of our vast fleet once the war has ended.
In reconstructing a war-torn world, it is evident to everyone that it means virtually rebuilding a continental Europe, Russia and China. Those jobs will take ships—every available ship. The resumption of normal trade will occupy a good portion of our ships. No one knows how many ships will be needed for new trades that will develop as a result of the war.
It is not proposed to overwhelm any other maritime nation in the course of such duties and such trade. There should be collaboration with our Allies. The American people have no desire to dominate world trade, but they have the right to insist that American ships carry a substantially increased share of American trade and be permitted a reasonable and justifiable entry into world shipping.
All the nations of the world are inescapably interdependent. The domestic economy and prosperity of the United States require substantial foreign trade, both for raw materials and as an outlet for our agricultural and industrial products. Foreign trade is a balance wheel against recur
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ring periods of domestic depression. We must have a merchant fleet sufficient to serve our international requirements.
The rehabilitation of the war-torn world will be bound to occupy our present merchant fleet, not only during the immediate emergency following the peace, but for many years thereafter. We will send materials to almost every country, feed their people, cloth them and reestablish them as nationals within their own countries. We will have to ship them steel, cotton, beef, machinery, and seeds to replant their fields. The requests that these countries will make on the United States for food and other agricultural products will be staggering, and the problem of relief will exceed that of even the last war when 30,000,000 tons of goods were sent abroad. In this country, as elsewhere, industry will need to be furnished with raw materials to get peacetime employment started again. The war will exhaust the stock piles of goods and materials that each country had in peacetime.
To meet all these requirements there must of necessity be an expansion of our agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries in the postwar period. Supported by these enlarged activities of our basic industries, our national economy in the postwar period will surpass anything we ever knew in peacetime. It will be, as it must be, at a level to meet our war indebtedness and other obligations. More important it will furnish employment to men and women who have been engaged in activities related to war.
It should be evident that the production and distribution of these goods and others will require the services of our Merchant Marine. There must be ships to export these commodities to other countries—which will need them as much as ourselves.
American agriculture, American manufacturing and American industry in general have been helpful to the Merchant Marine of this country through generations. An opportunity will be provided to reciprocate. We will have the ships for everything that the American farmer, manufacturer and producer wants delivered. Behind the ships and at the service of America’s industries will be skilled and experienced management— American-flag steamship companies which are demonstrating in this war their ability to handle a large merchant fleet under the most difficult operating conditions.
Just as vital to the country and to the whole world is our Merchant Marine as a factor in our national defense. This war has proved that the effectiveness of our Army and Navy is directly dependent upon the size and efficiency of our Merchant Marine.
Just ponder how the Axis powers accumulated much of the wealth and power with which to wage wars. They insisted on carrying the bulk of their foreign commerce. Japanese ships carried almost 70 per cent of
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Japan’s commerce, Germany 58 per cent and Italy 46 per cent. The Axis nations moreover made it virtually impossible for any other country to participate in the transportation of this trade. How well they succeeded can be seen in the figures for 1938 when the Axis Merchant Marine had close to a 12 per cent grip on United States foreign commerce while American ships, flying the flag of the country that produced this volume of business, carried only 25 per cent.
In the year 1938, which already has been taken as a standard (because at that time no nation except China and Spain was directly affected by war), we were carrying only 25 per cent of our foreign commerce in a merchant fleet which totaled 12,000,000 deadweight tons. We were dealing with countries considered economically stable, irrespective of their political philosophies. We were enjoying the greatest freedom of the seas in the history of this world.
Now, we have reached a point when this country has the greatest opportunity for maritime development in its history. Let us not lose that glorious opportunity to serve not only our country, but all countries.
Everyone knows that the standards of living in the United States are considerably higher than in any other country in the world. With this go higher wages, and American seamen are known the world over for two things in particular—more pay and better accommodations aboard American ships. This means greater operating costs reflecting higher freight rates. And heretofore, at least, this state of affairs has had a very detrimental effect upon the competitive operation of American ships on the high seas.
When the war ends it is to be expected that our ship operators will have a long-awaited and golden opportunity to get off to a better start in the great international race for world trade. We will have the SHIPS.
Establishing our argument on the premise that we will have this tremendous Merchant Marine tonnage, these thousands of well-trained Merchant Marine seamen, coupled with the fact that public opinion will force us to become a maritime nation once more, means only one of two things.
The government will have to subsidize the Merchant Marine so it can compete favorably with other nations whose cost of operation is far less than ours, or we will have to operate our vessels with greater efficiency.
A vessel, regardless of its tonnage, that stays tied up to a wharf an extra day or an extra hour means increased cost of operation, which reflects itself in the necessity for an increased charge for freight handled. We have the goods, we have some inland waterways—and we have the railroads to prevent such a tie-up.
I regret to say that we have not been known internationally either as an aggressive maritime nation or as a nation that knows how to take short cuts in either scheduling, loading or unloading our sea-borne freight. But
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this global war is changing all this, largely on account of Lend-Lease and our winning of the decisive victory of transportation.
We are going to have to develop greater skill and greater care in scheduling our vessels. We are going to have to give more thought to shipping dates, dates of arrival and those things which keep a vessel tied up, neither receiving freight nor unloading cargo.
All of this calls for long-range planning and routing, which in turn anticipates all of the factors which might cause vessels to be inactive. The crux of the whole thing is timing, not necessarily timing by hours and minutes but timing by days.
This timing can only be made possible by a judicial and constant effective use of the calendar. Ships that arrive in port on holidays or Sundays may mean red ink for that day’s or that week’s cost of operation. On the other hand, when these dates of arrival—weather permitting of course—are well planned, dock charges, extra labor charges and overtime costs can be avoided. If we are going to sharpen our pencils and sit down at a table and compete with foreign nations, past masters in maritime shipping, we are going to have to cut every corner and watch every angle.
These factors impressed me tremendously when I first came across The World Calendar plan. With a calendar, international in scope, traffic problems, while they could not be dismissed entirely, would become definitely less involved for the shipper.
It is true the vast majority of shipping contracts and schedules are based on the calendar we use here in the United States, but there is that factor of shifting holidays, uncertain week-ends, irregular months and unbalanced quarters.
I am not concerned with the shipping problem alone, but I can see where the comparability and stability made possible by The World Calendar of 12 months of equal quarters would lessen the bookkeeping problem, the office maintenance problem, and the intricate bookkeeping occasioned by various types of freight and the consequential varied rates.
A plan once set up and established, a plan definitely part of an office operation, would not have to be changed with every vagary of the calendar, because The World Calendar makes every day, date and period the same year in and year out.
Personally, as an ex-Navy man and student of foreign trade, I cannot help but see that the adoption of The World Calendar would reduce our costs of operation in America’s Merchant Marine. The World Calendar would effect a saving, one of the savings which must be anticipated and become a part of our plan if we are to compete favorably with the more aggressive, experienced, less expensively operated ships of our foreign competitors. Don't forget the International Date-Line!
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WHAT DAY IS TODAY’
By Frank C. Waldrop
From Times Herald, Washington, D. C., January 1, 1944
BY courtesy of the late Pope Gregory XIII, today is New Year’s Day.
So far as he was concerned, the matter was settled in 1582. He decreed an end to the old calendar organized by Julius Caesar and ordered the installation of his own.
But the matter wasn’t settled so far as the rest of the world was concerned.
One of the consequences of his act was that in England on what should have been September 3, 1752, crowds roared through the streets, demanding: “Give us back our 11 days!”
Men thought their time on earth had been tampered with. Anti-popery politicians in London inflamed the mob with stories that it was all a Romish plot to do some unspecified harm to the public.
Mathematicians and bankers had persuaded Parliament to adopt a “Calendar New Style Act,” swinging Britain over from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar after almost 200 years’ delay.
Experts tried to explain the sense of it all, but the crowd still roared for the lost 11 days.
Those days had been clipped off the year 1752 in order to bring the new calendar and the eternal seasons into gear.
Yet, down to this day, the Church of England runs a separate calendar of its own, for religious purposes, in which New Year’s Day falls on March 25. It still prefers this era of Julius Caesar to that of Gregory XIII in calendar matters.
As a matter of fact, neither the Julian nor the Gregorian calendar is good enough.
Caesar’s calendar was a slick mathematical performance for its day— considering that the astronomers of those times didn’t even know the earth circles the sun or the moon circles the earth. They thought the sun went around the earth, if anything.
Pope Gregory’s calendar was even a better job for its day, and came very close to getting the right time for a year, the period we have in mind when we discuss the time it takes the earth to circle the sun.
That period, incidentally, is calculated by modern astronomers to be 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and about 46 seconds long.
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That is an extremely awkward and misfortunate development, because 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds cannot be divided into any arrangement of equal time intervals.
Roughly, we separate the year into four quarters; 12 months; 52 weeks of 7 days each; and 365 days of 24 hours each. Then we refine the hours into 60 minutes each and the minutes into 60 seconds each.
But still that isn’t enough. The quarters are of unequal size because the months are of unequal size, because the time stretch won’t slice evenly.
The actual time it takes the earth to swing around the sun overlaps the calendar time allowed by so much that every fourth year we throw an extra day onto the end of the shortest month to take up the slack.
We’re doing that this very year, 1944, leap year.
Why is it necessary? Well, consider what would happen, otherwise. We know the calendar exists because men like to think and plan ahead. We keep track of the passing days and that helps us foretell, within very rough limits, the future.
For instance, a farmer living in near-by Maryland or Virginia knows that by March 15 he had better have his crop lines for the year pretty well worked out. But how does he know when March 15 is?
By looking at the calendar and by that way only. You think you could keep up with the passage of time without a calendar but you couldn’t. People have tried, but they’ve never succeeded.
So, according to the calendar, January 1, each year is predictable as a cold day in this particular spot on the face of the earth.
But suppose there were no adjustment of the calendar by the leap-year method, to take up that slack period that slops over beyond the calendar allowance for a year.
In about four years, the extra 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds per year would total a whole 24 hours. Then January 1 would, in fact, come one day earlier than it had four years before. In four years more it would turn up two days earlier.
You can see what would happen. In a few generations, the calendar would be calling for January 1 on a hot day of what used to be June. And that wouldn’t be so good. As with January 1, so with all other days.
Even with this adjustment, the calendar still contains one great fault, for January 1 may fall on any day of the week, since the quarters of the year don’t work out evenly, nor do the months. This year it falls on a Saturday. Next year it comes on—a Friday, or a Sunday? You probably don’t know which, but you know it won’t be Saturday, though everybody wishes it would.
If all quarters of the year were equal, all months equal, all holidays
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
falling on the same day of the week each year, everybody would find the calendar a better thing.
For instance, banks and insurance companies could calculate interest payments so they would fall at evenly spaced intervals. So could finance companies taking your note for the living room furniture. And so could YOU.
Rents could be paid at equal intervals.
Crops could be calculated to start on the best weekday as well as the right season. Business could be geared to a sensible holiday routine all year.
All these and many, many other benefits could come to us if a really universal calendar were adopted in law and in custom.
The World Calendar Association, a non-profit organization with offices at 630 Fifth Avenue, New York City, has worked out a “perpetual calendar,” along lines that are approved by leaders of all principal religious faiths in the United States, by our principal astronomers, by leaders of industry, farming, labor and by just plain people in general.
THE BACK YARD
By Paul Talbot
From United Business Service, Boston, January 8, 1944
ONCE more—as we start a new year—I urge the adoption of an improved calendar— The World Calendar.
Out of many years of study, discussion, and controversy, The World Calendar has emerged as the almost unanimous choice of businessmen, religious leaders, scientists, statisticians, and the general public. This calendar continues the 12-month year, and has four equal quarters of 91 days each. Every month has 26 weekdays (exclusive of Sundays) and “month dates” fall on the same “weekdays” from year to year. Every year, and every quarter, begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday.
The annual “odd day” falls between December 30 and January 1 and is called Year-End Day. The plan is to make this a world-wide holiday. Similarly, every fourth year, a Leap-Year Day would fall between June 30 and July 1 and would also be a holiday.
If you desire further information concerning the details or workings of this calendar, I suggest that you write to The World Calendar Association, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and ask for the Journal of Calendar Reform.
This all may seem like an “unimportant detail” in these days of world upheaval— but it is not. It is a move that will substantially benefit the human race for hundreds of years to come, and this year is the time to do something about it, because our present Gregorian calendar and The World Calendar will exactly coincide on December 30, 1944.

FIRST QUARTER 1944
43
CURRENT PRESS COMMENT
Worth Studying
Ottawa (Canada) Citizen
November 18, 1943
ROTARIANS were told about the new World Calendar by A. J. Hills on Monday, It is to be hoped that those who heard Mr, Hills’ address will pursue the matter further. The World Calendar would really be a great advance if it were adopted.
The present calendar is unbalanced, irregular, unsettled. Its days, weeks, months and quarters are constantly shifting. Month-dates never fall twice in succession on the same day. In these days of shrinking distances and transportation problems, it means a great deal of extra work and unnecessary personal inconvenience.
What is The World Calendar? It is an improvement on the present Gregorian calendar and retains all the progress achieved in calendar-making in the past, while clearing away the absurdities, the incongruities and unbalance of the current calendar. The World Calendar has equal quarters, 91 days each. It has monthdates that stay put—always the same weekday.
No sharp break with habit is involved in a change over to The World Calendar. It is just an improved scientific budgeting of the time-units to which mankind is already accustomed. It is a logical, grownup calendar. As already suggested, it is worth a little study by business men.
Sees Change As Moderate
Oklahoma City (Okla.) Oklahoman
November 13, 1943
EVERY so often an effort is made to revise our clumsy and unscientific calendar system.
One of the most recent movements in this direction is that of “The World Cal-
endar Association,” with offices in New York.
Its proposal for revision is moderate, as it suggests only that we keep our present 12 months, but do away with the 28-day idea for February, and, for the rest, make eight months of 30 days and the others 31.
Also in Leap Years two World Holidays would be added, in June and December, with ordinary years having one, in December.
The Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the idea, also 14 foreign nations.
There are three principal obstacles to calendar reform. One is the widespread belief that there is something sacred about the present system, because of the seventh-day Sabbath or historical concepts. Another is the interruption or disruption of contractual instruments. The third is plain inertia—“We’d rather not be bothered about it.”
However, this problem will have to be met some day. The present system is inefficient and clumsy. The calendar has been revised before, and it can be revised again. The new proposal may not be the answer to all the questions, but it is a healthy symptom.
New Calendar Book
Makes Good Case
Houston (Tex.) Post
November 21, 1943
THE World Calendar, what it is, how it would function and points in its favor are discussed by Elisabeth Achelis, its ardent advocate in The Calendar for Everybody.
Calendar reform has been a lively topic for a number of years. For a time there was talk of a 13-month year, but this has waned as Miss Achelis and her associates in The World Calendar Association have campaigned for adoption of a four-quarter year calendar which they sponsor. She makes a good case for the calendar in her book.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS
Easily Arranged
By TED ROBINSON
From Cleveland, O., Plain Dealer, November 17, 1943
((XTOU spoke the other day,” writes
JL D. R., “of the probability that the calendar would soon be reformed. But you stopped there, leaving many of us in suspense. Just what direction do you expect the reform to take, and how is it to be put across? . . . And when the alteration is made, will it be permanently satisfactory? Is it possible to arrive at a final and perfect form?”
There are too many questions here to be answered all at once, but we may make a start. In the first place, we know that the ancient Egyptians had a 12-month calendar of 30 days in each month. That calendar was in some ways better than those that succeeded it; each month was the same, each year was the same. Five days were added at the end of each year to make up the 365. But of course this got further and further off as the years went by.
The Julian calendar of Rome, with the Augustan and Constantinian revisions, was almost like our own, but the making of every fourth year a leap year proved increasingly inaccurate; the Gregorian calender was adopted (with much trouble and opposition) to correct the discrepancy. We still use it; it is inconvenient and illogical. It changes every year. No two like years follow each other; the months have four different lengths; any month can begin on any of the days of the week; we can’t tell without looking it up which day the 18th fell on, or what day of the month Thursday will be. Christmas can come on any day of the week; Easter on any date from March 22 through April 25.
There are two simple programs for reform. One is the 13-month calendar in which there are 28 days in each month; so that the first day is always Sunday. There is a 29th day in December, called Year Day; and in leap years there is a 29th day in June, called Leap Day. That
is too radical a change to get itself adopted; the conversion of dates from old to new at the start would be a tremendous job—and there are other drawbacks.
The League of Nations was working on something more practical, the 12-month equal-quarter plan, when the war interrupted its sessions. This calendar, known as The World Calendar, is bound to be adopted, sooner or later. In this, the quarters are equal; each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, and contains three months, or 13 weeks, or 91 days. Each month has 26 weekdays, and month-dates always fall on the same weekdays. Each year begins on Sunday, January 1. A World Holiday, called December W, follows December 30 every year. In leap years, there is a June W, too.
It is so simple and so easily arranged that it will probably be adopted without too much opposition.
Time to Bunch
The Old Calendar
From The Democrat, McConnellsburg, Pa., January 13, 1944
JANUARY 1, 1945, will begin on Sunday if The World Calendar is adopted at that time. The months of April, July and October will also begin on Sundays. This 12-month equal-quarter calendar is the same every year. Each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, with 13 weeks in each quarter, 91 days. To keep the quarters intact there is an extra world holiday at the close of December, the Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, which follows December 30 every year; a world holiday at the end of June, the Leap-Year Day, another extra Saturday, follows June 30 in leap years. The present calendar has “grasshopping” month dates never twice in succession on the same weekday. The World Calendar has month dates that stay put—always the same weekday; it begins every year on Sunday, ends every year on Saturday.
FIRST QUARTER 1944
45
Miss Elisabeth Achelis has written a New Year “must” book under the title of The Calendar for Everybody, and inasmuch as she has devoted her life to calendar reform for more than a dozen years she is able to go clear down the line in furnishing satisfactory proof that the New World needs a new practical and common-sense calendar, and that The World Calendar of 12 months is just what the World needs.
A Date With Time
From The Evening Standard, London, England, December 29, 1943
A GROUP of earnest men and women scattered around the world will adjust their calendars from December 31 to January 1 this week-end with sentiments of sadness and hope nicely blended.
They are the members of The World Calendar Association, whose view is that our present calendar wastes time, being “unbalanced, unstable and irregular,” and should be discarded in favor of their proposed calendar. Their “time-plan” divides the year neatly into regular quarters, ending genially with a day to be known as December W—a world holiday.
Headquarters of the Association are in the United States, but they have supporters in this country. Lord Desborough, now 88, is a member of the Foreign Advisory Committee. Lord Desborough has enjoyed a variety of interests, from swimming the Niagara River (twice) to presiding over many official bodies. He took to reforming the calendar some years ago, and his great interest in the matter continues. Lord Desborough is at his home in Hertfordshire.
Lord Desborough reminds me that the Fixed Easter Act, which he proposed in the House of Lords, has received the Royal Assent, but is held up pending agreement among Christian denominations.
“As most nations are engaged in trying to kill each other, it is not easy to get attention paid to calendar reform,” says Lord Desborough.
“He is tremendously keen about calendar reform,” Lady Desborough told me. “He has been connected with the Association from its first days. Having a fixed Easter is another thing he is keen about.
All his views on this subject are distinct.”
I have been reading the latest issue of the Journal of Calendar Reform, published by the Association in New York. With the slogan, “A new calendar for a new world,” they set out an abundance of reasons for adopting their calendar.
It closes with a confident claim of the “global aspects, and benefits this new time-plan will bring to the entire world and to everyone.”
Faces Easter Problem
TNDICATIVE of the problems which 1 merchants face because of a variable Easter date is the following rule of the War Production Board which appeared in “Government Digest” of Washington Review, January 29, 1944:
The War Production Board has announced that Inventory Limitation appeals resulting from the variable Easter date will be promptly considered, as Easter on April 9 is 16 days earlier this year than last. Many stores merchandise some or all of their spring stocks in relation to Easter.
WPB is prepared to give sympathetic attention to any retailer who appeals on the basis that an earlier Easter necessitates some temporary adjustment of inventory control. Appeals should be filed in accordance with Paragraph (q) (3) of Order L-219 and addressed to the WPB Wholesale and Retail Trade Division, 5301 Empire State Building, New York 1, New York. If a merchant has never filed reports under L-219, completed Forms WPB-1620 and WPB-1621 must be submitted with his appeal.
2,500,000 To Go
By W. T. LOTTIS
From Collier’s, February 19, 1944
WHILE a February without a full moon takes place about five times in every century, this occurrence in 1866 was accompanied by the rarest lunar phenomenon on record. The preceding January and the following March had two full moons each, a sequence that will not happen again for at least 2,500,000 years.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
FROM THE MAIL BAG
The difficulties of our present calendar are one of the topics discussed in my course in Business Statistics.—Richard L. Kozelka, Associate Prof, of Economics and Statistics, University of Minnesota.
Truly The World Calendar Association has accomplished much, and with the adoption of The World Calendar the year 1945 will be a happy one for all the nations of the world. I see great values in the new calendar and wish you the best of fortune in bringing about its final consummation. Wishing you good success, accept my best regards and kindly convey my compliments to all The World Calendar Association members from a friend far away in Yemen—Haj Abbas Abdulla, Interpreter and Translator to H. M. Imam, King of Yemen, Sanaa, Arabia.
I should like to say that I am strongly in favor of calendar reform and consider it would be a valuable factor in world planning after the war. If the U. S. A. would approve, probably all the other nations now cooperating would also make this change.—C. Chapman, Brighton, England.
I have been very much interested in your new pamphlet. It is well written and very cleverly ties the subject in with world conditions. Sincerest good wishes for the success of your great work.—Mrs. J. L. B. Buck, Second Vice-President, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Richmond, Va.
I shall try not to miss an opportunity to aid the coming of The World Calendar.— Clyde Fisher, Honorary Curator, American Museum of Natural History, N.Y. C.
The special booklet The World Calendar ... A New Calendar for a New World is especially good. Very clear, a plain statement that should convince everybody who sees it.—McDonald Steers, Athletic Department, Yale University.
The calendar is a perpetual source of trouble and I have recently had to write to three different people who inquired about the authenticity of dates that I gave, they forgetting the difference between New
Style and Old Style, which change came in the middle of the 18th century. Anything which can be done to bring the calendar more nearly in conformity with the astronomical movements of the earth and sun will save an enormous amount of trouble. —James Truslow Adams, Historian, Southport, Conn.
A great convenience to have all years alike.—Arthur W. Smith, Prof, of Physics, Univ, of Mich., Ann Arbor.
For many years I have been in favor of a readjustment of the calendar, and The World Calendar seems to me the best so far proposed.—C. A. Chant, Editor, The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto.
No reason exists why the world should not or could not have a universal and perpetual calendar embracing a perfect perpetual cycle.—Allen J. McCallum, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The World Calendar has my unqualified approval—glad to do anything to further the cause. Press and radio should get behind it.—George W. White, Equip. Acct., Pere Marquette Railway, Detroit.
Your World Calendar appears to be a sign of the times—for we look forward to a coordinated reconstructed world, and to a world regarded as a unity, no longer a conglomerate of diverse parts.—Margaret Whyte, Nanaimo, B. C., Canada.
It will be a wonderful step forward when the new calendar is adopted as it must surely be.—Caleb A. Harding, New York City.
For a long time I have thought of a new calendar and have discussed it many times. If at any time I can be of service in promoting this new calendar in the Southeast, please call on me.—E. K. Brook, War Production Board, Atlanta, Ga.
After a few years it is going to be necessary to rebuild the entire world and I hope at that time we will be able to take advantage of The World Calendar.— A. M. Harding, President, University of Arkansas.
FIRST QUARTER 1944
47
THE WORLD CALEN
Elisabeth Achelis, President Harriet A. Lillie, Secretary-Treasurer
AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE William H. Barton, Jr.
Henry W. Bearce Dr. Clara B. Burdette Mrs. Frederick H. Clausen Mrs. Vera Beggs Conway Capt. J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. (Ret.) Mrs. Gustav Ketterer Mrs. Rowland H. Latham Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D. Bishop William T. Manning Hon. Dave H. Morris Prof. Wm. Starr Myers
Dr. L. S. Rowe Howard C. Smith Bishop Ernest M. Stires Julius F. Stone Rabbi Martin M. Weitz P. W. Wilson Dr. Mary E. Woolley
DAR ASSOCIATION
Charles S. McVeigh, Vice-President Emerson Brewer, Director
FOREIGN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Admiral Josfi Guisasola (Argentina) Dr. Eugene Delporte (Belgium) Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino (Brazil) Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir (Canada) Prof. Alberto Cumming (Chile) R. P. Eugenio V.' Rosso, S.S. (Chile) Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu (China)
R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, S.J. (Cuba) Dr. Herbert Blume (Danzig) Barney N. Morgan (Dominican Republic) Lord Desborough (England) C. David Stelling (England) Paul-Louis Hervier (France) Abraham Frowein (Germany) Athanase Politis (Greece)
E. Keith Eason (Ireland) Amedeo Giannini (Italy) Dr. Joaquin Gallo (Mexico) Juan Rivera Reyes (Panama) Luis Montero y Tirado (Peru) R. P. Antonio RomanA, S.J. (Spain) Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden) Raymond Mage (Switzerland) Dr. M. I. Dereoglu (Turkey) Edgar J. Anzola (Venezuela)
Membership ts based on active interest in the study of adequate and effective improvement of the calendar. Owing to lack of space, a large number of names have been omitted. They will be printed in future issues.
Albert S. Anderson, Stud., Fairfield, Conn. George W. Anderson, Kingsport, Tenn. George R. Armstrong, Corp. Exec., Boston K. A. Arnold, Jr., Stud., Broad Brook, Conn. Sir James W. Barrett, Phys., Victoria, Australia
Harry Batley, Teach., Thermal, Cal. Frank Berklund, Salesman, Detroit, Mich. Fred Bish, Miner, Forestburg, Canada R. B. Bryden, Ins. Off., Kitchener, Canada William A. Carey, Salesman, Detroit Prof. W. W. Carlson, Manhattan, Kan. J. C. Clarke, Ship. Clk., Flushing, N. Y. Garrett B. Clayton, Engr., New York City Hart Cooper, Atty., Wilmington, Del. W. E. Daverin, Acct., Housatonic, Mass. Brooks Davis, Purch. Agt., Tucson, Ariz. S. M. Dillon, Corp. Exec., Wilmington, Del. Isabel Doll, Librn., W. Caldwell, N. J. D. E. Doman, Dean, Greenville, N. C. John W. Duffle, Clerk, Montreal Peter Dyck, Teach., Winkler, Canada Kathryn Easterly, Teacher, Mosheim, Tenn. Henry M. Elliott, Corp. Exec., Troy, N. Y. Dr. Rolfe H. Ehrmann, Chern., Elmhurst, N. Y; Charles M. Fenn, Estimator, Oakville, Conn. Jimmy Fischer, Stud., Old Hickory, Tenn. Mrs. John E. Fisher, San Francisco Arthur S. Gall, Corp. Off., Montreal Florence Garbush, Teacher, Loyal, Wis. Orrin O. B. Garner, Atty., Chicago J. C. Gibson, Mfgr., Willard, Ohio Dr. J. Edgar Guimont, Montreal Rev. M. C. Haecker, Canova, S. D.
Abdul Hamid, Editor, Lahore, India John B. Happ, Banker, Evanston, Ill. A. M. Hauber, Corp. Exec., Pittsburgh A. H. Henshall, Draftsman, Taunton, Mass. H. M. Heywood, Merchant, Biltmore, N. C. Alfred Higgins, Mfgr., Burbank, Cal. Edgar B. Holden, Engr., Westport, Conn. E. M. Houghton, Corp. Exec., Cleveland F. L. Impey, Mfgr., Birmingham, England Rev. Homer A. Jack, Lawrence, Kan.
Robert D. Jefferson, Corp. Off., Boise, Ida.
James Johnson, Librn., Portales, N. M. Willis E. Johnson, Writer, Hollywood Richard O. Jonas, Educ., Austin, Tex. Rev. H. C. Kelleran, New Berlin, N. Y. L. J. Keys, Civil Serv., Wellington, N. Z. William Kneale, Farmer, Buhl, Idaho John H. Koewler, Exec., Evansville, Ind. Richard W. Mattoon, Physicist, Chicago Nelle McCalla, Librn., Terre Haute, Ind. Ronald A. McEachern, Editor, Toronto Capt. Alden McLillan, Jr., New Orleans R. M. McMillen, Farmer, Marion Center, Pa. J. E. McNeil, Farmer, Lockhart, Fla.
Albert W. Meserve, Arborist, Danbury, Conn. Harry Miller, Reno, Nev.
J. A. Miller, Printer, Asheville, N. C. Paul Mishkin, Student, Brooklyn Mrs. J. T. Montgomery, Librn., Rockford, Ill. Thomas L. Moody, Mfgr., Bradford, Pa. Rene Morin, Student, Montreal Margaret O’Dowd, Student, Brighton, Mass. Ohio Farm Library, Columbus Dr. O. J. Olafsson, Dentist, Riverside, Ill. Tasso Vance Orr, Writer, Niceville, Fla. J. L. Owens, Credit Off., Lincoln, Neb.
F. M. Pantzer, Corp. Exec., Sheboygan, Wis. Dr. Arthur Parry, Dentist, Toronto, Canada E. J. Pease, Insur. Off., Newton, Mass.
J. D. Plekker, Stud., Grosse Pointe, Mich. Plymouth Teachers College, N. H. Leonard Potkewitz, Student, Brooklyn B. G. Prestegard, Acct., Mahnomen," Minn. W. A. Priegnitz, Acct., Milwaukee, Wis. William Ringer, Acct., Gary, Ind.
A. M. Robinsky, Student, New York City H. B. Robinson, Corp. Exec., New York City Earle S. Rodda, Designer, Lake Orion, Mich. R. L. Rofman, Teacher, Philadelphia James F. Rogers, Student, Falmouth, Mass. William C. Rollauer. Banker, Flushing, N. Y. Miss I. Rosenberg, Teacher, Bronx, N. Y. Earl C. Sanford, Forester, Vernal, Utah A. T. Scheurmann, Realtor, Chicago Elliott A. Schick. Brooklyn
H. R. Schmidt, Corp. Off., Houston, Tex.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
David V. Seaman, Stud., Gilbertsville, N. Y. Ogden S. Sells, Mfgr., Riverside, Cal.
Mrs. Ann B. Shimmick, Trenton, N. J. L. S. Shively, Teach., Muncie, Ind. Deo Shulman, Clerk, Kansas City, Mo. Colin Simkin, Adver. Man, Hartford, Conn. D. D. Simmons, Chicago Jack Sklansky, Student, Brooklyn Dominik Sloboda, Ins. Off., Dorain, O. Johan J. Smertenko, Editor, New York City Arthur A. Smith, Engr., Daurinburg, N. C. Arthur W. Smith, Educ., Ann Arbor, Mich. Bertram Smith, Acct., Berkeley, Cal. Ferdinand C. Smith, Labor Off., N. Y. C. Goldwin Smith, Teach., Midfields, Tex. Malcolm S. Stanley, Engr., Sydney, Australia A. E. Staffer, Publisher, Deshler, Neb. H. A. Steckler, Ins. Man, New Orleans W. T. Stevens, Ins., Ithaca, N. Y.
Mel Stover, Scientist, Winnipeg, Canada
Otto Strasser, Writer, Montreal Ivin Tarnove, Student, Brooklyn F. H. Tharp, Detective, San Francisco Margaret Thurnham, Sch. Supt., Sweetsburg, Canada
S. H. Tomlinson, Mgr., High Point, N. C.
James L. Turner, Corp. Off., Welland, Canada C. F. Wacker, Banker, La Salle, Ill.
D. H. Wagner, Corp. Exec., Wheeling, W. Va. Elsie K. Webb, Secy., New York City Robert G. Wheeler, Historian, Albany, N. Y. B. A. Whitney, Researcher, W. Cleveland, O. G. H. Wilson, Ins. Exec., Philadelphia P. H. Wilson, Co. Exec., Worcester, Mass. Marion Winship, Insurance. Buffalo Mulford Winsor, Librn., Phoenix, Ariz.
L. M. Winters, Merchant, Cortland, N. Y. Dora Wise, Teacher, Birmingham, Ala. Helen E. Wold, Frat. Exec., Lyndhurst, N. J. Rev. R. P. Wyche, Charlotte, N. C.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ARGENTINA: Comite Argentino del Calen-dario Mundial, Admiral Jose Guisasola, Chairman, Ministerio de Marina, Buenos
AUSTRALIA: Committee on Calendar Reform of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, C. W. Allen, Secy., Solar Observatory, Canberra.
BELGIUM: Belgian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Professor M. Dehalu, President, 1’Universite de LiSge, Liege.
BOLIVIA: Comite Boliviano del Calendario Mundial, Don Moises Santivanez, Chairman, Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre.
BRAZIL: Comite Brasileiro do Calendario Mundial, Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino, Chairman, Rua Raul Pompeia No. 133, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Rational Calendar Association, Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir, Secy., 82 Jane St., Toronto 5.
CHILE: Comite Chileno del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Cumming, Chairman, Calle Manuel Rodriguez, Santiago.
CHINA: Chinese Association for the Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu, Director, National Institute of Astronomy, Kunming, Yunnan.
COLOMBIA: Comite Colombiano del Calendario Mundial, Bogota.
COSTA RICA: Comite Costarricense del Calendario Mundial (Igualmente de Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador y Nicaragua), Don Teodoro Picado, Chairman, San Jose.
CUBA: Comite Cubano del Calendario Mundial, R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, Chairman, Bel6n Observatory, Havana.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Comite Domini-cano del Calendario Mundial, Barney N. Morgan, Chairman, Box 727, Ciudad Trujillo.
ECUADOR: Comitfi Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde, Chairman, Calle Cienfuegos 158, Santiago, Chile.
ENGLAND: Rational Calendar Association, C. David Stelling, Director, 38, Parliament Street, London.
FRANCE: Comite National pour la Reforme du Calendrier, Senateur Justin Godart, President; Paul-Louis Hervier, Secy., 5, Rue Bernoulli, Paris.
GERMANY: Deutscher Ausschuss fur Kalen-derreform, Dr. Grosse, Geschaftsfiihrer, Neue Wilhelmstr. 9/11, Berlin N. W. 7.— Der Weltbund fur Kalenderreform, Dr.
FOR REFORM OF THE CALENDAR
Rudolph Blochmann, Secy., 24 Lornsen-
GREECE: Greek National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. S. Plakidis, Secy., Observatory of University of Athens.
HUNGARY: Hungarian Committee for Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Paul Vajda, Secy., 9 Eotos Utca, Budapest.
IRELAND: Committee for Calendar Reform, E. K. Eason, Secy., 80, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.
ITALY: Italian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Amedeo Giannini, Secy., Via del Seminario, 113, Rome.
MEXICO: Comite Mejicano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Joaquin Gallo, Honorary President; Dr. Horacio Herrera, Chairman, Sociedad de Estudios Astronomicos y Geoflsicos, Av. Observatorio No. 192, Ta-cubaya, D.F.
PANAMA: Comite Panameno del Calendario Mundial, Juan Rivera Reyes, Chairman, Panama City.
PARAGUAY: Comite Paraguayano del Calendario Mundial, H. E. Senor Ministro Coronel don Luis Irrazabal, Chairman, Calle Moneda 1938, Santiago, Chile.
PERU: Comite Peruano del Calendario Mundial, Don Luis Montero y Tirado, Chairman, Casilla 220, Lima.
POLAND: Polish Committee for Calendar Reform, Albin Jakiel, Chairman, Krasiu-skiego, 21 m. 27, Warsaw.
SPAIN: Spanish Calendar Reform Committee, Rev. Father Antonio Rornand, S.J., Chairman, Observatorio del Ebro, Tortosa.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Committee on Calender Reform, Prof. Emile Marchand, Secy., Mythenstrasse 2, Zurich 2.—Comity International de Cooperation de 1’Association Universelle du Calendrier, M. Raymond Mage, Secretaire General, Palais Wilson, Geneva.
TURKEY: Committee on Calendar Reform, Dr. M. I. Dereoglu, Secy., P. O. Box 1121, Hanhaym Han No. Io, Istanbul.
URUGUAY: Comite Uruguayo del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Reyes Thevenet, Chairman, Liceo de Ensenanza Secundaria Hector Miranda, Calle Sierra 2268, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Comite Venezolano del Calendario Mundial, Don Edgar J. Anzola, Chairman, Apartado de Correos No. 207, Caracas.
YUGOSLAVIA: Yugoslavian Committee on Calendar Reform, Georges Curcin, Chairman, Poenkareova 25—III, Belgrade.
This space is contributed to the American Red Cross by The World Calendar Association and is one of several announcements which will be published m cooperation with the American Red Cross.
Printed in the United States of America by CEHIZTON company, printing dvision New York • Philadelphia
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1944
PRESENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR
PROPOSED WORLD CALENDAR
FIRST QUARTER		
JANUARY	FEBRUARY	MARCH
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
S	ECOND QUARTER	
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
THIRD QUARTER		
JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 ,3Q31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1314 15 16 17 18 19 202122 23 24 25 26 2728 29 30 31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1314 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1415 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 *
FIRST QUARTER			
JANUARY	FEBRUARY	MARCH	
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
SECOND QUARTER		
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T_FS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 **
THIRD QUARTER				
JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7, 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 *
This calendar has 52 weeks and must borrow from another week to complete the year. This causes the calendar to change every year and is responsible for its confusion. Also note varying number of days in each quarter.
* A WORLD HOLIDAY, DECEMBER W, the Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, follows December 30th every year. ** A WORLD HOLIDAY, JUNE W, the Leap-Year Day, another extra Saturday, follows June 30th in leap years.
THE WORLD CALENDAR
THE WORLD CALENDAR of 12 months and equal quarters is a logical rearrangement of our present calendar. Every year is the same and begins on Sunday, January 1.
THE YEAR is divided into equal quarters of 3 months—13 weeks—91 days. The months are arranged in 31-30-30 days: each month has 26 weekdays, plus. Sundays. The various time-units all agree at the end of quarter-years.
* THE 365th DAY at the close of every year is the natural Year-End Day, the extra Saturday, December W (the old December 31). ** In leap years the 366th day, the Leap-Year Day (the old February 29), is placed in the midyear on another extra Saturday, June W. Both are World Holidays.
This year is significant because the last four months are identical in both the old and new calendars. Sunday, the old December 31, becomes the extra Saturday, December W—a World Holiday.
YOU have the opportunity to apply this calendar and observe its benefits YOURSELF in the last four months of this year.
The Last Four Months of 1944 Are Exactly The Same in Both Calendars
A NEW CALENDAR FOR A NEW WORLD
VOL. XIV
SECOND QUARTER, 1944
No. 2
MANKIND would be immeasurably buoyed and strengthened could it depend unhesitantly on reliable, harmonious, well-organized and coordinated systems, such as the solar system. This is composed of nine independent and different planets, each of which moves in its own free orbit, yet all unite in revolving around the center point, the sun. There is thus formed a harmonious, balanced and united group—a shining example for man’s constant guidance.
Another system, closely related to the solar and equally as important to man, is Time. The reckoning of Time is unique in that it is twofold, measured by the clock for recurrent hours of the days and by the calendar for recurring seasonal years. The clock in its smooth, flowing movement of rhythmic seconds, minutes and hours is an ideal prototype of the harmonious solar system. This is not true of the calendar, which is meandering, unreliable, irregular; nothing meshes but everything clashes in unreasonable confusion.
■ \
Successful invasion and war strategy depend upon the complete cooperation and coordination of all the various branches of the fighting forces. Anything less causes a weak link and the stupendous task is endangered. The importance of willing cooperation among the many branches that weld and form the whole cannot be too strongly stressed.
If man wishes to achieve cooperation and coordination for maximum and best results, it is outright common sense that the calendar be given a rhythmic arrangement and harmonious pattern similar to those inherent in the solar system and clock-time.
The World Calendar accomplishes this and belongs inevitably to the progressive changes of a new and better world. Its adoption should not be denied because of any special or self-interest which would deprive mankind of this better time-system. The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters, with its global World Holidays “for the healing of the nations,” belongs to all mankind and to the entire world.
JOURNAL	OF
CALENDAR REFORM
April, May, June
1944
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL	49
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ACCOUNTANTS APPROVES WORLD
CALENDAR	51
STATE GOVERNMENTS NEED WORLD CALENDAR O. K. Armstrong 57
WHY NOT A LOGISTIC CALENDAR?	Elisabeth Achelis 61
THIS YEAR'S CALENDAR ONLY SIX YEARS OLD IN ENGLISH
CHRONOLOGY	Dr. Benjamin F. Yanney 64
CATHOLIC SAVANTS ESTABLISH YEAR OF CHRIST'S DEATH 67 THIS CHANGING WORLD DEMANDS ONE PLAN, A CALENDAR
FOR EVERYBODY	Carleton J. Ketchum 69
DEATH COMES TO ADVOCATE OF PROGRESS	77
WHAT TIME IS IT?	Alma K. Anderson 79
PREDATE MAKES COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE
THEM	Henry Platt 85
WORLD CALENDAR ADVOCATES URGE ADOPTION
Vincent Johnson 91
TOMORROW'S CALENDAR?	Curt B. Beck 94
NEED COMMON DENOMINATOR TO WELD THE PEOPLES OF THE
WORLD	Emerson Brewer 98
IN TIME OF WAR PREPARE FOR PEACE	Ernest Camp, Jr. 102
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS	107
EMERSON BREWER, Editor
Published by THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC.
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING: 6 3 0 FIFTH AVE., N. Y. C. 20
SECOND QUARTER 1944
51
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF
ACCOUNTANTS APPROVES
THE WORLD CALENDAR
The American Institute of Accountants, the national organization of certified public accountants in that field, is the Phi Beta Kappa of the accounting fraternity. For many months this organization has been studying The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters. A committee, made up of Ernest G. Maihack, Chairman, W. E. Pollard and Herbert H. Rapp, submitted the results of their findings to the Council, which accepted the report in toto. The report needs no editorial embellishment and is carried as submitted.
THE greatest objection to the present calendar is its shifting nature.
The present civil calendar has been in use in the English-speaking countries for less than 200 years, and in some other countries for less than 20 years, but man has been using—and improving—his calendar for nearly 9,000 years. A twentieth-century calendar improvement is at hand. Since the present calendar was adopted, the world’s tempo and mood have changed. Our lives, our habits, and our needs have changed. Civilization is ever devoted to the ideal of progress to make life simpler and better for all people.
The new World Calendar of twelve months and equal quarters, as sponsored by The World Calendar Association, Inc., of New York, is a sturdy young successor, easy to adopt, and now ready for adoption. It would be folly to ignore any longer the need for a new and improved civil calendar. There is so much to be gained, with so little effort.
The present Gregorian calendar was the first calendar to be constructed in conformance with complete knowledge of a true length of a solar year—the time it takes the earth to complete the four seasons. It took many thousands of years before mankind attained the scientific knowledge necessary to calculate the correct length of the solar seasonal calendar. During this process many habits, superstitions, and foibles were acquired, which the makers of the Gregorian calendar were unable to discard at the time.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
The present calendar still labors under the blight of those old customs. As an example, we wonder why February is so ridiculously, disproportionately short—10 per cent shorter than January or March. The reason for this is because it was the last month, the stepchild, in the calendar of the early Romans, who therefore did not scruple to shorten it so as to lengthen other months. The calendar of today is really a conglomeration of fourteen different calendars, because the month’s-date can come on any of the seven days of the week, in both regular and leap years. For instance, March 15th, our familiar federal income-tax due date can come on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, in regular years, and in Leap Year it is pushed back one day because of February 29th. Under the present calendar, holidays jump around the week on various days. In 1939, March 15th fell on a Wednesday, whereas in 1943 it fell on a Monday.
The World Calendar represents an improvement in the Gregorian calendar under which nearly all of the world is operating. The World Calendar, as it stands today is precisely the calendar arrangement that has been decided to be the most practical, the most scientific, the most generally accepted, and the most easily adopted. The plan as to how it works is very simple: The modern calendar is based upon the solar year, is 365 days long, with an extra day inserted—which calendar makers call “intercalated”—every four years. Of course 365 is not divisible into quarters, neither is 366: but 364 is. Consequently what is needed for a new World Calendar is equal quarters—and as nearly equal months at the present number of 365 will permit. So a day is set aside. With 364 as the base, the year is divided into four quarters of 91 days each. The new calendar is then on an easily understood basis of a twelve-month year, which means that each quarter includes three months. Furthermore, since 91 is one quarter of 364, it is simply a division of 91 into three equal months, by making the first month of each quarter contain 31 days; and the other two months consist of 30 days each. Therefore, a pattern for the quarter—31, 30, 30, repeating itself regularly four times a year is the result. This then gives January, April, July, and October 31 days each, the rest of the months having 30 days each.
As a result of this equal division as outlined above, it is next necessary to bring the calendar into line with common sense and plain logic and have every year, and consequently every quarter, begin on the same day—Sunday—the first day of the week. This then means that the same date of the month would come on the same day of the week every year, thereby preventing the hopping around of a day throughout the week. The universal recognized holiday of Christmas, December 25th, would under the new World Calendar, fall on a Monday every year.
SECOND QUARTER 1944
53
As for the 365th day it would be set aside since it would be the odd day of every year. The World Calendar Association, chief sponsor of the cause of calendar improvement, accepts the consensus of authority that the logical place for the 365th day is at the end of December. It is also recommended that it be designated as a World Holiday by all countries adopting the new calendar. On that day, the calendar takes a holiday and so may everyone. The World Holiday is an extra Saturday called Year-End Day, December W (31st). There is another inserted or intercalary day to be reckoned with, and that is Leap-Year Day, existing in the present calendar at February 29th. This day which comes every four years, represents an approximate adjustment to take care of the extra five hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds that astronomical calculation shows to be the excess of the solar year over an exact 365 days. The World Calendar places Leap-Year Day at the end of June, in the middle of the year, thereby balancing the calendar. Again it is an extra Saturday and a World Holiday, June W (31st).
The greatest objection to the present calendar is its shifting nature. Days and dates never agree; weeks roam crazily in and out of the month; months that we must count either with the aid of knuckles on our hands or recite a childish rhyme in order to vacillate between 90 and 92 days; half-years likewise are unequal varying between 181 and 184 days; and the new year always begins on a different day in the week. Nothing stays put. Elisabeth Achelis, president of The World Calendar Association, points out that our calendar is so planless and has so little order and no coordination that it confuses accounting systems, business efficiency, school and college schedules, and our many daily affairs which include clubs, family life, civic and defense duties. Comparability is almost impossible and the holidays break awkwardly into the week, haphazard fashion.
There are fourteen nations that have given their official approval of the new World Calendar plan—Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, China, Esthonia, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Norway, Panama, Peru, Spain, Turkey, and Uruguay. This is an interesting list as it cuts through national, racial, color, and religious barriers, a true indication that time, the civil calendar, belongs to and affects us all alike.
As for the changeover date from the present calendar to The World Calendar, it is suggested that the changeover take place commencing with January 1, 1945, which would fall on a Sunday. To effect the commencement, the present calendar date known as Sunday, December 31, 1944, is eliminated. This process would then commence the running of the new world calendar on a Sunday at the beginning of the year 1945.
As for its adoptability, it is interesting to quote such a personage as the Honorable Dave Hennen Morris, member of the American Advisory
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
Committee, The World Calendar Association, and formerly United States Ambassador to Belgium. “For many years I have been actively interested in the movement for a world language, one that is simple in structure, precise, easy to learn, and free from hidden prejudices and misunderstandings in the meaning of its words. Because of my desire to further greater understanding and unity among all people, I have also been increasingly interested within the past few years in the movement for improving our antiquated and inadequate calendar.”
“Statisticians and Accountants” as mentioned in the Business Digest, Chicago, January, 1938, “who have to struggle with comparisons of months of varying lengths, stylists who must cope with an Easter that may fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th, churchmen who must step warily along the intricate calibrations of an ecclesiastical calendar superimposed on the secular calendar, have been suggesting for years that something be done about our unsymmetrical calendar.”
As for the natural business year, Walter Mitchell, Jr., of the Research and Statistical Division of Dun and Bradstreet, writes from the viewpoint of an accountant, that any general adoption of the fiscal closing dates on a sound business basis would be beneficial to him. Under present conditions, certified public accountants commonly work to the point of complete exhaustion during the first three months of every year and find their time largely idle during the remainder of the year. Some time ago it seemed to members of the accounting profession that the community of interest made evident by these two facts warranted a study of a possibility of arranging for fiscal closing dates which would be more convenient for all concerned.
The result was the organization of the Natural Business Year Council sponsored by the American Institute of Accountants. It included representatives of the Robert Morris Associates, analysts of bank operating figures; American Management Association, which deals with engineering and management problems in industry; the National Association of Cost Accountants; and a credit-report agency. This group held meetings for discussion and assembled a file of all previously published information pertinent to their problem. They found that adequate data were available for relatively few lines of industry and trade. They also found conflicts in recommendations—one authority recommending a closing date for a given industry and another advocating some other time. The Council endeavored to check all this information by questionnaires to trade associations and representatives of the industries concerned. They found the idea of a natural business year so little understood that complete and repeated explanations were needed before interest was evident in any industrial group. Even when interest was aroused in the abstract problem, more
55
SECOND QUARTER 1944 ♦
definite facts about the seasonal cycle of a given industry were necessary if the industry was to be convinced that a radical change was desirable for the traditional closing of books with the calendar year.
In selecting closing dates for recommendations to an industry, the end of a quarter year has been chosen wherever possible, so that concerns adopting the suggestion will be still able to compare their quarterly figures with other concerns or other lines of business operating on a calendar year, or closing their books on a fiscal year at the end of another quarter. From this standpoint the equal quarter-years which would result from adoption of The World Calendar should be an advantage, in that comparability by quarter-years would be more accurate than under the existing calendar. At present, accurate comparisons can only be made by adjustment for the number of working days. This is inaccurate at best, and in any case is seldom used by businessmen, who lack both the method and time for making such calculations. (Journal of Calendar Reform, March, 1938).
As a lawyer sees it, George Gordon Battle in the New York Law Journal points out that proposals to reform the present calendar must necessarily attract the attention of the lawyer in active practice, for there is perhaps no one to whom the calendar is more important. It has been suggested that the lawyer’s diary is as indispensable to him as a schedule and a watch are to the locomotive engineer. The comparison errs on the side of understatement, for the diary of the active lawyer varies so greatly from day to day and touches on so many different aspects of so many different matters that it would be more nearly comparable to a railroad schedule which changed completely every day, if not indeed more often.
Other prominent persons, well known to our professions who endorse The World Calendar, are Dean John T. Madden, of New York University; Dr. Jules Bogen, editor of the New York Journal of Commerce; James Rowland Angell, former president of Yale University; Myron C. Taylor, director of the United States Steel Corporation; church officials; business leaders; educators; statesmen, and such a long list of others that would make it impossible to print herewith.
A resolution passed by the Milwaukee Society of Accountants, at a regular meeting held at the LaSalle Hotel on November 11, 1941, after due consideration “Resolves that after a thorough discussion of the merits of the new World Calendar, it heartily endorses this plan and gives its full moral support to this change in our calendar and earnestly hopes for the complete success of the Association striving for this beneficial change.”
The Chamber of Commerce views, as pointed out by Professor M. H. Deslandres, who was a member of the 1921 Commission on Calendar Reform of the International Chamber of Commerce, indicates that an adoption of a plan similar to The World Calendar has been recommended by
56	JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
several international congresses of Chambers of Commerce.
Seasonal variations are commented upon by Wilbert G. Fritz, Instructor in Financial Research, at the University of Pittsburgh, when he says, “As a research worker, I have encountered endless difficulties from the constant shifting of days and periods in our archaic calendar. Some of the most striking difficulties are found in the monthly indexes, but even more serious ones occur in the weekly indexes.
“Department store sales, for example, rise to great heights before Christmas Day and drop to unusually low levels thereafter. Imagine the difficulties of measuring seasonal variation when, as this year, there are five full shopping days in the week before Christmas Day and none in the same week after Christmas Day, whereas last year there were four shopping days before and one after.
“I am much opposed to the present calendar, which has been devised arbitrarily and handed down to us by custom. The chief advantages of a 12-month revised calendar over a 13-month plan is its divisibility, an end greatly to be desired. It has the merit of symmetry, fixity and divisibility.”
Henry W. Bearce of the United States Bureau of Standards, writing in a publication approved by the Director of the Bureau of Standards of the United States Department of Commerce, points out that “the principal defects of our present calendar may be listed as follows:
(1)	The calendar year is of non-uniform length; ordinary years containing 365 days, and leap years 366 days.
(2)	The calendar year is not evenly divisible into weeks, ordinary years containing 52 weeks and one day, and leap year 52 weeks and 2 days.
(3)	The calendar year is not divisible, by months, into halves and quarters of uniform length.
(4)	The months are of unequal length.
(5)	The months are not evenly divisible into weeks.
(6)	The date of Easter and other ‘movable festivals’ is not fixed.
“The above principal defects are more or less closely interrelated, and out of them flow a wide variety of secondary defects or inconveniences. For example, the first defect comes from the fact that the astronomical or tropical year does not contain an integral number of days. The length of the tropical year being slightly less than 365*4 days (365.2422 days, more exactly), it is apparent that if the calendar year is to contain an integral number of days the best that can be done is to make some years contain 365 and others 366 days.”	Respectfully submitted,
Ernest G. Maihack, Chairman
W. E. Pollard
August 30, 1943.	Herbert H. Rapp
SECOND QUARTER 1944
57
STATE GOVERNMENTS NEED
THE WORLD CALENDAR
By O. K. Armstrong, Member of the Missouri House of Representatives
Mr. Armstrong, as a citizen of Missouri and an author, has long been interested in the subject of calendar reform.
EVERY man or woman in public life today must be conscious of the need for calendar reform. Our Gregorian calendar is as out of date as the ox cart.
Even a state assemblyman gets letters about it, like the following I received from the manager of a Missouri trucking company:
“Dear Sir: While the legislature is trying to improve government, why can’t you do something about the calendar? I need to plan my work, my transportation schedules and my pay rolls, far ahead on the basis of both the months and the quarters of years. There’s too much difference between February with 28 days and the months with 31 days. I was trained as an engineer. Can’t you call in some engineers and let them fix up a uniform calendar ?”
I had to write my friend, as I’ve written merchants, school superintendents, ministers and others, that there’s simply nothing a state legislature can do about it—officially. We can’t adopt a reformed calendar for Missouri while Illinois, Kansas and the rest of our neighbors hobble along with the old one. The matter will have to be tackled not only nationally, but in cooperation with other nations of this globe. But we in positions in state government can express opinions and offer advice. We can put in our word for calendar reform.
My friend in the trucking business has a good idea in calling for the help of engineers. Clearly, the job of calendar reform is to streamline our method of time-accounting, in months, quarters and years, in the same way our technicians improve a highway or a motor vehicle. The needs of our modern complex life demand it.
One matter of great importance in a state assembly is the granting of appropriations. Money for this, money for that. Every public service must be supported by funds from the taxpayers. (Hasn’t everybody found that out?) In allocating appropriations, we constantly meet the problem of unequal months and quarters.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
In Missouri, the governor of our state is empowered to release appropriated funds on a quarterly basis. With unequal quarters, we find more money to spend during one quarter, and less money another. There is definitely a need for uniformity.
Most public pay rolls are drawn up on the basis either of annual salaries or monthly wages. The inequality of the months is so well known as to need no further comment. Annual salaries have to be paid in monthly or bimonthly accounts, and here again the lack of uniform lengths of time is obvious.
Another great problem in governmental life and work is that of holidays. We do not minimize their importance, nor detract from the honor due the person or the occasion giving rise to holidays when we say that they play hob with office routine and other factors of public administration. That’s not because there are so many of them. It’s because there’s no way to stabilize them on the present calendar. It is well known that holidays occurring in midweek present a great handicap to orderly functioning in both government and business. The fact that Christmas and other holidays may fall on Monday, Tuesday, Friday or any other day of the week, year by year, presents an even greater problem. Any calendar which would tie down the holidays would be a boon.
Uniformity and regularity in our time-plans are needed in every department of state government. What’s our single biggest public expenditure? It’s not highways nor crime nor insecticide. An average over all the states shows it’s education. Our universities and colleges have to turn mental handsprings annually to plan schedules for the year ahead. The eccentric fluctuations of our Gregorian calendar cause untold expenses just for planning.
In some states, I am informed, the problem is more acute than in Missouri. Teachers must teach a stated number of days before their schools can participate in certain funds and appropriations. Lack of uniformity in dates from one term to another works a handicap under such arrangements.
I predict that if and when a reformed calendar is adopted, schedules for school purposes, from kindergartens to graduate courses, will become standardized, with openings of universities, colleges and public and private schools, the holidays, and dates for graduations, falling on the same days each year. That, as any school man will tell you, would be something!
Increasingly, governmental units are utilizing part-time employees. Generally, they are specialists who devote some time to public service, or skilled workers needed for particular jobs. Uniformity in months and quarters would be a blessing to our auditors and paymasters who account for such work.
SECOND QUARTER 1944
59
The collection of taxes is as important to government as the granting of appropriations. With increased burdens for state and national expenditures, taxpayers are being permitted periodic instead of annual payments of taxes, in line with the “pay as you go” policy. Unequal months and quarters prevent a just and equitable division for periodic tax collections.
In our household, we’ve become used to the “24-hour clock” because our son in the Navy uses the new daily time-reckoning in his letters to us. When he says 15:30 o’clock we know that’s 3:30 in the afternoon. All military services use the 24-hour clock, thus eliminating one historic cause for confusion as between hours of the morning and afternoon. It seems logical that if this improvement is desirable for the military, it is desirable also for civil departments of our government, and for general use as well. So greatly needed is the uniform calendar that we wouldn’t have to “get used” to it. We’d wonder how we ever did without it I
As we approach the crisis of this war and the inevitable postwar period, long-time planning is the watchword of the day. Programs of public finance, public works and reconstruction are already being laid out, by state and federal agencies, separately and in cooperation, for long years ahead. The order and stability of a calendar that could be constantly used, with uniformity in its divisions, become almost essential.
The same reasons for calendar reform on behalf of governmental organizations, in cities and counties, in our states and the nation, hold for business, labor, industries and the professions. After all, government is a business—public business, attending to public protection and welfare, establishing order and justice.
I have made some study of proposed reformed calendars. One that received considerable prominence some years ago was the “lunar” calendar, in which each month was equal, with 13 months of 28 days each. That meant a total of 364 days, and, obviously, there would be another day to account for every year and the extra day every leap year.
But 13 months is simply out of the question so far as calendar reform is concerned, for you can have no quarters of years with 13 months. Any advantage you might find from months of equal days would be neutralized by this defect.
Another proposal I have studied is the Edwards Perpetual Calendar, which has been endorsed by the legislature of Hawaii. This calendar has 12 months, with equal quarters of 91 days, except the last quarter, which has 92. However, the New Year would begin on Monday. This makes an entirely unnecessary change. It discards Sunday as the first day of the week, thus running counter to deeply engrained tradition, both religious and secular.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
It seems to me that any new calendar adopted by this country, and by other nations of the world, should have these characteristics:
Constant use. The same calendar, this year, next year, etc. Days and dates should always agree. Twelve months in the year. The first day of the week should be Sunday, The same number of business days each quarter and each year. Stabilized holidays and other days of regular annual observance.
There is one calendar—and the only one I know of—which fulfills all these requirements. It is The World Calendar, sponsored by The World Calendar Association, and endorsed by numerous public, business, civic and educational organizations. Fourteen nations have also given it approval.
The World Calendar divides the year into equal quarters of 13 weeks and 91 days. Thus it hasithe same number of business days in each quarter. The division of each quarter into three months of 31-30-30 days produces months as nearly equal as is possible. But what is of importance is the fact that every month has 26 weekdays exclusive of Sundays. The first day of the week would continue to be Sunday. This makes a calendar of 364 days.
It is true that the 365th day is added as an extra Saturday after December 30 has been reached. It should be designated as a World Holiday, so that government, business, social and educational schedules as well as payrolls would not be disrupted by unequal quarters of working time. The extra “leap year” day should also be a World Holiday, and could well be observed in midyear of every fourth year on another extra Saturday following June 30.
Holidays would be stabilized, falling on the same date and day of the week every year. And of great interest to governmental agencies, most of the holidays would fall on or next to Sunday, thus allowing a long weekend and preventing so many disruptions in midweek. New Year’s and Lincoln’s birthday would fall on Sunday. Easter Sunday would cease to wander over the spring calendar, provided the churches agree on a fixed Easter Sunday—shall we say the second Sunday in April? Labor Day would be Monday, September 4. Christmas would fall on Monday, December 25. Thanksgiving Day might well be made Saturday, November 25. Only the Fourth of July would occur on Wednesday, and this could be placed on Monday, July 2, when the Declaration was introduced in the Congress in 1776.
Since state governments have as great need for a reformed calendar as does the national government, and since our states deal more directly with local agencies and with the people, I feel that we legislators might well lend our influence to securing favorable consideration of The World Calendar in Washington.
A new, universal, constant calendar would be one more strong link in the chain being forged to bind the peoples and nations of the world together in the period following this great war.
SECOND QUARTER 1944
61
WHY NOT A
LOGISTIC CALENDAR?
By Elisabeth Achelis, President, The World Calendar Association
Asked by Porter Moore, Editor of “The Home Front" edition of Our Army magazine to discuss The World Calendar in its relation to our Armed Forces and pre-postwar and postwar conditions, Miss Elisabeth Achelis immediately associated the logistics of modern warfare with logistics in the civil world. The article, prepared especially for this edition, appears below.
WELL-DIRECTED plans, careful preparation, good timing and all-out cooperation are ever essential for progress and success. Every soldier, sailor, marine and aviator, officer and enlisted man alike, realizes as never before the need for order, planning, preparation and the minute exactness of time. For practical common sense and simple wisdom the Armed Forces under its commanding officers accomplished a master stroke when it adopted the 24-hour clock system for its many branches. Previous errors, confusion and misunderstanding, which too often had resulted from the old A. M. and P. M. method, disappeared as by magic. Thus did the Armed Forces, quietly and efficiently, adapt itself to this new and better system of counting time by the clock. It did not hesitate to discard a completely unsatisfactory system.
Lieutenant General Brehon B. Somervell, to whom is entrusted the coordination of the various divisions of arming, feeding, clothing, fueling, transporting and healing the army, and burying its dead, has said: “Logistics is the science of transportation and supply in war. It is the art of getting the right number of the right men to the right place with the right equipment at the right time . . . Good logistics! alone cannot win a war. Bad logistics alone can lose.” The 24-hour clock system is an example of good logistics for more accurate timing.
Captain J. F. Hellweg, Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington and guardian of our clock time, has for many years advocated a better and more adequate calendar. He realizes, as do many other leaders, that the superannuated calendar of the hoary age of Caesar, in its arrangement, no longer fits our age and era. Captain Hellweg has stated: “The United States Naval Observatory has approved,
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very strongly The World Calendar. Benefits from it are manifold, and the differences from long-established customs are negligible . . . My advice to all advocates of calendar revision is to devote their energies to the only proposal which meets all the requirements of the situation, with a minimum of upheaval and disturbance and a maximum of benefits to mankind —The World Calendar.”
Our present calendar is an outstanding example of bad logistics. It has no plan—every year and month is different from other succeeding years and months. It has no order—months vary in length in a crazy hit-or-miss manner. It has no stability—January one year may have four or five Sundays and in others four or five Mondays or Tuesdays, or any other day of the week. And this is true of all the other months. The year too begins on different days of the week. It has no coordination—days, dates, weeks and months never agree.
This erratic and planless calendar exacts a toll from every one of us, greater than we realize. Valuable time, labor, money and material are daily sabotaged. It is one of the poorest tools with which we work. Particularly as there are so many immediate problems that require help, not hindrance, from the calendar.
As the Armed Forces improved upon the confused A. M. and P. M. clock time, so can civilians improve upon the present Gregorian calendar. This is made easy with The World Calendar ready and available for adoption.
Is this not a neat, simple plan for both the military and the civilians? With this ordered, stable, civil calendar of equal quarters, coordination among the various time-units is possible. The planning of all activities and daily affairs would be facilitated in every way. Contracts for production and distribution would be figured more accurately. Budgets, accounts, and payments of salaries and wages on agreeing days and dates would be more just. Holidays coming on the same day and date, year after year, would add immeasurably to the pleasure and convenience of all. Transportation, vacations and furloughs would be more easily arranged. But above all, adequate planning for the winning of the war and for the making of the peace would be materially aided by this ordered, steady and coordinated calendar. It is an outstanding example of good logistics. The accepted 24-hour clock time has proved a natural forerunner for The World Calendar.
This year 1944 is significant because the last four months in both the present and the proposed calendars are the same in their days and dates. This is possible because Sunday, December 31, and what would be the extra Saturday, December W (World Holiday), are both non-productive,
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non-business days. The new year would then begin on Sunday, January 1, and the transition from the old to the new would be easy. The next available date when both calendars agree, without the loss or addition of days, would be Sunday, January 1, 1950. The World Calendar is actually functioning within 1944 in the last four months, and gives an excellent opportunity to everyone to observe its benefits because the quarter years are alike and equal.
An exceptional opportunity is presented to America. As Egypt of old initiated the solar seasonal year, as Julius Caesar introduced the leapyear day, as Constantine the Great inserted the seven-day week into the European calendar, as Pope Gregory XIII amended the leap-year rule for adjusting the calendar to the seasonal year, so can the United States, either acting alone or with other countries, plan and prepare to initiate The World Calendar for better days to come. With a 1945 adoption improbable, action should be taken in 1947 (a pre-presidential election year) which would give nations and civilians three years to get ready for the 1950 adoption.
Time is the most precious commodity we have; let it serve us well. Progress and success are not achieved by clinging to inadequate systems and patterns, for it is only with foresight and courage that we advance. Thus let us seize the opportunity and bring this new and improved calendar to reality, as did the Armed Forces with the 24-hour clock. (See advertisement on inside back cover.)
CHRISTMAS DATE BELIEVED ERRONEOUS
From the Observer Dispatch, Utica, A. ¥., December 26, 1943
THIS Christmas was probably the year 1947 A. D. And even may have been 1954
A. D., the Astronomy Journal, Sky & Telescope, reminds scientists who try to solve the mystery of the Star of Bethlehem.
The calendar is not likely to be corrected for this uncertainty as to the date of Jesus’ birth, and it also complicates the annual search for explanations of Christ’s natal star.
Actually we now know, the Journal declares, that Jesus was born at least 1,947 years ago this Christmas, and maybe as much as 1,954 years ago. The uncertainty in the dates is ascribed to an error in calendar calculations, credited to an abbot of Rome, Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century.
The Journal points out also that the time of year when Jesus was born is a mystery. Until about the fourth century after his birth the date was January 6. Then the pagan festival of December 25, on the return of the sun, overwhelmed the opposition of church fathers and the nativity celebration was changed.
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THIS YEAR’S CALENDAR
ONLY SIX YEARS OLD
IN ENGLISH CHRONOLOGY
By Dr. Benjamin F. Yanney, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Wooster College
From The Wooster Daily Record, Ohio, December 29, 1943
OF the 14 different patterns of yearly calendar in the Gregorian system, that one will be employed for the year 1944 which is adapted to the leap year beginning with Saturday. This pattern was last used 28 years ago, for the year 1916. It will be the sixth time to be used in America since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by England and the American colonies in 1752. It was employed, however, in that year also from September 14 to the end of the year, the third of September of that year of the Julian calendar having been advanced to the fourteenth day of September in order to be properly geared to the Gregorian calendar, which had already been in general use over Europe since 1582.
This yearly pattern of calendar has the usual 11 varieties of monthly calendar. The only two of the 12 that are the same are those of January and July. Each of these two begins with a mere shred of a week, a Saturday. The first one is a leftover from the year 1943, and the second one a leftover from the first half of the year 1944. The arrangements of the days and weeks of the four so-called quarters are all different. Nobody can tell offhand, except in rare cases, on what day of the week any given day of a month falls. For such information one must consult the calendar of the particular year in question. It would be absurd, of course, for anyone to undertake committing to memory such information covering a whole year, especially in view of the fact that 13 other patterns of yearly calendar would have to be similarly mastered.
An over-all glance at the calendar for 1944, or at any other of the yearly Gregorian patterns, will give one a clear idea of the unbalanced structure of our present calendar system, and also of its utter lack of harmonious arrangement of constituent parts. And as for the quality of perpetuity of the system, one fails to see anything perpetual about it until
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it has run its regular course over a period of 400 years. That is to say, if we were to start with the inauguration of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, then we must wait until 1982 for a new cycle to begin, having precisely the same complete order of recurrence of the 14 varieties of yearly patterns that was followed throughout the first 400 years of its existence. In this sense, and in this sense alone, may the Gregorian calendar be considered a perpetual calendar. Even so, it was an improvement over the Julian calendar, whose periodic cycles covered each a period of 700 years. But such perpetuity has only curiosity and is of no practical importance.
Is it not time for the human race to devise a calendar that is “balanced in structure, perpetual in form, harmonious in arrangement” ? The writer believes that “The World Calendar Association” has the answer to this question. And it may come as a complete surprise to many readers that the very pattern of yearly calendar to be used for 1944 contains a section which may be taken as a facsimile of the irreducible unit structure of the proposed World Calendar. The section referred to is that from October 1 to December 30 inclusive. These three monthly calendars, just as they are, without the 31st day in the last month, are to be used for each of the four quarters of the yearly calendar. The appropriate names for the respective months in each of the quarters are, of course, to be employed: January, February, March for the first quarter, and so on. The leftover day of a common year and the extra day of a leap year are to be tucked in the yearly calendar in such a way as to leave the four quarterly calendars each intact. Such arrangement will make it possible for every yearly calendar as well as every quarterly calendar to begin on a Sunday. Thus every day of the year will have a special designation, as “Year-End Day” for the leftover day of a common year; or “Leap-Year Day,” to follow June 30, for the extra day of a leap year; or for any other day of the year its automatic and unalterable weekday name together with its month-date number, as Thursday, November 23.
It seems to be the purpose of the association to start the new calendar at such time as to cause, at the outset, little or no disruption of the old order, and to make the slight adjustments as needed to bring the old calendar into complete alignment with the new. As an example, the transfer could be made on October 1, 1944, in which case there would not be needed any calendar adjustment until December 31 was reached. Then in the new calendar the last day of 1944 would be labeled Saturday, December W or Year-End Day. The year 1945 would then begin with Sunday and the Gregorian calendar for the year would be replaced by The World Calendar. A simpler example would be afforded by inaugurating the new calendar at the beginning of the year 1950. For in that case, since that year itself begins on Sunday, Gregorian style, the new and the old calendar would
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coincide, day by day, from January 1 to February 28, and again from September 1 to December 30.
Despite the war, The World Calendar Association reports that the proposed calendar is making real progress—definitely, thoroughly, convincingly—with the active and interested support of the people and organizations which are leading nations toward new and better goals.
OBITUARY NOTES
THE REV. DR. SAMUEL J. SKEVINGTON, 72, minister of the Temple Baptist Church in Albany, N. Y., for the last 16 years, died April 25 of pneumonia. He had preached to his congregation the previous Sunday, and it was his intention to resign in June. Dr. Skevington was camp pastor at Camp Logan, Houston, Texas, during World War I. He had been a member of The World Calendar Association since 1937.
DR. CHARLES H. FULTON, 70, professor of metallurgy at the Montana School of Mines, died April 9. He had retired in 1937 as director of the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, but resumed teaching two years ago in response to an appeal for help based on the war-caused shortage of professors. He had taught at Columbia, the University of Wyoming, and had been President of the South Dakota State School of Mines. Dr. Fulton early became interested in calendar reform and had been a member of The World Calendar Association since 1931.
METON SMITH HEISS, who for 19 years was managing editor of the Kiwanis International Magazine, died December 31, 1943, in Hollywood, Florida. Mr. Heiss, interested in The World Calendar and in calendar reform, resigned his position with the Kiwanis publication in October.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AFFLECK, former president of the Universal Atlas Cement
Company and a prominent figure in Chicago’s business life for many years, died February 13 of a heart attack in his home in suburban Winnetka. He was 75 years old. Mr. Affleck began his business career with the Harrison Machine Works. He was able to exert a great amount of influence in favor of The World Calendar especially among those making up the business interest in the Middle West.

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CATHOLIC SAVANTS
ESTABLISH YEAR
OF CHRIST’S DEATH
The following article which appeared as an editorial in the April 24,1943, issue of the Buffalo Courier-Express is of unusual interest, and, while it may be considered controversial, it is printed here because the detailed processes indicate the thoroughness of the study. The Editor of the Journal of Calendar Reform obviously is in no position to establish the authenticity of the study conducted by the Catholic Biblical Association. This story, however, is of such general interest that it is reproduced here as it appeared in the Buffalo paper without comment other than to point out that the diligent study and search, together with the confusion about these interesting dates, is further evidence of the fact that there is but little clear-cut definiteness as to dates in early history.
THE Catholic Biblical Association recently announced that, after 1,900 years of study and research, the exact date of the Crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ has been determined as April 7, 30 A. D.
This, the association asserts, is the ultimate decision of a corps of 29 American Biblical scholars who have given final expression to the findings of hundreds of historians, archeologists and exegetes. The evidence, the decision and the commentary has been published by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine with the title, A Commentary of the New Testament.
The investigation also resulted in the conclusion that the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem took place some time between 6 and 4 B. C. This is based on the records of Roman historians, and this chronology alters the traditional age of Jesus at the time of the Crucifixion from 33 to between 34 and 36. It is pointed out that the Popes have never made any declaration to assign exact dates for the birth or crucifixion of Jesus, but have followed tradition until such time as research might determine them.
The methods used to arrive at the date of the Crucifixion are most interesting. For instance, astronomical calculations show that there were only two years during the term of Pilate in Judea when the Passover might have fallen on the Sabbath (Saturday). These years were 30 and 33
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A. D. In 30 A. D., the date would have been April 4. Thus the crucifixion and death of Christ occurred either on April 7, 30, or on April 3, 33.
The association says that in the light of the evidence presented in the four Gospels the Scripturists unanimously selected the earlier date, April 7, 30 A. D.* Their reason was that to select the later date would be to extend the time of Christ’s public ministry to a period longer than is justified by the details given in the four Gospels.
As a result of the findings, the date of the Resurrection would be established as April 9. The association makes no mention of the proposals which have been made on numerous occasions in behalf of a fixed date for the observance of Easter, but the establishment of a definite date for the first Easter would be helpful should a fixed day ever be decided upon.
• EDITOR’S NOTE: The suggested Easter date in The World Calendar, Sunday, April 8, with its attending Good Friday on April 6, would bring this day nearest to the supposed historical date, April 7.
RABBI CONDUCTS CHRISTIAN SERVICE
DURING the Passover season, en route from one island to another in the South Pacific, we had occasion to experience a most unusual event. On Sunday, April 9, a crew that took me by plane from one island to another for scheduled Passover dinners, asked that I conduct an Easter Service for them. I was, then, a Christian for a morning, and I believe it was the first time in history a Jewish Chaplain or Rabbi conducted an Easter service aboard a plane at full speed. A Negro sang, “Go Down, Moses,” and each recited his own profession of faith as a silent meditation.—Chaplain Martin M. Weitz.
JOINS ECUADOR COMMITTEE
JUAN F. MARCOS, former Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Ecuador to Spain, and President of the “Sociedad General,” a banking organization located in Guayaquil, has accepted a place on the Comite Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, according to Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde of Santiago, Chile, Chairman of the Committee. Senor Marcos is a man of unusual influence and financial significance and is enthusiastic about the rearrangement of the present calendar according to The World Calendar Association’s plan.

SECOND QUARTER. 1944
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THIS CHANGING WORLD
DEMANDS ONE PLAN, A
CALENDAR FOR EVERYBODY
By Carleton J. Ketchum
In a former issue of the Journal, Mr. Ketchum’s article on “Russia’s calendar difficulties'” aroused unusual interest. We asked this former foreign correspondent for the London Express to write more of the calendar difficulties he encountered on his various world-wide assignments for that London syndicate.
THE calendar has long been an institution more or less taken for granted by the man in the street in all nations. Only in the world’s chancelleries and among business institutions concerned with world trade have its paradoxes, its differences as between certain nations, caused acute confusion. Calendar reform has steadily progressed through the ages and from earliest times. Logic for centuries has been the final determining factor in producing the accepted national calendar. Yet before the clear light of irrefutable logic shed its lustrous rays upon the minds of more enlightened nations, there were the darker ages where astronomers and kindred scientists groped with crude instruments in the hope of devising measurements of time which would satisfy all the peoples of this planet.
History records the year B. C. 4241 or 4236—the earliest known date— as providing the origin for the first Egyptian calendar. It was based upon the Sothic style consisting of 12 months. That was the beginning of the Solar calendar.
The Chinese cycle of 60 years began in B. C. 2637 while in B. C. 2357 or 2397 the Emperor Yao, according to tradition, reformed the Chinese calendar.
A seven-day week was observed in Asia Minor in B. C. 1800. Eclipses of the sun and of the moon were identified in China in B. C. 776. The year B. C. 753 saw the foundation of Rome, and B. C. 716 to B. C. 673, with the reign of Numa Pompilius, the creation of the Roman calendar.
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The Ionic philosopher Thales, in the seventh century B. C., told Greece of a solar year of 365 days, and in the sixth century B. C., the Babylonian astronomer Nabu-rimanu calculated the solar year as embracing 365 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes and 41 seconds. His calculations, according to present-day astronomical and scientific knowledge, were incorrect by only 26 minutes and 55 seconds. Babylonia adopted a cycle of eight years in B. C. 528-505 and in B. C. 504-383 a cycle of 27 years.
Darius the Mede attempted unsuccessfully to introduce the Egyptian or Solar calendar into Persia in the sixth century B. C., while in the fifth century B. C. Herodotus, visiting Egypt, revealed himself to be impressed by the Egyptian use of the solar year.
Julius Caesar in B. C. 47 acted upon the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes and reformed the Roman calendar by eliminating the moon and basing the year entirely on the sun. The first Julian calendar began the first of January of the 45th year before Christ.
December 25 was first observed as Christmas in the fourth century, and in the same era, the year 321 A. D., Constantine the Great decreed official introduction of the seven-day week in the calendar. The numbering of years from the birth of Christ was inaugurated by Dionysius Exiguus in 532.
Omar Khayyam, Persia’s poet and astronomer royal, produced the Ja-lalain calendar in 1074-9. The Mexicans reformed their calendar in 1091. A discussion of calendar reform in Rome followed the election of Sixtus IV as Pope in 1471. The Spaniards, under the leadership of Hernando Cortes, conqueror of Mexico, substituted the Julian for the Mexican calendar in the period 1504 to 1547.
Calendar reform from the time of the advent of Pope Gregory XIII and his revision of the Julian calendar seems to have taken the course almost exclusively of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. That revision took place in 1582 and because its author was Pope Gregory the new calendar became known as the Gregorian calendar.
It was adopted in that year in Italy, Spain, Poland, Portugal and France. Its adoption in Switzerland was gradual. It began in 1582 and was complete by 1812. Most German Roman Catholic states, Flanders and the Netherlands, adopted it in the following year, 1583. Hungary accepted it in 1587, Protestant Germany in 1700.
The Gregorian calendar was approved by Britain’s Parliament in 1751 and was adopted by Statute as the legal calendar of the United Kingdom and The British Empire in 1752. In the same year it became the official calendar of the United States which the Union was then destined to become.
The year 1753 saw its adoption in Sweden. Napoleon in 1806 restored it in France in place of the French Revolutionary calendar initiated and
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dated from September 22, 1792. Japan adopted it in 1873, Republican China in 1912, Bulgaria in 1916, Soviet Russia in 1918, Roumania and Greece in 1924, and Turkey in 1927.
I have emphasized the growth internationally in the employment of the Gregorian calendar not to extoll its virtues but rather to indicate the desire, which most if not all nations have long expressed, for the realization of a calendar common to them all.
It was about the year 1900 that nations appeared to have become conscious of the need of a calendar which would be an advance upon that known as the Gregorian. The phrase calendar reform was first heard after a number of years of general, almost world-wide, acceptance of the Gregorian calendar, at an Evangelical Conference at Eisenach whereat a group of non-Roman churches considered formal proposals for such a reform. A calendar Reform Bill was introduced in the Parliament of Great Britain in 1908; and while, until 1930, individual nations continued one by one to adopt the Gregorian as their state calendar, there was, nevertheless, taking definite shape a movement almost universal in its ramifications in favor of a fixed world calendar which would meet the requirements of all peoples everywhere. The manner in which that movement has developed, especially since the formation of The World Calendar Association in New York City in 1930, is known to everyone.
Principal calendars in use throughout the world today in addition to the Gregorian (still almost universal) and the Julian are the Chinese luni-solar calendar serving directly or indirectly 450 millions in Asia; the Mohammedan 12 moons calendar embracing all the seasons, serving about 275 millions in Asia and Africa, and the 17 different calendars which continue to serve about 320 millions in India. The era of the Hejira known as the Mohammedan era is still recognized in Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Egypt and some parts of India. The era is dated from the first day of the month preceding the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. This day was July 16, in the year A. D. 622. Hejira years are purely lunar. They consist of 12 lunar months beginning with the approximate new moon. Having no intercalation to keep them to the same season in respect of the sun these years retrogress through all the seasons every 32^ years. Yet even here one finds a calendar based upon the 12-month principle of reckoning time, each month being divided more or less in the manner of our own Western or Gregorian calendar.
India today employs 14 principal or important calendars in addition to the Gregorian, Mohammedan and Jewish. There are calendars for different regions of the country. Their enumeration may interest the reader
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as giving an example of a nation greatly in need of calendar reform internally if not in relation to the world as a whole. Here are the Indian calendars:
Name	Region of use	Name	Region of use
Assamese	Assam	Marwari	Marwar States and by
Bengali	Bengal Province		merchants throughout
Burmese	Burmah and parts of		India
	Bengal	Oriya	Orissa, part of Madras
Gujrati	Bombay Province		and greater part of Behar
Hindoo	All parts of India	Parsee	Many parts of India
Kanarese	Mysore, West India and	Punjabi	Punjab Province
	parts of Madras	(Bikremi )	
Mahrashtra	South of Bombay, Poona	Tamil	South of India and all
	and elsewhere		Ceylon
Malayi	Malabar	Telegu	North of Madras
Traveling through India as I was privileged to do in 1930 when my interviews with public personalities ranged all the way from Mohandas Gandhi to Viscount Halifax, then Britain’s Viceroy at New Delhi known as Lord Irwin, I discerned this extraordinary calendar tangle. It was apparent in the native newspapers and in other directions throughout the country. British (Indian Government) officials stressed it as a source of embarrassment and cost to the Indian Exchequer. The extent of this embarrassment and cost may be gauged when I explain that the Government has long printed four of these calendars—the Bengali, Hindoo, Malayi and Tamil—in the form of an almanac which includes the Gregorian and Mohammedan styles. This almanac has usually consisted of about 3,000 pages and is required to cover the meridian transits of the sun, moon and important stars for each day in a succession of years. The work of compilation, it was explained to me, requires at least three months and oftentimes a much longer space of time. The ultimate aim of the almanac is to determine and publicize for the edification of all concerned the seasons, festivals and holidays and coordinate all historical dates.
British newspapers have frequently called attention to India’s unparalleled calendar complexities. The Times of London on one occasion pointed out that “Every thirty years for two or three years in succession a Mohammedan period of mourning dependent on a lunar calendar overlaps and clashes with a Hindu period of rejoicing fixed by a solar calendar.” Added that newspaper editorially on that connection: “The case for making the solar calendar universal in every detail is from the point of view of convenience of the human race overwhelming.”
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India’s nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi, lies today in the shadows of political obscurity, as far as the United Nations are concerned. Yet his views past and present still reflect the opinions of countless individuals, high and low alike, among India’s teeming millions. Appropriately, therefore, I think I may quote his sentiments upon calendar reform as expressed in a signed memorandum presented by him to The World Calendar Association upon the occasion of a British Imperial Conference in London held at a time when the League of Nations in Geneva was discussing the possibilities of adoption of a world calendar. Said Gandhi:
“In India there are several calendars in current use. Several racial groups have their own calendars, in which the year begins on a different date and ends on a different date. In these calendars different holidays are observed, which results in much confusion.
“It would be a splendid thing if our 350,000,000 people could have a single national unified calendar. As most of the Indian calendars are arranged on a twelve-month basis, it would obviously be easier to meet on this common ground. I am in favor of such a calendar. I am in favor of a standardized calendar for the whole world, just as I am in favor of a uniform coinage for all countries, and a supplementary artificial language (like Esperanto, for example) for all peoples.
“I have been informed of, and I welcome, the international movement for calendar reform. The efforts made by the Americans in this direction are particularly laudable because they represent a pure philanthropy. But their progress is hampered by national jealousies and national short-sightedness.”
China’s interest in calendar reform has been vigorously expressed. China’s inhabitants, long numbering more than 500,000,000—a quarter of the globe’s population—have known from time immemorial two native calendars—their ancient lunar style and a solar calendar that followed the astronomical months precisely. The official lunar calendar was abolished with the coming of the Republic and replaced by the Gregorian. President Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalistic Government strove hard to implement the use of the Gregorian calendar.
Decrees were issued forbidding the printing and sale of the old Chinese calendar while the Government—or successive governments from 1911 to the present time—have declined legal recognition of documents and contracts dated according to the ancient system. That indicates the attitude of official China toward calendar reform today. It has been made clear in that country that any reform savoring of a 13-month calendar would encounter opposition, but that a 12-month calendar of the general construction of The World Calendar would find ultimate general acceptance.
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The population of the world is estimated at 2,000,000,000. Jews of all persuasions are said to number 15,000,000 to 16,000,000 so that in contemplating a calendar for common use by all peoples, this Jewish minority is sufficiently large to be taken into account.
The only objection which the Jewish race are believed to entertain against the development of a common world calendar is based on some apprehension expressed mostly by their religious leaders that such a calendar might weaken respect for the Sabbath.
Advocates of The World Calendar point out in this connection that the perpetual World Calendar does not seek to interfere with individual national or religious holidays. One has only to glance at a publication issued each year by the Guaranty Trust Company of New York entitled Bank and Public Holidays Throughout the World to appreciate how utterly impossible it would be to devise a common calendar which would affect the feast and other holidays of individual countries. More than two-thirds of a year are devoted to national, bank or religious holidays somewhere and this being so it will never be possible to develop a world calendar that will affect or govern individual national holidays. The last day of the year—Year-End Day—is the only day which The World Calendar supporters would set aside as a common World Holiday, but even that would not be permitted to interfere with national arrangements where the world and the strictly national holiday might conflict.
The Jewish calendar in use today is both solar and lunar. Its years are reckoned by the sun and the months by the moon. The two systems are adjusted by intercalating the month in the 3d, 6th, Sth, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 19th years of a 19-year cycle. For practical purposes such as the beginning of the Sabbath the day begins at sunset but the calendar day of 24 years always begins at 6 p.m.
The Hebrew month varies between 29 and 30 days. The number of days in a year change. The total will be the days in a month, 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 3% seconds, multiplied by 12 in an ordinary year and by 13 in a leap year. The main difference between the Jewish week or month and that of the Christian calendars is that the Jewish Sabbath falls upon Saturday instead of Sunday. That, it is again emphasized, should not interfere with Jewish acceptance of The World Calendar plan since, as I have stated, such a calendar can never hope and never would wish to regulate individual national or religious holidays.
Officials, in conversation, have complained to me of their difficulties due to calendar differences. In Yugoslavia, for example, the state calendar is Gregorian. It is used by all government employees in their official relations with the state. Yet in their private lives, as in the case of the larger proportion of the Yugoslavian population before the war, they made their
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calculations and arranged their appointments on the basis of the Julian calendar. In that country most Moslems, though Slavs by origin, adhere to the Lunar calendar given them by Mohammed the Prophet, while the Jews, mostly of the Sephardic creed, have long observed only their own Jewish calendar.
The main conflict in Europe has been due, of course, to the disparagement of dates as between the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Elsewhere even in Asia, Turkey, the Middle East, throughout the Far East and in most parts of South America, the official calendar more generally than not has been the Gregorian. Natives in many lands, as in India, cling stubbornly to their old customs and therefore to their original calendars. It is significant, however, that among more enlightened elements of the Mohammedan, Chinese and Indian peoples the use of dates for calculations has been based for many years upon the Gregorian calendar, while, in more recent years, The World Calendar appears to have emerged as the practical ultimate ideal in calendar reform in the minds of the majority of these people.
It cannot be reiterated too frequently in the interests of the success of The World Calendar movement that The World Calendar as evolved by The World Calendar Association has met with the approval of 14 governments. These governments are those of:
Afghanistan	Mexico
Brazil	Norway
Chile	Panama
China	Peru
Estonia	Spain
Greece	Turkey
Hungary	Uruguay
The movement is sponsored internationally by the Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire, the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, the World Federation of Education Associations, in the United States by the National Education Association, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as countless other public bodies on this continent. Calendar reform organizations are advocating adoption of The World Calendar in 32 lands.
The purpose of this article has not been to stress the virtues or advantages of The World Calendar but rather to emphasize, as a fairly widely traveled foreign correspondent, the inconveniences which have resulted in almost all spheres of national activity ranging from trade and commerce to religion, in those countries wherein calendar paradoxes have had to be taken into account.
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The approaching dominance of air transport as an every-day mode of travel is advanced by officialdom in most if not all those countries as a sound reason for a rearrangement of the calendar system. World radio networks, operated now by nearly all nations, will definitely require a common calendar and timing system, as they continue to develop.
These are only a few of many practical considerations arising out of the advent of our highly industrialized, aeronautical and radio age which are causing thinking men and women everywhere to offer their support to a movement, which, by virtue of its ultimate success, will, ipso facto, dispose of untold inconveniences and difficulties, endured now so widely under our present calendar system.
PROMINENT SCIENTIST DIES
DR. CHARLES B. DAVENPORT, internationally known geneticist, who retired in 1934 after 30 years as director of the Carnegie Institution’s Station for Experimental Evolution, at Cold Spring Harbor, died February 18 at the Huntington, L. I., Hospital after a brief illness in his 78th year.
In a letter to The World Calendar Association while Dr. Davenport was connected with the Carnegie Institution of Washington Eugenics Record Office, he said:
“As you know, I am heartily in favor of simplification of the calendar, and think the 12-month equal-quarter plan superior to the 13-month plan.
“In regard to supporting the movement for action at the spring meeting of the National Academy, similar to action taken by the American Association, American Philosophical Society and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I am free to say that if the matter came up at a general meeting for action by the members I should vote for a resolution approving the 12-month plan and probably, if it seemed desirable, speak for it.”
DR. HENDERSON DIES AT 70
DR. YANDELL HENDERSON, professor emeritus of physiology of Yale University, died February 18 at the Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, Cal. He was 70 years old. Dr. Henderson had been ill for a year and was visiting his son, Malcolm C. Henderson.
Dr. Henderson was born in Louisville. He studied at Chenault’s School, Louisville, and was graduated from Yale in 1895. He continued his studies of physiological chemistry at Yale for four years and later at the University of Marburg in Germany. He served as an ensign aboard the U. S. S. Yale in the Spanish-American War. He returned to Yale in 1901 as an instructor in physiology at the medical school. He was made an assistant professor in 1903 and a professor in 1911. Upon his retirement in 1938 he became professor emeritus.
In discussing The World Calendar with Miss Elisabeth Achelis, Dr. Henderson said: “Rest assured I will be glad to support calendar reform in the National Academy.”
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DEATH COMES TO
ADVOCATE OF PROGRESS
THE Honorable Dave Hennen Morris, loyal friend and staunch advocate of The World Calendar, and a member of the American Advisory Board of The World Calendar Association since 1937, died May 4 at his home at the age of 72 years.
A prominent lawyer, he had a most varied and interesting life. In early youth he was for a brief time a homeopathic physician. He graduated from Harvard University in 1896, New York Law School in 1901, and received a master’s degree in constitutional law from Columbia University in 1909. Mr. Morris was also an accomplished violinist, and in the field of sports was a yachtsman, tennis player, co-owner of a racing stable, and one of the founders of the Automobile Club of America and one of its first presidents.
In 1933, President Roosevelt appointed Mr. Morris Ambassador to Belgium and Minister to Luxembourg, positions he held until 1937. With all these various interests, he was also active in educational and benevolent associations, a director of the Legal Aid Society and chairman of the Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association’s Retirement Fund.
The broadminded and progressive spirit of Mr. Morris was shown in his ardent advocacy of a simple, common auxiliary language as an aid to humanity. It was this side of his character that also led him to advocate The World Calendar.
In the Journal of Calendar Reform, June 1938 he wrote:
“Let me touch upon a few of the outstanding advantages by which The World Calendar has appealed so forcibly to me. To begin with, it is a mechanism for international use upon which all nations may agree without its being to the special advantage of any one. Time is one of the few things we have which is fundamentally the common property of all. Under this reformed system we shall enjoy a simplicity, and stability in timing our daily affairs such as we have never known before. In this unsettled and disordered world anything that is marked by harmony and balance ought to be welcome indeed. The two intercalary days of The World Calendar plan, as international holidays, appeal to anyone who has the interest of a many-peopled world at heart. . . .
“A new civil calendar is greatly needed now, one which is more appropriate to the modern day and age under which we live. Once the present obsolete system is replaced by the new World Calendar with its inherent harmony, order and stability, who knows what beneficial influence may be
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felt upon our world from these desirable qualities? This calendar reform becomes a duty of intelligence which few of us can ignore or neglect.
“Our todays would then more surely pave the way for better tomorrows, for it is our todays upon which our tomorrows are built.”
In connection with a world language, he said in a radio address:
“Let there be a new, unselfish coordination of effort by all, so that each may contribute of his best to a common solution of this world problem. We need a language worthy to supplement the radio and to bring to it new efficiency, so that man’s thoughts may be universally apprehended even as this instrument sends the words spoken by their voices to the world ... a simply constructed secondary language, one world-language for all, providing the means for direct communication among all mankind.”
To the Honorable Dave Hennen Morris a world language and a world calendar were both essentials toward the building of a better tomorrow and a better world.
LETTER CARRIERS STUDY CALENDAR
CHARLES A. PARKS, a Director of the Pennsylvania Rural Letter Carriers Association, has been designated by M. F. Gallagher, President, to present The World Calendar time-plan at the annual meeting of the State organization to be held at the Hotel Penn Alto in Altoona, Pennsylvania, July 17 and 18.
Mr. Parks is Chairman of the Convention’s Arrangements Committee and he has asked that a representative of The World Calendar Association be present at the State Convention to assist him in presenting The World Calendar story to their Association. The National President and the National President of the Rural Letter Carriers Auxiliary both plan to attend this State meeting.

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WHAT TIME IS IT?
By Alma K. Anderson
Mrs. Alma K. Anderson, President of the Red Head Brand Company, manufacturers of hunting, fishing and camping equipment, occupies a unique position among American industrialists. Taking charge, after the death of her husband, of an organization manufacturing products used mainly by men, Mrs. Anderson in 15 years has more than doubled the business volume of the company. A graduate of Northwestern University and the Chicago College of Music, she still finds time to lend her influence to music and social work. She is a member of many leading clubs and organizations which include the Chicago Woman’s Club. Recently she assumed the added responsibility as President of the Illinois Federation of Music Clubs. These various activities have given her a broad picture of the benefits of a calendar which “stays put.”
THE answer to that every-day recurring question, “What time is it?” is everywhere. One need only glance at the watch on his wrist or the clock on the wall to find the right answer. In Iceland, or Siam, the same watch or clock would still be telling the right time.
Your first watch may not have been quite as good as the one you have today, but it had the same two hands and the same hours on its dial. In other words, last year’s watch is this year’s watch as well. In fact, you and I have looked at the same watch so long we little realize what a wonderfully universal thing it is, and all because each day has the same number of hours, minutes and seconds, no matter on what part of this earth you happen to be.
And this universal convenience of telling time by the watch was further improved when it became standardized throughout the world in 1884, whereby clock time became more closely synchronized with the sun’s position in the varying parts of the globe. Today we know that for every 15 degrees of longitude to the east it is one hour later, and to the west one hour earlier. This seems so simple, yet it took years of scientific and patient research and calculation to accomplish.
One can imagine what it would be like to have to change to a new watch every year or every month. To have street-car, train and bus schedules revised monthly, to say nothing of your working hours. How long would we put up with it?
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Yet you and I actually tolerate a calendar which changes every month and every year; a calendar so irregular that only two consecutive months in each year have the same number of days—July and August. There are only two successive months, February and March, which start on the same day of the week, but they end on different days. In every fourth year, which is a leap year, these months do not have even that in common. So we must constantly consult a calendar to determine how today’s date (a Friday) differs from the same date (a Thursday) last year. It should really not be different at all, and it need not be, if we could just act upon plain common sense.
Business and professional men, scientists and educators, engineers and legislators, men notable in their field, acknowledge that there is too much confusion in the calendar we use today. Planning of schedules is difficult because supposedly corresponding dates do not correspond with weekdays from one year or one month to the next. They never can as long as our roving calendar remains as it is. For example, Christmas fell on Saturday in 1943, and this year it will be Monday. Any merchant’s Christmas plans for 1944 must be entirely different from those of 1943. His plans for advertising and sales are paramount as “Christmas comes but once a year,” yet he must almost entirely disregard his past records (established at no small cost), and resort to much guesswork. And what is not sufficiently understood is the fact that it is the ultimate consumer who pays for all this through what is called “overhead expense”; a portion of which must be added to the original cost of every article the merchant stocks in determining the setting price. So, this confused, irregular calendar affects everyone directly, in the pocketbook.
There is a, new calendar as “stable as your watch,” the revised 12-month calendar of equal quarters known as The World Calendar. Every year begins on Sunday and so does every quarter of the year. The first month of each of these quarters has 31 days and the other two 30 days each. And each month has exactly 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. So, the year is divided into four quarters of equal length—91 days or 13 weeks or 3 months. This completes the 364-day year, and with the 365th day placed on an extra Saturday, following Saturday, December 30, as a World Holiday every year, the calendar becomes fixed and regular; a similar method is employed for leap years, when the Leap-Year Day falls in the middle of the year, after June 30.
Once put into use, The World Calendar will be as permanent, as universal, as your watch. Were your birthday to occur on Wednesday one year, it would fall on Wednesday continuously, and the day and date would be jointly registered.
Our particular manufacturing business is dependent for the most part
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upon two fine outdoor sports—hunting and fishing. The hunting seasons are short, so every day must be made to count. The law appoints the time when the open season begins and ends. The State regulates this law for upland or local species, while Federal authorities take control over migratory species.
In the Chicago area, for example, there are exactly ten days—November 10th to 19th—on which hunters are permitted to take pheasants.* Generally the opening date is the most favorable, so every hunter wants to be out bright and early on that particular day. Since open seasons are measured by the date of the month, the opening can fall on any day of the week. Quite obviously when this day happens to fall on Sunday the need to go to the office or shop is not a factor. This makes it ideal for business, for the Saturday afternoon and evening preceding bring brisk purchasing of equipment at the sport stores. This many times results in complete “sellouts,” that naturally reflect themselves in our sales volume, for we have to replenish these depleted stocks so that we “sell out,” too.
In contrast, let us consider a season which opens on Wednesday. A certain percentage of the sportsmen cannot neglect their work. Another group that could be spared do not wish to sacrifice their pay. Considering these, and also unfavorable weather, the ranks of sportsmen who enjoy this pleasure are reduced still further. Saturday being the last good day for him, the retailer fervently hopes that those who anticipated hunting on Sunday will not forgo hunting, as many will if reports indicate there is scarcity of game, or if unfavorable weather is forecast. All this cuts deeply into sales volume. The loss to the retailer can never be quite recovered for, until another season some 12 months later, this stock and money invested in inventory cannot be turned over but must remain idle.
The tricky calendar shows that next year the season opens on the same date but, of course, a different weekday—a Thursday. This is no more favorable than was Wednesday. The worst years are those when the season opens from Tuesday to Friday and these run consecutively for three years, even granting that there will be one leap year out of the four omitting one of these days.
With The World Calendar in operation, with every year the same, fish and game seasons could be arranged to open ideally on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday every year with immeasurable benefit to the sportsman as well as to the nation-wide business of equipping him for recreation and sport. To have days and dates agree, year after year, for the opening and closing of the hunting and fishing seasons is obviously of great advantage. Small wonder, then, that we are strong for The World Calendar.
Hunting and fishing are the only sports wherein the law prescribes the seasons, but the customs of each of the various groups of other sports
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usually control the opening and closing dates. Under The World Calendar seasons would become uniformly standardized as to their days as well as their dates.
Many summer sports, including swimming and yachting, open simultaneously with resorts on Memorial Day. And special sporting events are always featured for this occasion. Obviously a three-day holiday would stimulate interest and pleasure, and reflect itself in increased business each year.
Memorial Day, however, comes on a Thursday, May 30, in this new calendar. It should be a comparatively easy matter with this steady timeplan in use to observe holidays on Mondays, whereby Memorial Day would always come on May 27. This date has another deep significance for, were the churches to decide to fix Easter on the second Sunday in April (the 8th in The World Calendar), Whitmonday—a great European, English and South American holiday—would then fall simultaneously on Monday, May 27. Certainly there is something deeply satisfactory in associating our Memorial Day with Whitmonday that follows Whitsunday (Pentecost).
You can easily imagine the beneficial effect this perpetual calendar has on all sports events—big days in the life of many schools and communities. These traditional affairs could be arranged to recur on the same day and date, the one most favorable for the occasion, every year. In such sports as baseball, football, basketball or hockey, involved schedules are called for each year and arranged at great expense and trouble under our present time system. With The World Calendar in operation such schedules, once set, could be used year after year with no more change than the names of contestants. In this connection it is highly significant to note that the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, which has supervision of all types of amateur athletic contests and American participation in the Olympic Games, unanimously approved this new perpetual calendar of 12 months and equal quarters.
Let us return for a moment to the short hunting season to point out that similar conditions exist for almost all other kinds of merchandise pertinent to many other important occasions, such as Christmas, Independence and Memorial Days. Although these are of short duration, they are the subject of months of anticipation by the public and of preparation and promotion by those who make and distribute merchandise for these occasions. They are observed on the same date of the month but not on the same day of the week. Would it not be a great advantage to everyone were these arranged always to come on Monday so that, tied in with Saturday and Sunday, they would afford us a three-day long recess, a welcome respite in our intensive and competitive lives?
Then there is another group of nationally observed holidays, including
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Labor Day and Thanksgiving Day. In reverse fashion these days come on a certain day of the week regardless of the date of the month. Labor seems to have shown rare good judgment, for it selected the first Monday in September. Definite as to the day but indefinite as to date, thus confining it to the first seven dates of the month. We commend the foresight of the responsible labor leaders who coupled it with Sunday to make certain of at least one three-day recess every year. We might say they were World Calendar conscious.
By proclamation of our first President, Thanksgiving happened to have received its official start on a Thursday, the last one in November, which, it is recorded, was the 26th day. Subsequent celebrations have followed the pattern of the last Thursday, which is usually the fourth in the month, except for certain years when there is a fifth Thursday in November. This irregularity caused great inconvenience to manufacturers, retailers, schools and universities.
Congress, realizing the difficulty that a roving Thanksgiving caused the people, passed an Act which was duly signed by the President December 26,1941, whereby Thanksgiving has been set on the fourth Thursday every November. Even this stabilization, the nearest we can come to in our still wandering calendar, is of real advantage. Its benefits would be enhanced still more were it to come always on its regular date as well as day, possible only with a perpetual time-system like that of The World Calendar.
In the same manner, to have Christmas always come on Monday, December 25, and were the churches to agree on a fixed Easter, the second Sunday in April, religious life as well as civil life would receive untold advantages. The public weal resulting from fixed holidays would be increased and stimulated as toil is punctuated by holidays. We have the will and the power to replace the present idiosyncrasies with an assurance of certainty whereby the calendar difficulties that today confront business, school and social activities would be eliminated. Thus let us take the first step toward order, stability and unity now. We regard the change in the calendar a subject worthy of inclusion in every code for international peace and postwar planning under consideration.
This is the year in which the last four months of our present calendar are identical with those of the proposed World Calendar, an opportune period for us to begin the operation of this new and better calendar and continue right on with it in 1945 and forever.
Such action would be highly desirable, but because of the war nations and peoples do not seem to see it that way. Thus in all probability the unusual occasion of the coincidental fourth quarter of 1944 in both calendars will be applied only for studies and research—comparing the same period of 1943 in the Gregorian with that of the proposed World Calendar
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in 1944. And in this manufacturers and retailers have an important role. The resultant facts and figures would be a practical demonstration of the many advantages The World Calendar would exert in our personal, business, national and world affairs. By utilizing the next few years to study and toward obtaining endorsements from prominent organizations and influential leaders, national and international action should be obtained in 1947 (a pre-presidential election year). The two or three years then following would enable everyone to get his house in order for the actual operation of The World Calendar on Sunday, January 1, 1950—when again the two calendars meet.
What time is it? It is time for The World Calendar to get its hearing. A calendar, that is as steady, as ordered and as reliable in measuring the days of the year uniformly as is the clock in measuring the hours of the day, demands attention. Thus The World Calendar becomes the fitting companion piece to the clock, and the two time-systems are worthy instruments to guide our days and years.
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UNIFORMITY WINS OVER VARIETY
By Professor E. R. Gross
College of Agriculture, Rutgers University
THE regular arrival of the Journal of Calendar Reform is an event inasmuch as I enjoy very much reading some of the articles. I also consider it an honor to be enlisted in the good cause of changing the calendar to something regular, orderly and evenly proportioned. Especially does it seem to me to be of great value to have the days of each month find their place in the week and stay there, so that February 2, for instance, would always be Thursday.
I have on my desk a small booklet entitled A 200 Year Calendar. Why should such a thing need to exist? The answer is obvious because of the irregularities and vagaries of the present calendar causing the days of the week and the days of the month to slide by each other in kaleidoscopic fashion. In order to have a complete reference calendar for every year it is necessary to have 14 calendars, one beginning on each day of the week from Sunday to Saturday, seven calendars, and another series of seven for leap years. One of these will fit any year since the last calendar change. But the small volume on my desk is necessary if I wish to correlate the date with the day of the week. For instance, in a few years someone, in thinking of the momentous struggle now going on, will say, “Remember Pearl Harbor” and in an instant he will say, “That was December 7, 1941,” but the fact that it happened on Sunday morning, while significant, can only be determined from memory, from recorded history or from a calendar selected from the 14 varieties we now employ. “Variety is the spice of life,” so they say, but in the use of the calendar I think uniformity has its advantages.
Along with many others I sincerely hope that a change in the calendar to a more balanced form may be made to become effective in 1950.
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PREDATE MAKES COMING
EVENTS CAST THEIR
SHADOWS BEFORE THEM
By Henry Platt, Editor, United Press Predate
Mr. Platt is not only a newspaper man but a patient researcher as well. With a follow-up file system, a “tickler” plan, definitely of his own creation, he sits in the United Press Predate office and tips off newspaper men all over North America about events weeks and months before they are scheduled to take place. Newspapers, radio, news services, advertising agencies and sales organizations are among those whose plans for the future can be more definitely scheduled because Mr. Platt not only reminds them of what happened last year but, what is more important, when that same event —and many others—will take place this year.
TAKE any newspaper, daily or weekly, or any news or picture magazine, and you will find news and features of two sorts: One is the kind of news that “just happens,” known to the journalistic profession as spot news; the other is scheduled news. Press and radio have devised their own methods of preparedness for both'kinds of news. Spot news will “break” any time. But preparation of scheduled news coverage is a matter of calendar work, and much depends on which calendar you work with.
Newsmen have to keep track of many kinds of scheduled events. They do so by means of what they call their “Futures Book”—which in many cases is just a desk calendar, and in others the syndicated futures book published by United Press under the name of Predate. This was established six years ago to keep newsmen posted on the more important scheduled events of news interest.
Such events form a considerable part of the news. A survey of one week’s issues of The New York Times some time before Pearl Harbor showed that news stories on events scheduled ahead filled enough columns to make up the equivalent of a complete weekday issue. Many of these events were “annuals,” occurring more or less at the same time each year.
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There are thousands of annual events in the United States each year, ranging all the way from baby parades to important national observances. One—though by no means the only—reason for the existence of United Press Predate is the necessity to “precover” these events for the benefit of editors and other newsmen.
News coverage being a competitive business, a head start is often essential, sometimes decisive, for press associations, newspapers, news and picture magazines, radio networks and stations, news, feature and photo syndicates, advertising agencies, marketing services, public relations counselors and publicists. Knowing ahead of time where and when an event of interest to their readers or other customers will take place, they are able, for example, to check their day-by-day news coverage; assign feature stories to their writers; prepare commercials for sponsored radio programs which “tie in” with an event of the day; catch oddities on the news front; order or offer action shots of known events and plan for their delivery to meet a magazine deadline; make the so-called predated publications timely; allocate features so they will fall on timely dates; tie promotion campaigns into areas where specific groups congregate, and plan sales, advertising and publicity tie-ups.
So much for the importance of scheduled news to those handling it. More often than not, scheduled news has good “feature angles,” pictorial and sometimes editorial possibilities. Incidentally, newsmen are not the only ones who have to take time by the forelock in order to gain and hold the attention of the public.
Why is the “precoverage” of all this scheduled news such a complicated task ? The answer is simple: Most of them are bouncing around the calendar with the annual cycle of shifting days, weeks and months, forced by its vagaries into a merry-go-round of confusion. As far as the scheduling, coverage and exploitation of annual events is concerned, the present calendar causes no end of waste in their promotion and in fact deprives them of much of their punch.
Six years of editing United Press Predate have left no doubt in my mind that a perpetual calendar would not only relieve newsmen of many headaches but would open up entirely new possibilities of promotion in the fields of travel, commercial, ideological and charitable campaigns, conventions, sports, etc.
For most of the annual events I have in mind, calculation of next year’s date—if there is a “formula” for the date and if this formula is known— requires the type of mind our current income tax forms demand. On the other hand, much of the advance information now painfully compiled in Predate from week to week and from month to month could be brought together in one annual handbook if our calendar were what it is supposed
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to be—a clearly marked path into the future instead of an obstacle race, an open book to anybody instead of a crystal ball.
A few examples of one week’s typical annual events listed—in addition to the frequently more important one-time events—in Predate last January may serve to illustrate the point. The week of January 9—meaning Sunday, January 9, 1944—starts off with the 85th birthday of the grand old lady of the fight for women’s rights, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt—a red-letter day for the National League of Women Voters which she founded. Like everybody else’s birthday, hers has been roving through all the days of the week for 85 years, confronting those anxious to give the day national importance with a different problem from year to year. Monday, January 10, was to mark the opening of the Second Session of the 78th Congress, convening after a three weeks’ holiday for the lawmakers. Under the Constitution, Article XX, “Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the third day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day” . . . which they have done frequently in the past and will no doubt do again and again until The World Calendar will permit a final solution.
Another scheduled news event for January 10 was the official release, at a specified time of the day, of the Agriculture Department’s periodic general crop report. Every year around Christmas, the Department has to publish a new schedule of its regular crop and livestock reports, designed chiefly to take care of the slight variations in dates made necessary by the changing calendar. Needless to say, the mimeographed eight-page schedule, sent to editors “for filing and reference” use, is rarely filed and hardly ever available when the reference is needed.
Also on January 10 came the openings of the important annual conventions of the National Retail Dry Goods Association and the Society of Automotive Engineers, one in New York, the other in Detroit, both productive of considerable news. Obviously, both associations have good reasons to make their meetings start on a Monday, one of them presumably being the possibility for their members to travel on Sunday. Under The World Calendar, Monday, January 9, could become their standard meeting date, facilitating many phases of preparation for the association itself and its members. The same holds true for such trade events as the semi-annual Furniture Market of the New York Furniture Exchange which opened the same day for a six-day run of weekdays.
Leaving the big cities, we find, for example, that also on January 10, the big Roy J. Turner ranch in Oklahoma—one of the state’s show places— holds its annual Hereford auction, known to the experts as a bovine society event for which the purebred beauties are bathed with castile soap and even the hair on their white faces is encouraged to wave. This one is not
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just a cattle auction but a modern barn show drawing some thousand “first nighters,” including big names in the Midwestern financial world and even a couple of governors. But if you want to know beforehand when the auction comes off this year, you will have to have at least a good “string correspondent” on the spot because the calendar ... you know what I mean.
Next day, January 11, being the second Tuesday in January, the legislatures of New Jersey and South Carolina were to convene. All states in the Union have such formulas, or more complicated ones like the Wednesday after the second Monday. There is nothing wrong with them except that their meaning, in terms of actual dates, changes from year to year, and that the key to the problem, in the form of next year’s calendar, is never around when you need it, and the formula itself available only to research experts who know where to ask for it. (The Council of State Governments, if you ask me.) Similar confusion appears two days later, January 13, which was an important date for newsmen to watch because it was Mr. Willkie’s first opportunity to file his formal entry as candidate in a Presidential primary this year. To figure out that January 13 was his first and February 12 his last chance to file for the New Hampshire contest, one had to refer to the latest edition of an erudite booklet “printed for the use of the Office of the Secretary of the Senate” and making it entirely clear that in New Hampshire the candidate may file 60 to 30 days before the primary, and that the date of the primary election itself was the second Tuesday in March.
Even frivolity now has to work with such formulas. January 13, 1944, being the second Thursday in January this year, the Union Society for the Detection of Horse Thieves and the Recovery of Stolen Property scheduled its annual chase and mock hanging of a prominent “horse thief” for that day. The affair, which has a tradition of 132 years, and in fact was a serious undertaking at a time when horse stealing ranked next to murder in seriousness of crime, was finally called off this year but has in the past been an excellent “feature possibility” for writers and photographers— unless they missed it because of the lack of a fixed date or failure to consult Predate.
On the welfare front, the next day marked the official start of the annual fund-raising appeal of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis which annually reaches its climax on the President’s birthday, January 30—another date which, floating around the calendar, causes considerable difficulties in scheduling and promoting the annual birthday balls in different localities. The same is true for such promotions as the “Junior Chamber of Commerce Week” and the annual “Large-Size Promotion” in chain drugstores, both beginning January 14 this year but not in 1945.
This one week’s examples, selected at random, suffice to throw light
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on the current scene of scheduled news. The picture is one of confusion and waste. One special promotion week has ten days, another five. Conventions are forever shifting their dates within a usually narrow range to make their schedule fit the vacation or other plans of the members which in turn are fluctuating eternally with the calendar. The important problem of how to avoid scheduling of conflicting dates has to be done all over from year to year. Annual sports events, for which the schedule is all-important, hop on and off the bandwagon of the latest calendar human ingenuity was able to devise and agree upon. The famous Laredo, New Mexico, celebration of Washington’s birthday—a three-day week-end affair which under The World Calendar could always begin on Sunday, February 19—is typical of hundreds of similar events now engaged in a hopeless pursuit of the “nearest Sunday.”
What would this picture look like if we had The World Calendar? In the first place, the schedule maker’s job could be done once and for all. Undreamed-of possibilities would open up for the promoter of annual events. Almanacs could finally shake off the dust of a largely retrospective attitude; they might include any number of annual events. Desk and wall calendars could be similarly brought to life. Promotional calendars for various fields could for the first time be safely prepared a year ahead of time, and their users would no longer be surprised by annual events popping up at the last moment, too late for adequate preparation. Predate itself could at last eliminate the deadweight of such information, limiting its current issues to spot news and new angles on standard events, for the rest referring to a basic handbook covering the whole year.
Symmetry, one might object, leads to uniformity which causes boredom. The answer is that annual events are not based on the surprise factor. The fact of their occurrence does not now become more interesting because identification involves a “guess when” game. An annual convention as such is news only in the relatively few cases where it has established a reputation for newsworthiness, such as the annual meetings of the National Association of Manufacturers or the American Medical Association. Generally, the spot news developed through the proverbial “headline speaker” or the subjects covered and new developments disclosed are the core of the resulting publicity. The annual football bowl classics do not lose in interest because everybody knows where and when they are played. In other words, standard events that fail to develop spontaneous news will drop by the wayside, as far as their actual coverage by press, radio and newsreel is concerned, regardless of how difficult or easy it may be to make their happening known.
Streamlined presentation of the basic date material would help not only those anxious to promote their events. Largely as a result of the
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unpredictability of our calendar, there is now going on a hide-and-seek game between editors and promoters, the former seeking newspegs and the latter outlets. The World Calendar would arrange the standard newspegs for the first time so that they cease to be a field of booby traps and become solid hitching posts. Predate, incidentally, has often served as a mediator between these two groups, causing hundreds of feature articles, editorials, and radio program features on which, without this bridge across the gap of the future, the twain would never have met.
In this respect, editorial and advertising deadlines are extremely important. And the problem is complicated by the fact that too many publicists still think of their work in terms of dailies only, missing important chances with weekly and monthly magazines whose deadlines range as far as four months ahead of time, and in turn depriving these magazines of sometimes valuable newspegs. Finally, at the “spending end,” advertisers and their agencies, as well as those selling space or time, would benefit tremendously from definite advance knowledge of the annual events in certain fields.
Today, private, individual “presearch” has to take the place of an orderly calendar. Such presearch is complicated and expensive—needlessly so as far as annual events are concerned. For the newsman, it is a permanent headache which United Press Predate can relieve but not cure since inclusion of the innumerable annual events of purely local significance would defeat the purpose of this national advance news service.
The basic remedy is The World Calendar.
DR. HERBERT L. WILLETT DIES AT 79
DR. HERBERT L. WILLETT, one of the nation’s outstanding figures in the fields of religion and education, died at Winter Park, Florida, March 28, 1944. He was 79 years of age.
Dr. Willett was a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago for many years, and from 1916 to 1920 was president of the Chicago Church Federation. From 1920 to 1925 Dr. Willett was the Chicago representative of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America and later served as chairman of its Midwest committee.
His scholarship was recognized beyond the bounds of Protestantism. Jewish scholars sought his counsel as a noted Talmudist. At a dinner given in his honor a decade ago at the Covenant Club, he was affectionately introduced as “an honorary rabbi, whose knowledge of our people, their language and traditions matches our ablest teachers.” Like the late Dr. William Adams Brown, he was an ardent advocate of a fixed Easter on the second Sunday in April.
Until only a few months prior to his death, Dr. Willett had been the pastor of the Union Church in Kenilworth, Illinois. Both in his capacity as a minister and as an educator, and as an associate editor of The Christian Century he contributed greatly to the work of The World Calendar Association.
He was the author of innumerable books—among them Life and Teachings of Jesus, Basic Truths of the Christian Faith, Prophets of Israel, The Call of the Christ, The Bible Through the Centuries and The Jew Through the Centuries.
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WORLD CALENDAR
ADVOCATES URGE
ADOPTION
By Vincent Johnson
From Pittsburgh, Pa., Post-Gazette, September 25, 1943
“Thirty days hath September” . . ,
Still it does, but this remember:
Eight months have them, in perfect order,
But thirty-one days start every quarter,
December gets an extra Saturday—
While “JF” ends the year that way.
Leap Years have an added boon,
An extra “W” that comes in June.
THE old verse relating the lengths of the months—familiar alike to vacation-minded schoolboys and to inventory-minded business men— will have to be revised into couplets like the above if The World Calendar Association gets it way.
The Association favors adoption of The World Calendar as an improvement over the Gregorian, which most of the world has been using ever since 1582 and which reformers have been abusing ever since the new calendar was devised.
Retaining all the progressive features of the Gregorian calendar, the new system at the same time would eliminate existing absurdities, inconveniences and unbalance, its advocates maintain.
Lengths of the familiar 12 months are rearranged in The World Calendar so as to equalize the quarters of the year into 91-day periods. Instead of 365 days there are 364 and a Year-End Day designated as December W (December 31).
Since 91 days cannot be divided among three months equally, the first month of each quarter is given 31 days. This gives January, April, July and October 31 days each and the rest 30.
Every year and every quarter begins on the same day, Sunday, the
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first day of the week. Consequently the same day of the month comes on the same day of the week every year. This will be a source of infinite relief to the traditional witness in the crime melodrama who is asked by the prosecutor where he was 11 years ago on the night of January 19.
The last day of the year—December W—is designated as a World Holiday by all countries adopting the new calendar. The theory is that on that day the calendar takes a holiday, so the people who reckon by it might just as well take one, too.
Leap year is provided for by adding an extra day after June 30, to be known as June W.
Christmas, universally recognized as a holiday December 25, always comes on Monday in The World Calendar.
Religious and secular holidays are to be fixed by their respective groups. There would be a special meeting of all churches to agree upon a fixed Easter, the date now suggested being Sunday, April 8.
Like Federal Union and other movements, The World Calendar depends on international cooperation to achieve its purpose. Fourteen governments already have officially approved the calendar. They include: Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, China, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Norway, Panama, Peru, Spain, Turkey and Uruguay.
Several global organizations, like the Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire and the Universal Christian Council, are sponsoring it internationally. In the United States it has won the approval of the National Education Association and Chambers of Commerce, including that of Pittsburgh which earlier this month sent a report on its advocacy to the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Two large industries, motion pictures and radio, already have adopted a quarter-year of exactly 13 weeks in a 12-month calendar as a basis for contracts, reports and calculations. If other firms were to do this, beginning their quarterly divisions on the first Sunday of January, April, July and October and regarding the 365th day separately, the transition to a new calendar would be accomplished without friction, World Calendarites claim.
The World Calendar is expected to lend harmony, order, stability and balance to the computation of production, pay rolls, deliveries, purchases and to relieve that annual headache, the inventory.
Labor would benefit by the elimination of pay-roll inconveniences and irregularities occasioned by the present calendar.
The farmer—whether his crop is milk, livestock or grain—will find his work easier and his profits greater when and if The World Calendar is adopted, according to Professor E. R. Gross, of the department of agri-
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cultural engineering at Rutgers University. Professor Gross has this to say:
“Whether it is the planting of a crop, its cultivation or its harvesting; whether it is the purchase, the feeding or the sale of livestock; and even though the day’s routine may be as methodical and constant as that of the average dairy farmer, the days, dates and periods of the year must be readily comparable with the periods of previous years.
“With one month having five Sundays and four Saturdays last year and with the situation reversed this year, and with days and dates constantly changing, comparison is difficult if not impossible. Planning takes extra time and time on the farm today is more than money.”
The rule of thumb in retail merchandising is the provocative phrase, “Beat last year’s figures.” To a large extent, the success or failure of every season, every regularly scheduled sale and every single day is measured by a comparison with the corresponding figures of the previous year.
Trend in “figures” is just as important to the retailer as the trend in the fashions that clothe them.
The World Calendar, with every year, quarter, month, week and holiday the same, enables the retailer to set up a standard for planning the week’s merchandising.
Educators favor some form of world calendar which will balance and stabilize school schedules.
Final appeal of The World Calendar is to the housewife, who is scrimping these days not only to save money but ration points as well. Well-ordered calendars, advocates of the system believe, make for well-ordered meals.
Children may have some difficulty changing over from their old nursery rhyme—
“Thirty days hath September, April, June and November ...”
That verse neatly covers the idiosyncracies of the old calendar. But there’s always the chance that some day it will be replaced—by a verse explaining the advantages of the new.

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TOMORROW’S
CALENDAR?
By Curt B. Beck, Editor-in-Chief, The Tech Engineering News, Professional Journal of the Undergraduates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 1943 (Abridged)
THIS is the day and time that everyone is thinking about far-reaching improvements of our living conditions. Postwar planning worked out to the most minute detail, in fact, a complete social and economic revolution is staring us in the face—the proposal and adoption of highly idealistic governmental policies confronts us on all sides and we are assured again and again that, comes the peace, we will never again see the world we were used to back in the twenties and thirties. Along with all of the postwar panaceas comes a suggestion which has struck the editors of Tech Engineering News as being worthy of much more credit than it has yet received. This is The World Calendar reform plan, also known as the 12-month equal-quarter plan, which, if adopted, we think will contribute as much to human comfort and orderly living as any other single postwar proposal. But this is not an editorial, so let us investigate the facts of the matter, for this sensational idea has as its basis good common sense backed by a long-needed reform in our method of counting the days.
It was primitive man who made the first contribution towards regimenting our daily actions when he divided the day into 24 hours. The Babylonians divided the hour into 60 minutes and the minutes into 60 seconds. The 12 moon cycles of 29^2 days each soon gave rise to the concept of integrating the four seasons into a year, and Julius Caesar was the first one to do anything concrete in this respect. He found the mean solar year to be 364*4 days and thus originated the first of the modern calendars, the Julian calendar. Leap year was of course necessary every fourth year to keep the balance. The Julian year was inaccurate itself and missed being a true year by 11 minutes and 14 seconds, or one day in 128 years, an error which amounted to 10 days by the time of Pope Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century. After five years’ investigation of the problem, Pope Gregory established the modern or Gregorian calendar, skipping 10 days and eliminating leap year in all centenary years except those divisible by 400 to correct the mistake. Modern astronomy has found that the solar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46.15 seconds, and it has been proposed
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that the year 4000 and all its multiples not be leap year to make the final correction.
An interesting fact about the English adoption of the Gregorian calendar (some years after the Catholic countries had adopted it by papal edict) was the fact that the 11 days between September 2 and September 14, 1752, were skipped. Even then labor unions were active, and the guild leaders were greatly set back when their demand for pay for the missing 11 days was refused. Among other changes brought about by this step-up of time, Washington’s birthday was moved from February 11 (the actual date) to February 22 (the date by the Gregorian calendar).
The faults of the Gregorian calendar are obvious and numerous. The main|objection to it is its complete lack of organization and its incongruity. One can never tell the number of days in a month, the date a certain day will fall on, or the day a holiday will fall on without a complicated recital of Elizabethan rhymes, counting on the fingers, or consultation of a calendar. Every year is different from every other year, and holidays hop from day to day in different years like a grasshopper. In this day of precise measurements, planned time, and the eternal struggle for maximum efficiency, this old calendar appears to have no place.
Of the two feasible plans which have yet been offered to reform the calendar, The World Calendar is by far the most satisfactory. (George Eastman’s 13-month 52-week year idea has recently been dropped as impractical.) The World Calendar is simplicity itself. Contrary to the Eastman calendar, The World Calendar has only 12 months with the same names as they had before. The year is divided into four quarters, each containing three months of 31, 30, and 30 days respectively. Each of these quarters is of equal length, 91 days, and begins on a Sunday and ends on Saturday. An extra Saturday is thrown in after December 30 to make 365 days. Another extra Saturday is included in leap year, occurring after June 30. Both days are holidays. Every year is the same as every other year in all respects, since every date always occurs on the same day of the month any year.
The high point of The World Calendar is, of course, that it offers a solution to nearly all of the bad points of the Gregorian. Its main virtue is its simplicity, but it also offers ease of adoption combined with only a modicum of changes of the position of the days in our old system.
The group profiting the most by this arrangement will be the business men. These men suffer the most of any occupation from the vagaries of our method of indicating our position in the solar orbit. With every day of every month the same over a period of years, it would greatly simplify planning for future sales, something which merchants have to leave to judgment and chance at present. No longer would the business man have
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to compare a five-Saturday September (as in 1944) with a four-Saturday September (as in 1943) and be required to judge sales by such a comparison. Moreover, with holidays stabilized as proposed in the plan, unevenness of demand will be largely done away with, as in the case of Easter. Easter, which can vary anywhere from March 22 to April 25 (thanks to a decree of the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.) could be fixed as April 8, historians’ most recent approximation to the exact anniversary of the Resurrection. Thus the post-Easter postponement of purchasing would always come after the eighth of April and not anywhere between the twenty-second of March and the twenty-fifth of April. For the necessary stocks of merchandise, for example perishable foods, could be more easily estimated if the merchant could compare any date with a date corresponding exactly in previous years.
The small business man is by far not the only one who would benefit by calendar reform. With all days the same, holidays can be put either on a Monday or a Friday, thus incorporating them into the week-end, and avoiding costly midweek shutdowns. Another important improvement is the four quarters into which the year would be divided, which will greatly simplify the methods of accounting.
The government and the law profession will also benefit by the new plan. The data upon which all the wartime (and after war, peacetime) agencies base their policies would be easily comparable to former years’ figures, thus rendering the formulation of future decisions much simpler. The obvious benefit to those concerned with laws, contracts, legal dates, etc., scarcely need be mentioned. The division of the year into unequal quarters has long been a thorn in the side of all those engaged in any legislative or legal activities. Summing up, the legal profession is one of which the very nature depends upon accuracy, conciseness, and an absolute maximum of coordination and efficiency, all of which the well-ordered World Calendar would provide.
In the world of finance the same benefits apply as do to law. The equalquarter modification is especially attractive, since it will equalize the period of loans, usually computed upon a quarterly basis. As in the case of statisticians, the use of graphs would be greatly simplified and the graphs themselves would be much more significant, since every month is comparable with the corresponding month of any other year.
One of the most delicate issues of calendar reform concerns religion. A few changes in the exact relation of religious dates to dates in the Gregorian system would have to be tolerated, but these should be inconsequential. The World Calendar changes only six days or dates in the present calendar year of 365 days. They fall between February 28 and September 1. The six months from September 1 to February 28 continue as today. The thirty-
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first of December, regarded as the double or extra Saturday, becomes the permanent World Holiday (Year-End Day). Notwithstanding, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church, and independent rabbis and priests of the Jewish and Catholic Churches have given their approval.
Of most interest to readers of T.E.N., the 12-month equal-quarter plan has the unanimous approval of scientists. For, as a result of actual consideration by international commissions and scientific bodies, science has shown overwhelming favor for this plan. Professor Harlan T. Stetson, in charge of the Cosmic Terrestrial Research Laboratory here at M.I.T., is one of the many scientists who have endorsed the plan and who believe actively in it. Professor Stetson was Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science when this body passed unanimously a resolution for the adoption of the 12-month equal-quarter calendar (The World Calendar). President Compton of the Institute was also President of the A.A.A.S. at the time. Beside the approval of the A.A.A.S., this plan has been approved by a committee of international scientists and several American scientific and technical societies.
The only hindrances at present to the adoption of the 12-month equalquarter plan is the general feeling of apathy to such a change which world powers like Great Britain and the United States bear. Fourteen other countries, including China, Norway, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, and Brazil, have signified their endorsement of The World Calendar idea. But it is still up to one of the larger world powers to start the ball rolling. Calendar reform has many disciples in high places (such as Mohandas Gandhi, who said that anything that might help to unify the Indians would have his support) and The World Calendar plan has so far been the most acceptable one yet drawn up. Once the apathy to change and the conservatism so prevalent before the war are broken down this plan may be accepted. It is a certainty that such a change is a necessity, for our old calendar has proven itself unsatisfactory for many centuries. The Editors of Tech Engineering News would like to go on record officially for The World Calendar plan as put forth in this article, for we believe it to be a necessity for the better world towards which mankind is eternally striving.

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NEED COMMON DENOMINATOR
TO WELD THE PEOPLES
OF THE WORLD
By Emerson Brewer, Director of The World Calendar Association
SURGES of selfishness are evident throughout the whole world. Detroit
। had its race riots. Harlem had its day of vandalism. In a quiet resort in the Quebec foothills, Canada’s red-coated police guarded highways, hotels and homes against anti-Semitic mobs. Jews and Arabs, Moslems and Hindus bicker and plot. Faction is pitted against faction in the camps of the enemies. Allied leaders ponder the after-war policies of their collaborators.
In a world where millions of men, billions of dollars and the entire natural resources of nations have been pledged to thwart bigotry, intolerance and ignorance, there still burns an underlying passion of ill will and suspicion—kept alive, nurtured and given impetus by selfish purposes. Before the dust of battle has settled, nations squabble and statesmen worry about territorial domination, about after-the-war divisions and about the immediate problems of who will be fitted for the toga of command and who will wear the crown of thorns.
It is tragically ironical in the greatest, the most savage and the most ruthless war the world has ever seen—fought for the avowed purpose of ridding civilization of the cankers which would eventually bring it to decay—that matters like these should be permitted to sidetrack the real objectives of this gigantic struggle.
The foremost objectives are the winning of the war; the eradication of those things which have brought the world to this state of selfishness, greed and lust for power; and the culture of a new civilization based on good will and cooperation with one’s fellow man. There is also an urgent need for an appreciation of national and personal problems, and a clearer realization of the economic problems that face each of the world’s various peoples. Only by the godly adherence to the teachings of Christ and ethical laws, and by the practical application of honest common sense, can this be achieved. It is by these precepts that the world can live again, and by plans based on these principles that free people can once more be free.
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The Four Freedoms, interpreted as they may be by various schools of thought, can only become the way of life for millions and millions of people if leaders of the victors and leaders of the vanquished dip into memory’s bitter reservoir and begin to plan for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, irrespective of national or racial prejudices; a plan based solely on the common fellowship of man. The changes in war machines, the changes and innovations in this global war presage changes and adjustments in all international and national relationships. Gone are the days when men and rulers rise to power and wealth using the bodies or the minds or the misfortunes of less fortunate people as their ladder to dominance.
There are people who fail to recognize this change. There are others who have seen its light on the horizon for more than a decade, yet who nevertheless continue to combat its coming, willfully hiding their heads in the sand and refusing to acknowledge the imminent transition. Then there are those, more farsighted than their brothers, who have long seen the approaching change, yet seek only to temporize.
It is the consensus of opinion that this change rides toward us like a tidal wave—direct, steady, powerful, inevitable. Economists, statesmen, educators, sociologists, rich and poor, all agree that change is inevitable. It appears that the purposeful and victorious route to follow would be the acceptance of this theory. Then, having accepted this as a fact, to plan for the long haul; not for the moment, but for the civil, social and political world as it should be tomorrow and for years to come.
This will mean reorganizing our diplomatic thinking and our personal and political planning on a new basis, on a basis of the common good and selflessness. If the citizens of this nation or of other nations may wish to regard this new global objective in terms and conception less Biblical, they can think of such a long-range plan in the terms of good, old-fashioned common sense. Either precept will lead to the same conclusion and pay the same powerful, valuable and necessary dividend. This dividend or international bonus will be freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from greed, and freedom from selfish, exploiting neighbors, nations and governments.
This principle is world shaking in its contemplation. It is almost like asking the leopard to change its spots; because too many nations in the past world history have risen to power and wealth by the application of the rule of force. The result has usually been eventual national, political and economic bankruptcy; and in their achieving momentary success and power millions of people have had to suffer. Millions of people have died in ignorance, squalor and want.
From these dead, sacrificed on the altar of political, national and mili
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tary ambitions, has arisen an antagonism that eventually reacts on the perpetrators of these inhuman practices. But in its doing and in its accomplishment, people have suffered and died while others have lived in despair and hopeless disillusionment.
But what is the answer to this problem? Upon the solution of this depends the future happiness and welfare of millions of people now smarting under the whip of dictators, poverty, ignorance and starvation. The solution, if it is to be a real solution and not a mere palliative, should be based on justice and equity.
We can defeat the dictators as1 they rise. We are strong enough in guns and planes and tanks. But, if we do not understand what made them and are not prepared to remove the causes that made them, then by merely destroying these individuals—these dictators—we have failed. On every side we hear: “Destroy the Fascists and the Nazis and the problem is solved.” To follow this, and follow this alone, would lead to inevitable failure and defeat in principle if not in fact, even though the battlefields of Europe will have raised many decades of crops.
We do not know all the complex causes that bring these men to power. But we do know this. In a military way this war is being won by factories and production and manpower; but production and factories and manpower alone cannot win the peace. It is not enough to cure the epidermal rash: we must seek deeper, destroy or cure the malignancy which brought about this eruption throughout the surface of the world. In seeking the fundamental causes, in our various experimentation it is primary that we should first establish those things which are common to all.
It is a problem involving many millions. The basis of the solution depends largely on the uncovering of a common denominator. Facts, products, thoughts and hopes, all must be discovered, which will affect us all in practically the same way, and thus bring about greater mutual understanding.
As we study history, as we look through tables of statistics, as we search libraries and interview statesmen, martial leaders, and administrative executives, business men, homemakers and welfare workers, there is found one thing that is common to all peoples and conditions. That one thing is Time.
Time, as regulated by the clock, is world wide in its general acceptance and in its ordered, equitable and steadfast arrangement has won worldwide application. Time as regulated by the calendar differs throughout the world. There are peoples, primarily living in Asia, who still reckon by a moon-sun calendar and this differs in detail whether used in India, China, or Malaysia, while, of course, religious calendars with their different feast-days are most variable. Adoption then of a civil calendar for the
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world, a calendar that is universal in its adaptation and in its cultural and utilitarian use, is an acceptable common denominator for which the world is searching.
The Gregorian civil calendar, upon which we depend so definitely and which is in practical use among the governments of the world and all international affairs, is one of the most outmoded and unsatisfactory of systems. The new civil calendar, The World Calendar, is a common and world denominator of counting days, weeks, months and years. These give us the one time-language, the one peg upon which can be hung international understanding, international thought and international cooperation. The brown man of the Indies, the black man of Africa, the yellow man of China, the Polynesian, the Javanese, and the white man of Europe and the Americas, have in The World Calendar a common system of time. Here is established, too, universal days upon which all can meet. Here can well be the start to a general understanding of problems facing men of all colors and creeds, men faced with problems peculiarly their own, or those of their immediate neighbors. It would be a real first step toward uniting all nations for all time, in the realm of time.
In this new common denominator, the civil World Calendar, in its arrangement of equal-quarter divisions, there is unfolded to us a real understanding of equity and justice. In the comparable 91 days or 13 weeks or 3 months within the quarter-year divisions, there is found perfect order and agreement; and with the new Year-End Day and the new Leap-Year Day, there are secured not only the scientific accuracy and the stability of the calendar, but these World Holidays, universally observed, also offer a time indicator that unites all men and nations and races as one.
The world is in a dire emergency. Political and diplomatic problems are so vast that they seem almost unsolvable to our finite minds, and it will take many years to find the solutions. But the new civil World Calendar is knocking at the door. Close the door and years must pass before another opportunity offers itself.
The adoption of this common denominator of time is the sesame that may well open the door toward solving other problems confronting the nations of the world. A beginning will have been made and a possibility offered which should not be taken lightly, ignored, or thrown aside as not worth our consideration now—today.

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IN TIME OF WAR
PREPARE FOR PEACE
By Ernest Camp, Jr.
Mr. Camp is a graduate of the University of Georgia. Being the son of a country newspaper publisher, he went to work, at graduation, for the Associated Press in Atlanta. But the cadence wasn’t fast enough and he came to New York where, since that time, he has made his home. Advertising agencies and manufacturing organizations had been his background until he landed as assistant advertising director at Seagram Distillers. In between, Mr. Camp has found time for a great amount of writing on subjects ranging from a syndicated newspaper “column” to serious studies in social psychology, philosophy and politics. In recent years his leisure time has been devoted chiefly to reading and writing on the problems of the peace.
TO the multitudes of individuals and agencies now engaged in postwar planning it daily becomes more apparent that, while waging this global war is difficult, waging the peace may be more so.
Some hint of the magnitude of the task is conveyed in the following words of Bernard M. Baruch, who, with John M. Hancock, heads the Advisory Unit for War and Postwar Adjustment Policies:
“Victory is our first and only duty, but just as we prepare for war in time of peace, so we should prepare for peace ins time of war. Through preparation we visualize prosperity that is sound and lasting. We see not merely civilian needs crying to be filled but a world requiring the things we can supply. The frame of our operation shows the gigantic nature of the change-over. It affects every part of our economic life. Nothing comparable ever has been known before. ... It is an easier task to convert from peace to war than from war to peace.”
Clearly, the years ahead constitute an era that cries out for—and belongs to—daring, open and imaginative minds. Minds with something of the quality of pioneer enterprise that sent Columbus questing westward for new and unimagined worlds; the same spirit of high-hearted and resourceful experiment which, in a later age, conquered a wilderness and founded the democratic dream on the North American continent.
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In the postwar planning now going on around us, there is abundant evidence that here in America we do have such minds—many of them— already busy grappling with the manifold complexities of the world to come. To judge from the progress made to date, we have by now left far behind that mood of cynical defeatism which was a natural by-product of our isolationist infancy as a great world power.
A careful examination of the plans already published reveals a surprising amount of agreement as to basic objectives. Despite superficial differences as to detail, there is a degree of open-mindedness and candor which shows how far we have come in the years since Pearl Harbor. It shows itself in a willingness to re-examine the entire structure of an obsolete world order, including grave errors at home and abroad, with considerable honest humility. Heaven knows, it’s about time I
Someone has said that the true “fifth columnist” today is the defeatist, the person who sells the future short. We of the living generation must believe in the future. Believing in it, we can do no less than go to work building it with all the strength that is in us. The duty falls with all the more force upon those of us who, for reasons beyond our control, remain at home while sons and brothers carry the torch of humanity on the fighting fronts.
If there is any single point on which almost all of our planners are agreed, it is the total nature of the present war and the necessity for total participation by the masses of the people everywhere in the shaping of the principles on which we shall build the peace. A people’s war, it is agreed, must issue in a people’s peace. And it is generally agreed that the time to think out its principles—if we are to heed the lesson of World War I—is not after the cessation of fighting, but now.
As Mr. Willkie well said in 1942: “After the last war the peace failed because no joint objectives upon which it could be based had been arrived at in the minds of the people. The League of Nations had been created full-blown; and men and women, having developed no joint purpose except to defeat a common enemy, fell into capricious and irrelevant arguments about its structural form. . . . Agreement in detail is not necessary, or even desirable. But unless we are to repeat the unhappy history of the first World War, agreement in principle must be won. Moreover, it must exist not just among the leaders of the Allies. The basic agreement I am thinking of must be established among the Allied people themselves. We must make sure that these peoples are fighting for essentially the same thing.”
With this thinking I am heartily in accord. As a writer and advertising man who has made a career of influencing public opinion, I could
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“think no other.” I have a healthy respect for the magnitude of the task involved in changing the opinion of a single state. A large city, even. It needs little imagination to visualize how broad must be the base of public acceptance if this people’s war really is to issue in a people’s peace freely accepted by ordinary people everywhere.
If that foundation is to be well laid, what we shall need is a rebirth of popular self-government—local, state, national and world—such as this planet has never seen. On the local plane, we need to revert, literally, to the stage of politics represented by the “town meeting” of New England’s early days. I am happy, by the way, to see this fine old custom taking root again in various parts of the country.
The trend deserves encouragement. Properly nurtured, it can give rise, I believe, to a new and healthy growth of democracy—a new growth of genuine cooperative accomplishment, a fertile new identity of interests and ideals. Obviously, this would be the most productive field possible for purposeful social planning.
At every stage of our planning, any proposal or device, however homely it may seem beside the high-sounding phrases of global strategy and geopolitics, if it holds any hope of substantial contribution to this democracy of ideas, should be brought forth and discussed.
In fact, it is my profound belief that the only sure foundation for agreement on great principles is the experience of cooperation gained through the joint solution of common, everyday problems that intimately touch the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen; problems that they can understand.
Surely, a logical starting point in any design for a more unified world order might well be some widespread popular need on which there is well-nigh universal agreement, and the benefits of which would be universal, extending to every one of the two billions of individuals inhabiting the troubled earth. It seems to me that the stable World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters holds unique possibilities here, as a sturdy and enduring foundation stone in that edifice built by many hands—a people’s peace.
In the kind of postwar world now shaping up, The World Calendar could have a logical, indeed a central, place. If there is any one idea which dominates our planning, it is that conveyed in the single word, production. Not just production for production’s sake, but production for a new world of plenty. Everywhere today there is growing recognition of a fact which looms gigantic over the modern world:
For the first time in history, there is now enough potential wealth to provide an improved average level of well-being for the common man the
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world over; now, for the first time, it is possible to achieve a dynamic, expanding world economy—a true economy of abundance—with a constantly growing production and improved distribution of better goods.
As a hard-headed business man, however, I insist that the attainment of this eminently realistic and reasonable ideal will call for a degree of efficiency in the utilization of the earth’s resources such as few of us, outside the cloisters of pure science, have ever dreamed. Waste of any kind will be recognized for what it always has been—not a badge of distinction but a social crime.
We who have grown up amid the most prodigal excesses of waste will need to acquire a sharp and vigilant new emphasis upon the adaptation of social means to social ends. It is only within the comparatively recent past, for example, that we have become conscious of the necessity for conserving our natural resources—our timber, water power and arable land. Of more recent years we have begun to recognize the even more acute need for conserving the greatest asset of all—our human resources.
Now what has all this to do with The World Calendar? Just this: basic in any attempt to achieve a more efficient and better use of our human and material resources should be a due regard for the conservation of time, the very stuff of life. Here we collide head-on with one of the most wasteful customs of an otherwise relatively efficient machine age, the archaic and antiquated calendar wherewith we reckon time in irregular months and wandering weeks and changeable days.
The present Gregorian calendar represents a daily, egregious and remediable form of waste, one whose effects are all too often overlooked precisely because they are so all-pervasive, ubiquitous as air. But it is not as inevitable as air, and a new-world mentality impatient of ancient wastes, ancient divisions, ancient wrongs and follies would do well to deal summarily with it, grateful that such a seemingly durable relic of an outmoded past could be dispatched so easily.
When a scientist enters his laboratory to conduct an experiment in chemistry or physics, practically the first thing he does is to set in order the yardsticks which measure the natural phenomena with which he deals: clocks, thermometers, barometers, scales, galvanometers, calipers.
I submit that the architects of tomorrow’s Better Way might well begin likewise, by calling for the discard of our outmoded calendar and for the adoption of The World Calendar instead, which sets to order the months, weeks and days, correlating these in uniform quarter-year divisions.
How truly it has been remarked: time-marking is time-making!
Such a change would improve the daily lot of mankind the world over.
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But in another, equally real if less tangible sphere, it would exert an even more far-reaching influence.
I refer to the symbolic effect which its general adoption would exert over diverse peoples everywhere, tending toward a fundamentally changed world outlook. To millions it would be the dramatic herald of a new and better world. It would underscore the break with an unhappy past—a past which in one generation produced the two most devastating wars and the greatest depression in history. The slogan, “A New Calendar for a New World,” would realize the full potential of its tremendous promise.
Even more potent symbolically would be the practical object lesson in international cooperation. Arguing from the nursery principle that we crawl before we walk, it would be an admirable vantage point from which to survey other and more urgent grounds of mutual interest.
I believe that Elisabeth Achelis, President of The World Calendar Association, is correct in her often-stated belief that one unique feature of this calendar alone—its one, and occasionally two, World Holidays— would be bound to exert a unifying influence on all nations.
Viewed in either its practical or its symbolic aspect, I cannot see how such concerted action in answer to a common need could fail to be an incalculable force for world amity and order.
Standard time (to which The World Calendar seems the natural complement required only six years for its adoption, from the date it was first proposed to the time it became international in use.
The sensible modern innovation of Daylight Saving Time was first proposed in England in 1907 and adopted nine years later—a product of the exigencies of war.
In contrast with this practical promptitude, note our long-suffering loyalty to the Gregorian calendar: 362 years.
Again the exigencies of war urge a reform already long overdue in time of peace. The need was never greater, the opportunity for a smooth change-over never better. Here is one plank that belongs in every postwar plan.

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CURRENT PRESS COMMENT
One Free Day
London Sunday Tinies
March 19, 1944
THE eighteenth century was the classical century of the highwaymen, but its most romantic theft was perpetrated by Parliament in 1752, when, as every schoolboy knows, unhappy people marched angrily about shouting, “Give us back our 11 days.” For 11 days, no mean space of mortal life, were kangarooed to bring us into step with the Europe of the Gregorian calendar.
Governments move slowly and Treasuries refund reluctantly, but there does now seem to be a chance of repayment by instalments. We shall get our days back, one at a time and one a year, if the calendar reform proposals Rear-Admiral Beamish has aired in Parliament go through. The particular beauty of his plan is that every year there will be an extra free day which will not be a regimented day with a number and a unit, not attached to any particular week or month, but a really free day, outside the legal and any other calendar. As the burden of the fixed obligations and duties of life in a modern community are elaborated, the need for a breather becomes ever more marked; and the new health centres will teach men and women to make the most of the glorious freedom of the day outside the calendar. No questions must be asked in Courts of Law how the free day is spent.
Praises New
Calendar Plan
Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Union and Republican
April 2, 1944
ELISABETH ACHELIS is a New York woman who has for many years devoted all her energies to promoting a universal calendar. In The Calendar for Everybody (Putnam’s; $1.50) she pleads
the usefulness of the new civil calendar to men and women in all walks of life. Her arguments are presented in a thoroughly logical and persuasive manner which deserves a considered reading on the part of the public.
Improved Calendar
Mason City (la.) Globe-Gazette
June 2, 1943
I HAVE always felt that just about the most potent argument for calendar reform is the confusion which occurs annually in connection with our holidays. The Memorial Day just past is a case in point.
Some communities observed it on Saturday, others on Sunday and still others —probably the largest number—on Monday. Nobody seemed to be quite clear on just when the observance should be.
Under The World Calendar plan—with 12 month of 26 weekdays each month and equal quarters—Memorial Day, May 30, would always fall on Thursday. Christmas would always fall on Monday.
This proposal has won the approval of many business, educational and scientific groups. They see in this orderly rearrangement of the present calendar many advantages, not the least of which would be complete comparability, with each day, week and month remaining the same year after year.
“The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters is the best answer I have seen to our business comparison problem,” observes F. R. Atcheson, comptroller of one of Chicago’s largest retail stores.
With a calendar that “stays put,” a merchant could plan with certainty and buy merchandise without need for “taking long chances,” he added.
The time is at hand, it seems to me, when another improvement should be made. I’ve never heard a good reason suggested for not doing so.
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EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS
The Clubhouse
By CHIP ROYAL
Syndicated Feature of the Sports Department of the Associated Press, May, 1944
DAN FERRIS, the Amateur Athletic Union’s rotund secretary, has added a lot of lines to his cherubic face in the 37 years he has been with the sports organization.
There have been so many worries that Dan can’t remember them all. But he hopes to get rid of one of the biggest—the dates for scheduling games—as soon as Emerson Brewer can get The World Calendar approved by the powers that be. Brewer is Director of The World Calendar Association, an educational group which proposes to divide the year into four equal quarters each, made up of three months of 31 days, 30 days and 30 days. That adds up to 364 days a year. The extra day would be known as December W, a yearend holiday.
Dan’s hope for eliminating one of his many troubles came about recently when Gustavus T. Kirby, an Amateur Athletic Union director, headed a committee proposing that the directors go on record as favoring The World Calendar.
The new calendar would benefit all sports. There wouldn’t be any of that irregular scheduling we have now. Every year would be the same. January 1 would be on a Sunday. Saturday football dates would always be the same. So would the Thanksgiving Day ones.
It is easy to see how such an arrangement would facilitate the scheduling of athletic events, the planning of traveling time, and make for lower expense accounts.
Once set up, all sports dates would become perennial and, to a man like Dan Ferris, who has witnessed more than a million athletes in competition in more than 66,000 events at 3,250 meets, the consistency of dates would mean a lot.
It is doubtful that the people who witness the athletic events year in and year out appreciate the terrific amount of detail and red tape which must be cleared
and cut before the sports boys can do their stuff.
The same task also holds true for any and all groups having anything to do with dates. Probably that is why the ordered calendar plan has also been endorsed by the National Education Association, many college presidents, hundreds of chambers of commerce and business organizations.
This year is especially significant because the last four months are identical in both the 1944 Gregorian calendar and the new World Calendar. All one has to do is compare the last four months of this year with those of 1943 to get an actual picture of the savings.
Don’t get the idea though that fellows like Dan Ferris will have an easy job with the streamlining of the calendar. There will still be thousands of letters to be written, hundreds of cups to be awarded, and hundreds of disputes to be settled.
But the good natured Irishman, who has so long occupied the corner office in the Amateur Athletic Union’s Woolworth Tower headquarters, could go along with one less headache. And The World Calendar should help.
World Calendar Meets
All Objections
From Postwar Digest, New York, N. Y., April 8, 1944
TODAY when planning is one of essentials toward obtaining highest peak of efficiency in PW production, inadequacies of present calendar are forceful arguments for improvement. Year contains approximately 365.25 days that cannot be divided by 2, 3, 4, or 6—halves, thirds, quarters without off days remaining. First quarter is 2 days shorter than either of last 2 quarters, and 2nd quarter matches none of others. Comparative reports have to be adjusted and difficulties are encountered in comparing business done on analogous days, as well as preparing statements of dividends, bond interest, taxes, operating costs, statistics, budgets, etc. To overcome these faults of present calendar in PW
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period a perpetual and ordered World Calendar is proposed by The World Calendar Association, as announced currently in large ads in N. Y. Herald-Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Chicago News, Chicago Sun and Washington Post.
World Calendar of revised 12 months divides year into equal quarters of 13 weeks or 3 months of 31-30-30 days, each month having 26 weekdays plus Sundays. This 364-day year gives comparability and coordination to various calendar units. Essential 365th day, December W, World Holiday, extra Saturday, keeps calendar in step with seasons. Every 4 years—leap year—another extra Saturday, 366th day, is added, June W, World Holiday. Every quarter is identical, and every unit within every quarter same. Stabilizing World Holidays, one intercalated at end of every year and another middle of leap years, bring about agreeing days and dates, holidays always on same day and date every year, accurate comparability for contracts, reports and calculations from year to year, saving of time, money, effort. Postwar planning and making of peace will be greatly aided when based on steady, harmonious, well-coordinated World Calendar. Good foundations beget good results. Acts of today foundations of tomorrow.
This year is important because last four months of 1944 in both present Gregorian calendar and proposed World Calendar are same. This is possible because Sunday, December 31, and what would be extra Saturday, December W (World Holiday), are both non-productive, non-business days. Thus an excellent opportunity is offered to test and study merits of World Calendar by using last 4 months of 1944 as basis of comparison for same period in Gregorian calendar 1943 and 1945. It is recommended, however, that long range objective should be to prepare for national and general approval in 1947—pre-presidential election year. Following 2-3 years would give adequate time for everyone to get their affairs in order for inaugurating World Calendar in 1950 when both calendars again agree—Sunday, January 1.
Accepted 24-hour clock adopted by Armed Services has proved natural forerunner for World Calendar. These two new and modern time-pieces are based on duodecimal number 12 divided into equal
quarters, thirds and halves—must in all time-reckoning. Captain J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. Supt. U. S. Naval Observatory, Washington, and guardian of our clock time has stated: “U. S. Naval Observatory has approved very strongly World Calendar. Benefits from it are manifold, and differences from long-established customs are negligible. . . . My advice to all advocates of calendar revision is to devote their energies to only proposal which meets all requirements of situation, with minimum of upheaval and disturbance and maximum of benefits to mankind—World Calendar.”
Among American and World leaders who have endorsed World Calendar are Gerard Swope, M. Albert Linton, Myron C. Taylor, Gano Dunn, Julius F. Stone, Ira Hirschmann; Lord Desborough, Sir H. Spencer-Jones (England); Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden); and Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu (China).
Seeks Global
Community
By RICHARD W. WESTWOOD
From Nature Magazine, Washington, D. C., April, 19H
WE never receive a copy of the Journal of Calendar Reform that we do not wonder why something is not done about our obsolete Gregorian system. We fail to see any logical objection to the proposed World Calendar with its 12 months and its four quarters of 91 days each, plus its one extra “Year-End Day,” and its “Leap-Year Day” sandwiched in between June and July every four years. We will confess we never were excited about the 13-month calendar idea, but we are unable to see that the “World Calendar” seriously upsets anything. If man can successfully tinker with the time of day, he certainly can equally successfully adopt a sensible and simple realignment of the days of the month. Perhaps in the plans for this postwar world the calendar will come in for consideration. In fact it would appear to be a good place to start in achieving that global community that seems to hold the most promise of accomplishing permanent peace.
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FROM THE MAIL BAG
I sincerely believe that The New World Calendar is a genuinely fundamental reform and one that will be of vast benefit to mankind. I hope that your efforts in support of it will soon be crowned with success.—H. S. Southam, Publisher, The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The world needs the new World Calendar. The new World Calendar with a minimum of change accomplishes results of great value to the world, for it eliminates many confusions of dates due to the irregularity of the existing calendar. I see no sufficient reason why this important reform would not be welcomed by the world when they understand it, except perhaps the apathy due to custom. It might add to the calendar that the World Holiday following December annually and following June quadrennially could be dedicated to prayers for world unity, cooperation and mutual good will.—Robert L. Owen, Counsellor at Law, Washington, D. C.
Your plan is excellent. We have operated too long on a hit-or-miss calendar because no one dared to be different.—Hart Cooper, Attorney, Wilmington, Del.
This method of dividing the year has been one of considerable interest to me and one with which I heartily concur. Years ago I was an engineer with the Eastman Kodak Company, at the time they adopted the 13-month period basis. Since I studied that and other calendars thoroughly at that time, I became interested in the general manner of yearly calendar arrangement. The World Calendar is, however, a considerable improvement over that, from various standpoints, all of which you know; and I trust that it may have an early adoption, in order that the conveniences, advantages and economies in all phases of life, which it promises, may be soon realized.—Donald F. Othmer, Prof, of Chern. Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
I find myself a convert to the idea.—The Rev. Willsie Martin, Los Angeles, Cal.
The World Calendar will effect a saving of millions of dollars every year in the cost of printing alone. In fact, the features of the new calendar will soon be memorized by everyone; so that the day of the week for any date is known without the aid of a calendar.—D. L. Reaburn, U. S. Engineering Office, Santa Maria, Cal.
I have been familiar with the proposed World Calendar for some years and, while I never have had occasion to make a thorough study of calendar problems, it has seemed to offer the most simple, practicable solution for many existing difficulties.— Carl N. Schmalz, Treas., R. H. Sterns Co., Boston, Mass.
To spread the movement of calendar reform is today necessary more than ever.— J. Brunet, Regent Knitting Mills, Montreal, Canada.
For some time I have been interested in your World Calendar and am strongly in favor of its adoption—just as strongly as I was against the adoption of the 13-month plan, for reasons unnecessary to point out to you. Best wishes for the success of your project.—D. W. Hardy, Englewood, N. J.
I have long been in favor of The World Calendar—or at least of some adjustment in the calendar that would simplify life for all of us.—J. Frederic Dewhurst, New York, N. Y.
I am heartily in favor of the reform you are proposing. Now that we are thinking in terms of global strategy, this is an opportune time to consider the proposed change in our calendar.—F. A. Conrad, Univ, of Ariz., Tucson.
Needless to say I am very much in sympathy with The World Calendar and hope that it may be adopted internationally in the near future.—E. T. Towne, Dean, The Univ, of North Dakota, Grand Forks.
I consider adoption of The World Calendar imperative from every point of view.— Julius F. Stone, Industrialist, Columbus, Ohio.
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TH WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION
Elisabeth Achelis, President Harriet A. Lillie, Secretary-Treasurer
Charles S. McVeigh, Vice-President Emerson Brewer, Director
AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
William H. Barton, Jr. Henry W. Bearce Dr. Clara B. Burdette Mrs. Frederick H. Clausen Mrs. Vera Beggs Conway Capt. J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. (Ret.) Mrs. Gustav Ketterer Mrs. Rowland H. Latham Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D. Bishop William T. Manning Prof. Wm. Starr Myers
Dr. L. S. Rowe Howard C. Smith Bishop Ernest M. Stires Julius F. Stone
Rabbi Martin M. Weitz P. W. Wilson
Dr. Mary E. Woolley
FOREIGN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Admiral Jos£: Guisasola (Argentina) Dr. Eugene Delporte (Belgium) Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino (Brazil) J. Royden Gilley (Canada)
A. J. Hills (Canada)
Prof. Alberto Cumming (Chile)
R. P. Eugenio V. Rosso, S.S. (Chile) Dr. Ch’ing-Sung YtJ (China) Dr. Herbert Blume (Danzig) Barney N. Morgan (Dominican Republic) Lord Desborough (England) • C. David Stelling (England) Paul-Louis Hervier (France)
Abraham J'rowein (Germany) Athanase Politis (Greece) E. Keith Eason (Ireland) Amedeo Giannini (Italy) Dr. Joaquin Gallo (Mexico) Juan Rivera Reyes (Panama) Luis Montero y Tirado (Peru) R. P. Antonio Romana, S.J. (Spain) Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden)
Raymond Mage (Switzland) Dr. M. I. Dereoglu (Turkey) Edgar J. Anzola (Venezuela)
Membershiv is based on active interest in the study of adequate and effective improvement of the calendar. Owing to lack of space, a large number of names have been omitted. They will be printed in future issues.
S. R. Alger, Editor, Ottawa, Canada Jean P. Allaine, Clerk, St. Jerome, Can. Paul G. Argenti, Businessman, Chicago H. A. Bathrick, Cleveland, Ohio John C. Batte, Merchant, Jackson, Miss. Curt Beck, Student, Boston William Berghahn, Draftsman, Chicago J. A. Birkenstock, Stud., Somerset W., South
Robert J. Black, Corp. Off., Buffalo
Jesse L. Brememan, Educ., Manhattan, Kan. L. Brosseau, Bookkeeper, St. Jerome, Can. C. J. Brunsar, Purch. Agt., Philadelphia A. H. Butler, Ins. Broker, Toronto, Can. William S. Cady, Editor, Pocatello, Utah D. C. Cameron, Meteorolqgist, Washington J. W. Chambers, Waterloo, Canada Frank J. Clifford, Mfgr., Baltimore, Md. Gerald Cloutier, Machinist, Detroit Angel Contreras R., Stud., Santiago, Chile J. B. Cote, Publisher, Rimouski, Canada J. M. Cowan, Editor, Niagara Falls, Can. H. C. Davis, Supt., Cut Bank, Mont.
Richard Downing, Chemist, Syracuse, N. Y. Kenneth Drury, Editor, Victoria, Canada Mrs. Ethel G. Durkin, Santa Monica, Cal. John A. English, Engr., Goshen, Conn. James Everatt, Corp. Off., Toronto Kenneth S. Fagg, Artist, Chappaqua, N. Y. Muriel Falick, Bronx, New York Mrs. M. C. Fath, Teacher, Washington, D. C. Mrs. E. A. Fish, Columnist, Williamsburg, Ky. Fred C. Geiger, Atty., Washington, D. C. Joseph R Griggs, Educ., Austin, Tex.
Robert R. Guthrie, New York City George D. Hall, Rockford, Ill. Dr. L. K. Hallock, Phys., Jacksonville, Ill George G. Henderson, Teach., Ginksburg, Cal. Joseph Hoffman, Stud., Bronx, N. Y. C. E. Hoskin, Gov. Clk., Kensington, Md. W. Harold Iles, Salesman, Urbana, Ill. Ervin Jackson, Jr., Stud., Birmingham, Ala. Adolph R. Klein, Ins., Man., Chicago
John H. Koewler, Jr., Stud., Evansville, Ill. William P. Korsland, Auditor, Chicago J. Larkin, Sales Exec., Forest Hills, N. Y. Glen B. Lerch, Corp. Exec., Hibbing, Minn. Sigfred Lindholm, Wood Worker, Chicago L. M. Lipa, Exec., Clinton, N. Y. Louis Lowinson, Broker, New York City R. D. Mancinelli, Gov. Off., McLean, Va. Mase Marisbone, Arcadia, Pretoria, S. Africa Lenader Marx, Qo. Off., New Orleans, La. D. A. McConnell, Sch. Supt., Junction City, Kan.
Daniel R. McMaster, Atty., Lake Bluff, Ill. Prof. Mark C. Mills, Bloomington, Ind. Henry W. Mueller, Clk., Wallaston, Mass. Paul E. Newshea, Corp. Exec., New York City Wm. M. Newton, Postman, Bethesda, Md. Herman E. Ollander, Businessman, N. Y. C. Geo. R. Onody, Controller, Salem, Mass. June Otteman, Stud., Canandaigua, N. Y. Katherine Pangborne, Teacher, New York City A. V. Parcninter, Teach., New Westminster, Can.
James A. Pollock, Teacher, Toledo, O.
Mrs. Bessie Price, Teach., Terra Atta, W. Va. Charles S. Raizen, Mfgr., New York City Elwood Randolph, Corp. Exec., New York City" Leonard J. Raymond, Corp. Exec., Boston F. C. Reick, Teach., Flushing, N. Y.
Milton Riesner, Contractor, New York City Mrs. Anna D. Robinson, Monmouth, Ill.
Riki Saito, Clerk, Aiea, Hawaii
Frank T. Scott, Stud., Fair Haven, N. J. Murray J. Shainis, Bronx, N. Y.
J. J. Sherman, New York City
Harry Shriber, Businessman, Pittsburgh
Chas. R. Siegert, Transportation Off., Buffalo Dr. Andrew Sinamark, Phys., Hibbing, Minn. Earl C. Smith, Co. Off., Frankford, Ind. Eunice L. Smith, Teach., Kenosha, Wis. Frank C. Smith, Teacher, Buffalo Harry L. Snyder, Stud., Sunnyside, N. Y.
J. F. Sommers, Tax Consult., Corsicana, Tex.
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H. S. Southam, Publisher, Ottawa, Canada
W. Spracklin, Rr. Off., N. Sydney, Nova Scotia
Robert L. Stailing, Ins. Off., Toronto
Ralph L. Southard, Educ., Woodmere, N. Y.
Fred W. Spalding, Educ., Akron, O.
Ruth A. Sparrow, Librn., Buffalo
H. K. Spector, Librn., Rikers Is., N. Y.
Chas. Spencer, Secy., Ch. of Com., Independence, Kan.
Rev. Jos. A. Stanton, Buffalo
A. Stein, Corp. Off., Chicago
Ernest J. Stevens, Set, San Francisco
Rev. Irvin Stewart, Rickreall, Ore.
Rev. Stanley Stoga, Chicago
P. M. Stone, Real Estate, Waltham, Mass.
Rev. Wm. D. Str eng, Rock Falls, Ill.
R. G. Sumner, Ins. Off., Chicago
Frances L. Swain, Teacher, Chicago
Col. Harrison Tilghman. Easton, Md.
Wm. Tornheim, Accountant, Pittsburg, Cal.
J. F. P. Trosch, Gov. Off., Washington, D. C.
Ralph E. Tschappat, Mechanic, Denver Col.
Frank E. Walsh, War Worker. Chicago Sophie P. White, Lbrn., Hutchinson, Minn. Edward Widawski, Stud., Hamtramck, Mich Clara C. Williamson, Teach., Van Hornesville, N. Y.
Wm. M. Willits, Teach., Reading, Pa.
Mrs. Anne C. Wilson, Teach., Troy, Ala.
G. H. Wilson, Ins. Exec., Philadelphia
Jas. H. Wilson, Educ., Rocky Ford, Colo.
J. H. Wilson, Co. Exec., Worcester, Mass. Mayo Winsberg, Merch, Whiting, Ind. Marion Winship, Insurance, Buffalo E. J. Winslow, Brattleboro, Vt.
Mulford Winsor, Librn., Phoenix, Ariz.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ARGENTINA: Comit6 Argentine del Calen-dario Mundial, Admiral Jos6 Guisasola, Chairman, Ministerio de Marina, Buenos Aires.
AUSTRALIA: Committee on Calendar Reform of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, C. W. Allen, Secy., Solar Observatory, Canberra.
BELGIUM: Belgian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Professor M. Dehalu, President, 1’Universite de Ltege, LiSge.
BOLIVIA: Comite Boliviano del Calendario Mundial, Don Moises Santivanez, Chairman, Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre.
BRAZIL: Comite Brasileiro do Calendario Mundial, Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino, Chairman, Rua Raul Pompeia No. 133, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Rational Calendar Association, J. Royden Gilley, Hart House, University of Toronto ; A. J. Hills, National Joint Conference Board of the Construction Indus-dry, Confederation Bldg., Ottawa.
CHILE: Comite Chileno del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Cumming, Chairman, Calle Manuel Rodriguez, Santiago.
CHINA: Chinese Association for the Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu, Director, National Institute of Astronomy, Kunming, Yunnan.
COLOMBIA: Comite Colombiano del Calendario Mundial, Bogota.
COSTA RICA: Comite Costarricense del Calendario Mundial (Igualmente de Guatemala, Honduras,. El Salvador y Nicaragua), Don Teodoro Picado, Chairman, San Jose.
CUBA: Comite Cubano del Calendario Mundial, Beten Observatory, Havana.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Comite Domini-cano del Calendario Mundial, Barney N. Morgan, Chairman, Box 727, Ciudad Trujillo.
ECUADOR: Comite Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde, Chairman, Calle Cienfuegos 158, Santiago, Chile.
ENGLAND: Rational Calendar Association, C. David Stelling, Director, 38, Parliament Street, London.
FRANCE: Comite National pour la Reforme du Calendrier, Senateur Justin Godart, President; Paul-Louis Hervier, Secy., 5, Rue Bernoulli, Paris.
GERMANY: Deutscher Ausschuss fiir Kalen-derreform, Dr. Grosse, Geschaftsfiihrer, Neue Wilhelmstr. 9/11, Berlin N. W. 7.—
FOR REFORM OF THE CALENDAR
Der Weltbund fiir Kalenderreform, Dr. Rudolph Blochmann, Secy., 24 Lornsen-strasse, Kiel.
GREECE: Greek National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. S. Plakidis, Secy., Observatory of University of Athens.
HUNGARY: Hungarian Committee for Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Paul Vajda, Secy., 9 Eotos Utca, Budapest.
IRELAND: Committee for Calendar Reform, E. K. Eason, Secy., 80, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.
ITALY: Italian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Amedeo Giannini, Secy., Via del Seminario, 113, Rome.
MEXICO: Comite Mejicano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Joaquin Gallo, Honorary President; Dr. Horacio Herrera, Chairman, Socjedad de Estudios Astronomicos y Geoflsicos, Av. Observatorio No. 192, Tacubaya, D.F.
PANAMA : Comite Panameno del Calendario Mundial, Juan Rivera Reyes, Chairman, Panama City.
PARAGUAY: Comite Paraguayano del Calendario Mundial, H. E. Senor Ministro Coronel don Luis Irrazabal, Chairman, Calle Moneda 1938, Santiago, Chile.
PERU: Comite Peruano del Calendario Mundial, Don Luis Montero y Tirado, Chairman, Casilla 220, Lima.
POLAND: Polish Committee for Calendar Reform, Albin Jakiel, Chairman, Krasiu-skiego, 21 m. 27, Warsaw.
SPAIN: Spanish Calendar Reform Committee, Rev. Father Antonio Romani, S.J., Chairman, Observatorio del Ebro, Tortosa.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Committee on Calender Reform, Prof. Emile Marchand, Secy., Mythenstrasse 2, Zurich 2.—Comite International de Cooperation de 1’Association Universelle du Calendrier, M. Raymond Mage, Secretaire General, Palais Wilson, Geneva.
TURKEY: Committee on Calendar Reform, Dr. M. I. Dereoglu, Secy., P. O. Box 1121, Hanhaym Han. No. Io, Istanbul.
URUGUAY: Comite Uruguayo del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Reyes Thevenet, Chairman, Liceo de Ensenanza Secundaria Hector Miranda, Calle Sierra 2268, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Comite Venezolano del Calendario Mundial, Don Edgar J. Anzola, Chairman, Apartado de Correos No. 207,
YUGOSLAVIA: Yugoslavian Committee on Calendar Reform, Georges Curcin, Chairman, Poenkareova 25—III, Belgrade.
TWO UP-TO-DATE TIME PIECES
/
THIS we have NOW!
WE SHOULD have THIS!
THE TWENTY-FOUR HOUR CLOCK
EVERY SECOND, MINUTE, HOUR THE SAME
EVERY DAY, DATE, YEAR THE SAME
THE ARMED FORCES performed a master stroke when they replaced the A.M. and P.M. clock time with the 24-hour clock. This new clock time is now in practical use among the allied forces.
The remarkable duodecimal number 12, in this instance the twice-told twelve, has been definitely established for our men in service. The hours are counted in hundreds to take care of the minutes, for example, the old 3.30 p.m. becomes 1530.
With the greatest simplicity and ease, confusion was changed to order, misunderstanding to clarity.
THE UNITED NATIONS and PEOPLES would do well to use the 24-hour clock in their daily lives and affairs, and acquire the same simplicity.
THE NEW 12-month year is divided into equal quarters of 3 months or 13 weeks or 91 days; the months are arranged in 31-30-30 days; each month has 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. All the time units agree at the end of every quarter-year. The old December 31 becomes the new December W*, an extra Saturday, and the new year begins on Sunday, January 1. The old February 29 in lean years becomes the new June W**, another extra Saturday. Both December W and June W are World Holidays.
With a similar simplicity and ease, confusion gives way to order, changeability to stability.
THE UNITED NATIONS and PEOPLES would do well to consider the practical benefits of The World Calendar as it affects their affairs, preliminary to general world adoption.
THESE TWO NEW AND MODERN TIME-PIECES are based on the duodecimal number 12 divided into equal quarters, thirds and halves, a MUST in all time-reckoning.
for further information:
630 fifth avenue THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC. new york 20, n. y.
See Article on Page 61
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Buy more and more WAR BONDS and STAMPS for an early PEACE!
Journal o/ CALENDAR REFORM
THE WORLD CALENDAR is in step with TODAY and TOMORROW
FOURTH QUARTER
PRESENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR
PROPOSED WORLD CALENDAR
	FIRST QUARTER			THIRD QUARTER		
		S M T W T F 5	1 9 4 3		$ M T W T F S	
	JAN FEB MAR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31		JUL AUG SEP	1 2 3 4 5 6 7-8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	
	Wdoy. SECOND QUARTER			92 dayi FOURTH QUARTER		
		S M T W T F 5			S M T W T F S	
	APR MAY JUN	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4.5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		OCT NOV DEC	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 12 3 4 5678 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	
	Vldoy.	nioyf This calendar has 52 weeks and must borrow from another week to complete the year. This causes the calendar to change every year and Is responsible for Its confusion. Also note varying number of days in each quarter.					
FIRST QUARTER	THIRD QUARTER
	S M T W T F S
JAN FEB MAR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
	S M T W I F S
JUL AUG SEP	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23:24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 12 3 4 5 67 8 9 10 11 .12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27:28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 IT 112 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25i26 27 28 29 30
91 days	91 days
SECOND QUARTER	FOURTH QUARTER
	S M T W T F s			। S MT W T F $
APR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31		OCT	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
MAY	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		NOV	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
JUN	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		DEC	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
91 days	91 days
★ A WORLD HOLIDAY, DECEMBER W. the Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, follows December 30th every year. ★* A WORLD HOLIDAY, JUNE W, the Leap-Year Day, another extra Saturday, follows June 30th in leap years.
EACH YEAR DIFFERENT
This calendar is always different from year to year.
The quarters .arej unequal in length. In leap years the first half-year has 182 days; the second, 184 days. .	!
Each quarter begins and ends bn a different day of the week.
Each month begins and ends on a different weekday.
The months have a varying number of weekdays.
Each year begins on a different weekday.
Its irregularity precludes comparison of periods and necessitates continued and never ceasing changes in matters routine in character.
This calendar is unbalanced in structure, unstable in form, and irregular in arrangement.
SOON YOU WILL BE DISCARDING THIS OBSOLETE CALENDAR.
EACH YEAR THE SAME
This 12-month equal-quarter calendar is the same for every year.
The quarters are equal in length.
Each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, contains 3 months— 13 weeks—91 days.
Month-dates always fall on the same weekdays. Each month has 26 week-days—plus Sundays.
Each year begins on Sunday, January 1, and the business year begins with Monday, January 2. Because the World Holidays precede Sunday, the usual custom of celebrating a Sunday holiday on Monday is voided.
Year-End Day and Leap-Year Day, the extra Saturdays, December W and June W. are World Holidays.
This revised calendar is balanced in structure, perpetual in form, harmonious in arrangement.
SOON YOU WILL BE USING THIS UP-TO-DATE CALENDAR.
£ > TTENDED BY ALL THE POMP AND J t circumstance of its ancient rites and rituals, a midnight ceremonial, recently conducted by the Russian Orthodox Church in the Moscow Cathedral, formally and publicly installed a new Patriarch for all the Russias.
Hailed throughout the world as a great triumph for Christendom and for religion in general, this news came as a complete surprise to those not conversant with political developments in the Soviet Union. To many millions and to the majority of churchmen, Moscow, since the revolution, has been regarded as a world citadel of communism and atheism.
In the early post-revolutionary days the higher councils of the Communist Party had banished not alone the Russian Orthodox Church but all religious institutions. With the public installation of a new Patriarch of the Russias, religion has come to the Soviet Union.
A Midnight Ceremony in the Moscow Cathedral, Formally and Publicly Installed a New Patriarch for all the Russias. (See Russia's Changing Tide, Page 147.)
VOL. XIII
FOURTH QUARTER, 1943
No. 4
A NEW CALENDAR FOR A NEW WORLD
SINCE last Christmas, many world-shaking changes have taken place.
Among these is one so significant and outstanding that it calls for particular emphasis. The recognition of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Soviet Union, after approximately twenty years of atheism and religious intolerance, stands as a great religious resurrection. Once more the Russian people can openly worship and offer praise and prayer in the church of their forefathers without fear and oppression. A free Russian Orthodox Church has been established with government approval.
Here again the entire world is offered striking proof that man is inherently religious. Governments may try to suppress and ignore but they cannot kill religion. The two great Christian religious festival days, Christmas and Easter, shine in this national religious resurrection as bright beacon lights. Elisabeth Achelis, in her book just published, writes about religious holidays: “I like to think of religious feast days as radiant stars in the rhythmic succession of our calendar days, annual reminders of the intimate relationship that exists between God and man. Religion knows no frontier, and like the Creator is limitless in its wide horizon.”
And yet there exist two glaring flaws in the universal observance of these two religious days of Christendom. They are observed on varying days and dates by different church groups, thus separating rather than uniting all Christians. Many Eastern Orthodox Churches in their observances lag 13 days behind other Christian churches because they still observe the ancient Julian calendar. Other churches follow the Gregorian calendar.
To bring these calendars into one fabric without retreat from a previous position is obviously the better course to follow. The World Calendar, free from past prejudice, becomes the welcome catalysis to heal the present lack of Christian unity in the observances of religious feast days. Under its banner all churches, all governments, all people could unite in following this harmonious, ordered and stable calendar and thus achieve unity and tranquillity heretofore impossible without a common denominator of time.
JOURNAL	OF
CALENDAR REFORM
October, November, December
1943
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL	145
RUSSIA'S CHANGING TIDE	Carleton J. Ketchum 147
STUDENT OF POSTWAR PLANNING ADVOCATES NEW
CALENDAR NOW	E. C. Rayner 156
U. S. DEPARTMENT HEAD GIVES ALTERNATE DATES FOR CALENDAR CHANGE	H. W. Bearce 164
EDITORIAL JACK OF ALL TRADES SEES HOPE IN NEW WORLD
CALENDAR	Richard Stephenson 166
"CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS"	Arthur Hale 170
THE COUNT AND THE CALENDAR	George Kent 172
THE THIRD MILLION WAS THE EASIEST	Joe Roberts 175
TEXAS PROFESSOR SUGGESTS PLAN TO GET STUDENT HELP
J. W. Baldwin 179
CALENDAR REFORM ACROSS EIGHTEEN CENTURIES
Bertha M. Frick 181
LET'S CHANGE THE CALENDAR	Sam Bate 186
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS	189
EMERSON BREWER, Editor
Published by THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC.
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING: 6 3 0 FIFTH AVE., N. Y. C. 20
FOURTH QUARTER 1943
147
RUSSIA'S CHANGING IIDE
By Carleton J. Ketchum
Resigning his commission in the Canadian Field Artillery after the first World War, having been awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty on the Western Front, Mr. Ketchum joined the editorial staff of Southam9s Ottawa Citizen. In 1921 he became associated with the London Daily Express, owned by Lord Beaverbrook. Assigned to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, he arrived in Moscow during the period in which Lenin lay dying, and subsequently spent five winters in Russia. In 1934 he toured the whole of European Russia, and visited, among others, the Caucasian, Georgian, Crimean and Ukrainian Republics. Mr. Ketchum visited almost every country in the world for the London Daily Express as a Foreign Correspondent. He speaks with authority on Soviet Russia, having been an eye witness of events during the time of many of the momentous changes which that nation underwent.
THE Russian Orthodox Church has been resurrected in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Attended by all the pomp and circumstance of its ancient rites and rituals, a midnight ceremonial, recently conducted by the church in the Moscow Cathedral, formally and publicly installed a new Patriarch for all the Russias.
The news has been hailed throughout the world as a great triumph for Christendom and for the institution, in general, of religion. To those not conversant with political developments in the Soviet Union in recent years, it came as a complete surprise. For, to many millions and to the majority of churchmen in Christian and, indeed, in other lands, Moscow, since the revolution, had been regarded as a sort of world citadel of communism and, therefore, of outright atheism. The world could not forget that in the early post-revolutionary days the higher councils of the then ruling Communist Party, which completely dominated the Supreme Soviet or Parliament of Russia, had to all intents and purposes banished not alone the Russian Orthodox Church but all religious institutions from their scheme of things to come.
It was my privilege as the Special Correspondent of the Beaverbrook London Daily Express to undertake the first of many subsequent assignments to Moscow, in the winter of 1922-23. Lenin, leader of the revolution, lay dying behind the then red but now white walls of the historic
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Kremlin located in the heart of the new capital. The country was just beginning to emerge from the ravages of one of the most widespread famines in history; that, of course, which followed in the wake of Russia’s last war against the Germans and her subsequent revolution. The revolution had taken place but forces were still at work, mostly in clandestine fashion, in a last determined if not desperate attempt to restore the old order. In the vanguard of that movement were the two most powerful of Russia’s pre-revolutionary churches, the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic. Their leaders and followers alike had fought openly in the revolutionary period itself. But the Red Army had become firmly established and with its advent, supported by an equally powerful Checka or secret political police, those, including churchmen, still hopeful of a counter-revolution were driven underground.
The churches took a proper stand at the time. They had become part and parcel of the Czarist regime. The Russian Orthodox was the official state church and as such was heavily subsidized by the state. The Roman Catholic Church functioned independently, as always it must do, but it owed its development and prosperity in Russia largely to the freedom which it enjoyed under Czarist rule. Both churches had accumulated vast property holdings. They commanded the support between them of millions upon millions of religiously-minded Russian citizens. It was to preserve that heritage that they fought and upon many occasions fought with a grim ferocity.
It was that attitude and that stand which provoked the conflict between church and state with the coming of the power of the Soviet. Flamboyant banners strung across street intersections throughout the length and breadth of the new Union proclaimed religion to be the opiate of the people. Church leaders including scores if not hundreds of bishops and priests, Russian Orthodox and Catholic alike, were arrested and imprisoned while the edifices which formerly they controlled were confiscated and in countless instances converted into anti-religious museums, into workers’ clubs and to sundry other uses.
There developed at about that time an organization whose influence spread like wildfire. It became known as the Militant Atheist Society. The Kremlin’s communist hierarchy took pains to emphasize, mostly for the edification of the outside world, that this was not in any sense an official body. It was officially described as purely a voluntary group of free citizens which had chosen to stamp out religion in the interests of a truly “democratic” state.
I recall a memorable occasion upon which I visited the offices of the Organizing Secretary of the Militant Atheist Society in the Red capital. His first disclosure was a claimed membership of 5,000,000 men and
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women. He then pointed to a large-scale map which covered one of the high walls of his main office. That map was densely pin-pointed to indicate how the new Godless League had taken hold in cities, towns and villages, in offices, factories and upon farmlands, in every quarter of the Union. Plans for the future, as outlined to me, gave little ground for a belief or hope that religious institutions as such could survive in the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As I concluded my hour’s interview, I was handed several copies of the society’s official organ. It was a magazine of about the dimensions of the Saturday Evening Post. It bore the title The Be^bojnik which, translated into English, means The Atheist. \ The first copy I perused carried as its cover-page illustration a caricature of Christ presiding over a whisky-still. Bishops and priests were similarly pilloried on page after page as racketeers and exploiters of the people. Artists, described as among the most talented in the Union, contributed these drawings in the interests of the cause. Men and women, claimed to be among Russia’s most gifted writers, were represented in the fantastically blasphemous literature which comprised the publication’s reading matter. The Secretary of the Militant Atheist Society told me on that occasion that the magazine had attained a circulation of at least 5,000,000 and would probably exceed 10,000,000 in another year or so.
Russia’s Supreme Soviet or Parliament by this time had abolished the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The days of the week as we in the English-speaking world know them—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and so on—had vanished into the limbo of forgotten institutions. All the age-old days of rejoicing accepted by the Christian world, including Christmas and Easter, were no more. These Christian feast or holidays were replaced first by four and later by five national public holidays associated with the revolution.
Incorporating these national holidays only, Russia established her own calendar which for some time provided for a 73-week year. This was formally developed into the Soviet’s “Eternal Calendar” when on October 6, 1923, (Revolution Day) the Council of People’s Commissars solemnly proclaimed an arrangement which gave five days to a week, six weeks to a month, plus five holidays with national instead of weekday names. These holidays were: January 9, Peasants’ Massacre, 1905; January 21, Lenin’s Death-day; May 1, International Labor Day; October 26, Revolution Day; November 7, Kerensky Flight. Leap-Year Day became a quadrennial holiday known and recognized as Industrialization Day.
The chief purpose of this calendar was to increase production insofar as it would ensure that machines in the factories would never cease to operate. Workers were issued yellow, pink, red, purple and green cards. Each became entitled to one free or rest day in the five-day week, each
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color representing the particular day upon which the holder was to be free. By this arrangement rest days were staggered. There was no common weekly holiday such as Sunday.
The system wrought one great hardship upon the family. For no consideration was given in the distribution of the free-day cards to workers with family ties. Thus Alexei Alexeieovitch, father of say a family of four grown children, all working, downed tools on the Russian equivalent of our Monday. For he held a yellow card. But his son, Alexei Alexeieovitch the second (junior), carried a green card. Thus his free day would fall on the equivalent of our Wednesday. The wife and mother of the family, Natasha Alexandrovna, had been issued by her factory chieftain a pink card so that her rest or free day probably fell upon the equivalent of our Friday or Saturday. And so forth, as far as that and the average Russian family at that time was concerned.
This hardship would not have been felt so acutely were it not for the fact that in these early post-revolutionary days the family home had been replaced by the workers’ communal club. Rarely under the then prevailing housing system was it possible for a family to live together as a single unit under a single roof. The law provided that each individual, man and woman, was entitled to so many arshins of floor space in a dwelling. The dimensions of that space gave the average Russian individual living space the size of a small bedroom in the average worker’s home in America. No provision for the family was made under this plan. The members of the family were expected to come together when they so desired in their neighborhood communal clubs. When wives were due to have children their problem was solved by having child-birth take place in the nearest communal day nursery. As time passed concessions were made to the desires of families to be together, but for many years families remained hopelessly and unhappily segregated, one member from another. Thus when the state introduced the idea of the staggering free day, a father seldom saw his wife or son or daughter. For all but one worked when one was free and vice versa. This hardship applied likewise to friends and sweethearts. It created widespread discontent in every section of that far-flung Union.
The “Eternal Calendar” remained the law of the land in Russia until December 1, 1931, when it was replaced by another. Its successor, still strictly a Russian calendar, provided for a 12-month year with the same holidays as before and the same extra day for leap year. Months were given 30 days and the weeks of six days were arranged to end on the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th, and 30th of the months. The staggering free or rest day was abolished. The dates mentioned became common national
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rest days, save in some industries; rest days for workers and machines alike. The colored card system was discontinued and once more families rested and relaxed together.
Significant was the fact that in these two Russian calendars the name days of the week as we know them were eliminated. That elimination included Sunday in such a carefully calculated sense that the dates enumerated as free days could not fall on the Sunday of the Gregorian or Julian calendar. Yet the 1931 calendar was a marked advance in their calendar reform. It restored to the family some semblance of family unity and convenience. It gave friends an opportunity to meet upon a common day of the week. It brought a new spirit of contentment, if not of happiness, to millions of Russian citizens and, with an extension of concessions in the matter of housing accommodation, led to a development of what we describe as home or family life. Workers still spend evenings in their communal clubs and communal theaters, but they have turned more and more to the privacy and comfort of their little apartment homes. That is to say urban workers.
Russia’s government throughout its period of experiment in calendar arrangements has encountered its most formidable difficulty in imposing calendar changes upon those millions working on their state collective farms. Russia’s farmer-peasants through the ages have worked with calendars based in a general sense on the four seasons—spring, summer, autumn and winter. Millions stuck to the old monthly and weekly divisions of the Julian calendar, stubbornly declining decreed changes, long after the revolution. They planned their work according to the seasons and to the months and weeks prescribed by a calendar to which they and their fathers before them had been accustomed. Many hundreds of thousands even marked Sunday conspicuously on their improvised calendars and, when no longer possible to attend church on that day, conducted clandestine services of their own, using a hidden but carefully preserved ikon as the symbol of their worship and beliefs.
I toured the whole of European Russia in the summer of 1934. I travelled down the Volga River to the Crimea, through the Caucasus, the Georgian Autonomous Soviet Republic, and through the rich black earth farming region of the Ukraine. I visited many state-controlled collective farmlands, and, arriving at some of these on the day equivalent to our Sunday, was able to observe how many of these sturdy peasant farm workers still clung to their ikons and religious relics including wall decorations of the past.
It was that apparent non-interference with their religious feelings which convinced me as far back as 1934 that Russia was veering away
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from her earlier anti-religious policies. I noticed this metamorphosis in the same year in Moscow and also in Leningrad. For, after an absence from the Union of two or three years, I was to find that the Militant Atheist Society had long since ceased to exist. The Bejbojnik or Atheist magazine was no longer in circulation. Churches were being renovated and reconstructed and people even in Moscow were openly going again to services conducted by Russian Orthodox priests on the equivalent of our Sundays.
It was true that the aged Patriarch Tikhon, Russian Orthodox Patriarch of all the Russias in 1922-23 (when first I visited the new Red capital), had been tried for alleged counter-revolutionary activities. I had visited him at his datcha or summer bungalow on the outskirts of Moscow several times in his period of exile, pending his trial. Later I attended his brief trial which ended with an acquittal after he signed a declaration assuring the government that he would not further counsel opposition among his followers to the newly-established Soviet power.
I attended, too, the trial of Polish-born Monsignor Tsepliak, Roman Catholic Primate of Russia in the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, and early post-revolutionary days. His trial, with that of about 25 or 26 Catholic prelates, took place in the old Hall of Nobles in the heart of the business section of Moscow, a stone’s throw from the Great Ballet Theater. It was a dramatic affair which might have ended in the deaths of many of the arraigned priests were it not for the publicity given the trial by the correspondents, including myself, and the consequent outcry raised by the world at large, expressed in strongly-worded telegraphic protests which poured into Moscow from most if not all nations. The aged Catholic primate received a two years’ prison sentence but some months later was freed and permitted to return to Rome when Italy concluded her first Trade Agreement with the Kremlin.
These events it should be stressed occurred before the advent of Joseph Stalin to the leadership of Russia’s Supreme Soviet or Parliament. Leon Trotsky, since exiled from Russia and murdered in Mexico, seemed at that time destined to inherit the mantle of his close friend Lenin. He was Minister of Defense for many years and as such leader of the Red Army. It was not until he and Stalin differed over the necessity of a world revolution as a preliminary step toward success in Russia that Trotsky’s power and popularity began to wane. With his exit went Zinovieff, one-time head of the Third World Communist International, his brother-in-law Kameneff and others who had formed a pro-Trotsky bloc against Stalin and his friends, in a plot to assume supreme power.
It was then that Joseph Stalin with a policy of socialism in one country in our time began his ascent to a position which since has made of him
FOU RT H QU ARTER 194 3
1 S3
one of the world’s most powerful, and, among United Nations, a most influential national leader.
Stalin, as many know, was born in Gori, a little town eight miles from Tiflis, capital of Georgia. His parents were members of the Russian Orthodox Church and being persons of deep religious conviction, contrived to send Joe to the Georgian Theological (Russian Orthodox) Seminary in Tiflis. Their wish was fulfilled for their son finally found himself a theological student in that seminary. What happened to end his career there has never been clearly established but the historic fact remains that he did work and study in that seminary for one or more years before applying his energies to politics.
Now the world awakes one morning to read that after conversations with Joseph Stalin there has been recreated, with the full sanction of the Soviet Government, the Russian Orthodox Church with a duly elected patriarchate holding dominion over all of Russia’s 8,000,000 square miles of territory.
The bare announcement is important political news in itself; perhaps the most important political development in Russia since Stalin’s rise to power as the Union’s first statesman. More important and deeply more significant have been the photographs which have been coming out of Russia in the last year, relating to the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church. A recent batch of these photographs, perused by this writer, portray high dignitaries of the Russian Church—many of them—presiding in their rich ceremonial robes at Easter services all over the Russian Union. The pictures have been labelled by the official Soviet Photographic Trust “scenes at Russian Easter services.” Details of the rituals recited by the Russian Orthodox prelates have been recounted and emphasis placed upon the fact that the services were in recognition of Easter Day and everywhere were widely attended.
Does it not seem possible, therefore, if indeed not probable, that Russia, perhaps only by virtue of the sufferings of her people in common with those of the United Nations in this war, plans to return holus-bolus to the principles and practices of Christianity as they prevail in so many other lands? Easter has not been the only Christian holiday which the Russian people have been encouraged to celebrate since the war began. Moscow correspondents last Christmas gave considerable space to colorful descriptions of Christmas services and festivities and doubtless will be called upon so to do again this year. These Christmas services and festivals observed in the Julian calendar still used by the Russian Church are celebrated on January 7, thirteen days after the Christmas of the Western Gregorian calendar. The Archbishop of York, who recently visited the new Metropolitan-Patriarch in Moscow, stated publicly upon his return to England
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
that the new Russian Church is entirely free: “Stalin,” the Archbishop said, “being a great statesman, has recognized the power of religion.”
That being so, a return of Sunday, throughout the Soviet Union, appears inevitable. With the return to Sunday of the week, there must come Monday, Tuesday and the remaining days of the old pre-revolutionary week.
It is not surprising in these circumstances that Russia has given considerable attention to America’s World Calendar Movement. Outstanding Russians, time and again in recent years, have advocated calendar reform for the Union. Maxim Litvinoff, one-time Commissar of Foreign Affairs and later Russian Ambassador to the United States, acted as Rapporteur for the Transit Commission of the League of Nations at Geneva in January of 1937. The occasion was the League Council’s 96th session. M. Lit-vinoff’s report was an endorsement of calendar reform. It represented the result of more than a decade of study and research undertaken by the League’s globe-embracing organization. M. Litvinoff in presenting that report declared it to be a matter of the greatest possible pleasure to be able to advance the cause of calendar reform as one subject which he recognized as commanding a wide measure of support among his listeners. Newspaper correspondents in Moscow later reported that the Soviet Government strongly supported that calendar reform resolution.
It should be emphasized that M. Litvinoff at Geneva simply fulfilled his function as Rapporteur in presenting the report on calendar reform. He was not empowered so to do nor did he seek for a fleeting moment to commit his government either to the principle of calendar reform or approval of The World Calendar. Yet he revealed himself to be, as unquestionably he is, interested in, if not greatly impressed by, The World Calendar plan. Others similarly highly placed have expressed views on the proposal indicating Russia’s disposition at least to consider adoption of this calendar.
Russia probably more than any other nation today must feel the need for a calendar which will conform with those of other nations. She has become allied to the United Nations. Emerging from this war as one of our victorious allies, as now she cannot fail to do, she will continue to be a partner or ally of these nations in the peace years that lie ahead.
Today, officialdom in the land of the Soviet must make use of four different calendars. Reference to the old Russian Julian calendar must be made to compute events up to 1923. The five-day Russian calendar must be consulted in relation to events from 1923 to 1931. The former six-day Russian calendar must be used to cover the period from 1931 to 1940, when Russia returned to the seven-day week. Then, in her relations with the outside world, official Russia must turn to the existing Western Gregorian calendar.
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Five winters and several summer periods spent in the land of the Soviets since the early post-revolutionary days which I have described have convinced me that the Russians are a reasonable, logical, and, nowadays, progressively-inclined people. They have demonstrated upon many occasions during this war that they intend and hope to be permitted to cooperate to the fullest possible extent with the United Nations, which have stood beside them in their hour of peril, when peace comes. They have abolished world communism. They have restored complete freedom of religion. Is it not reasonable to suppose that they will go still further and revert not only to the normal seven-day week with its name days and months as we observe them, but agree to a common calendar as well; a calendar which 14 nations have now approved and which seems destined sooner or later to become a calendar for world-wide use? I believe that this will be Russia’s disposition; that, if for no other reason, she will adopt this new World Calendar as a gesture of her determination to work in harmony and in the closest association with the American, British and Chinese peoples when the war drums throb no longer and the battle flags are furled.
WESTWARD JOURNEY TAKES LESS FOOD
By Dr. C. H. Cleminshaw
From The Griffith Observer, Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, February, 1942
OTEAMSHIP companies would save money by running all their world tours to the west, because an eastward journey around the world consumes six more meals than a westward one. As one goes eastward, he sets his watch ahead and eats each meal a little sooner than a person who stays at home. When he gets back he finds that he has eaten three more meals than the rest of us. A traveler to the west sets his watch back and eats each meal a little later than a stay-at-home. He misses out on three meals. The difference between the two journeys is six meals. Those who wish to reduce their weight should take a world cruise to the west.

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STUDENT OF POSTWAR
PLANNING ADVOCATES
NEW CALENDAR NOW
By E. C. Rayner
E. C. Rayner, Editor and Publisher of the newly established Postwar Digest, which he terms “The Weekly Digest of Postwar Thinking,” is a writer, magazine creator and publication owner of note. He established the magazines Radio Digest, Advertising Agency, American Culture, and compiled and edited the Book of 500 Successful Advertising Plans and Ideas. No student and critic of postwar projects and plans, upon which the coming peacetime world order and prosperity must be rebuilt, is better qualified to write upon the subject currently.
WHAT is postwar planning?
It is hard to define, I would say, but surely it encompasses decisions and accomplishments which must be made and be recorded today, so that they may work out and reflect advantageously for all of us in the happy days to come when victory and world peace have been won.
Certainly postwar planning must be done today, without delay.
A comparative newcomer into the limelight of newspaper headlines and news pictures, the powerful Henry J. Kaiser, of ships, and dams, and planes, and steel, recently said:
“There is no need to belittle the conscientious planning which has been undertaken, but we are in grave danger of talking the postwar program to death. The time for doing has come. The specifications for postwar production should be under way. There should be a great inventory of projects on the shelves of American enterprise, ready for postwar delivery.”
Unquestionably the blueprints for postwar planning should be drafted and printed today, to be read and approved and projected.
Another voice has been raised, that of the editor of Steel Magazine, an important trade publication which speaks for the important steel industry. E. L. Shaner, who vzrites currently in that monthly paper, editorializes as follows:
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“You hear many arguments pro and con on the subject of postwar planning now. Some say we must forget it—that it detracts from winning the war. Others say, without planning, victory may only usher in defeat— defeat of everything for which we are fighting.
“It seems reasonable that to meet new problems successfully you must know what problems to expect. That requires study and analysis. To be prepared to do something about it when the right moment arrives calls for planning beforehand. It is the function of the military to make plans for war. It is the function of business to make the plans for peace.
“Such preparation and planning does not imply any sacrifice of maximum productive output nor any limitations of -ingenuity on behalf of winning the war. For certainly no one can accuse American business of having a one-track mind. It has always proved itself as capable of tremendous doing and farsighted thinking at one and the same time. To bring the boys home at the earliest possible date is the purpose which motivates all industry.
“But, we have another responsibility to these boys. It is, to be ready to go when they do come home—ready to launch plans that will give them what they most want, an opportunity to work and attain things and advan-ages they’ve been dreaming about over there. Let’s not be responsible for an Industrial Pearl Harbor.”
A confidential survey made by the Office of War Information among American soldiers at the war fronts reveals that one of their chief worries has to do with whether they can get their old jobs—or any jobs, for that matter—when they do get back home. When, and if, OWI decides to release these figures, American business men will have something startling to think about. It is not known just how far this soldier survey extended.
However, in one large combat unit, men were given blank paper and asked to write down just what was on their minds. There were no promptings of any kind, it is understood, and papers were turned in unsigned so no check of individuals could be made. Tabulated results showed that the postwar job outlook was the dominant topic in the soldiers’ thinking today. This should be a powerful stimulant in the project of postwar planning.
That “Puck” comic strip character, Snuffy Smith, whose frequent and famous expression, “time’s a-wastin’,” has the right idea about getting into action, though he frequently leaps before he looks, creating humorous difficulties and disasters over which his followers laugh no end.
We must not waste time, but should now definitely plan and project both in industry and agriculture for the assured employment of millions when the war is over for these United States or we will be courting disaster, and it is no laughing matter. Our national security is at stake, and the peace and continued security of the world can be seriously affected if we do not plan well, and “time’s a-wastin’.”
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For private enterprise and the American way of life in postwar days, Eric Johnston, President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, warned in a recent address:
“Unless private enterprise can assure the worker of full employment after the war, the American people may decide to trade their freedom for some other form of government. Management will meet the challenge but industry must have some assurance with respect to their own security.
“This warning should be framed in large letters over every executive desk in Washington. But manufacturers should remember no public relations campaign conceivable can sell free enterprise to the American people, or any other people, unless free enterprise can show accomplishment.
“The people of Germany and Italy put security before freedom, and England, seeking security, is now leaning to the left. But we do not have to look beyond our own doorstep to Europe for proof. It was provided for us here in the United States during the thirties. And what was a prewar trend could become a postwar actuality.”
For the American worker on the farm, the United States Department of Agriculture predicts ample employment in postwar days. Government economists and farm officials are of the opinion that American farmers will have a market far greater than their ability to produce for at least five years after the war. The predictions are based on the prospect that the United States will have to send abroad for relief and rehabilitation even more food than it is now sending for lend-lease and military purposes.
Domestically the United States has never supplied its own population with enough of the right kinds of food to sustain good health as a whole. If our American people are permitted to buy all the food they want at present prices and conditions of a high level of employment, they will take all that farmers will be producing. Farm officials, on the basis of hopes that industrial production will be maintained at high levels in the postwar days, are planning to improve agricultural production and economic and social conditions of our farmers.
Officials estimate that at least 300,000 new farms would be needed to supply all food requirements from the United States. To make additional land available for settlement would require irrigation, drainage and clearing. It is estimated that there are something like 30 to 40 million acres of such land. Of this total 10 to 20 million acres could be reclaimed in Western states through irrigation, and another five million acres of fertile land in the Mississippi River delta through drainage.
About 15 million acres requiring drainage and clearing are located at various points over the country. Part of 20 million acres acquired by the Army and Navy could be returned to cultivation, to provide farms for at least 25,000 families. It has been suggested that this land, as well as reclaimed land, should be held for veterans. The reclamation program would
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be an important part of public works to provide employment during the reconversion and demobilization period at the war’s end.
One of America’s best known industrial designers, Raymond Loewy, warns of the danger of what he calls “postwar dream propaganda.” He recently wrote for The New York Times on this subject, and I quote in part:
“There is not a field that has not at some time been exposed to postwar dream treatment. Manufactured items that will afford shelter, clothing, food, health, travel, recreation, would seem to be trembling upon new thresholds of improvement. But the man who expects to turn his war bonds into a packaged home may have to wait longer than he now supposes. That nasty little element of time is the sticking-point in all this.
“The tendency of the average reader to skip happily over references to two years or more after the war may be the undoing of many reliable manufacturers of normal goods. Impression, consciously or unconsciously, is being made upon the consuming public which it may be difficult to temper. Product engineers see dangers of such propaganda.
“Two consequences of this public miseducation threaten—lag in buying and loss of confidence in industry’s potentialities. At the very time when mass employment is imperative, lag could have serious economic consequences.
“Unless the resumption model is accepted, successive advanced design will be delayed indefinitely. There is no reason this model should not be accepted. It is a good, tried and tested product.”
An equally prominent and forward-looking industrial designer and engineer, Walter Darwin Teague, is more optimistic as to the speed with which many new and improved products will be placed upon the postwar market, but states that in planning these products today for peacetime sale no designer or manufacturer is lessening his war production efforts.
“No one has diverted to postwar planning manpower hours which could be occupied in war work. But time has been found for thought and design to an extent that many postwar products are already well crystallized. Where it seems that major retooling will not be possible before the coming of peace, plans have been made to incorporate in prewar products all improvements that are feasible without major retooling; and plans for completely new and advanced products have been carried forward in time for these major changes.
“Competition after the war will be intense, unexpected, unprecedented. Shipbuilders will be making popular airplanes, airplane manufacturers will be making household appliances. Thousands of manufacturers who have got out of well-worn grooves in their war work will stay out and start making goods they never made before.
“It is my firm conviction, based on direct knowledge, that as soon as
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production can be resumed after victory, the public will be offered new and greatly improved models in most, if not all, lines of consumer goods. And, as soon as retooling and testing can be accomplished, new products will appear which will make the fanciful predictions that decorate our advertising pages today seem commonplace . . . [The public] does expect, with every right and justification, that major improvements will follow war just as fast as manufacturers can get them ready.”
The National Association of Manufacturers has reported, following its recent Postwar Industrial Research Survey, that, while “some armchair dreamers” paint fantastic pictures of a Utopian postwar world in which houses, automobiles, refrigerators and even human behavior will be revolutionized, this is idle fancy.
“More significant is the faith of scientists and engineers of American industry in the postwar future. Men of industry now are dealing with actual products and processes which Americans will enjoy within the next few years. Their testimony carries weight. It can be relied upon.
“It should be recognized that development contributing to faster, better and more efficient industrial production within industry is reflected in benefits to the consumer by way of lower prices and higher quality. Selling more goods at lower prices is America’s manufacturers’ road to profits, maximum employment and maximum benefit to consumers.”
The Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Wendell Berge, predicts that all of the postwar world will be our market and heralds an era of national prosperity and ample employment opportunities as soon as peace is won.
“A new industrial era is before us,” Mr. Berge believes. For example, he states: “Plastics and light metals will open up undreamed of horizons. Benefits from chemical developments are barely touched. Improved methods of transportation will amaze even the most farsighted.
“The American public and civilization as a whole will benefit from these technological improvements in direct relation to the extent of competition in these industries.
“All the world will be our market.
“We can pit the miracle of our mass production against the lethargizing effect of cheap labor in other countries—and we can bring competition to an even level. Disadvantage results only when we limit production and foster high prices. By so doing we surrender the advantages of our industrial perfection and reduce ourselves to competing solely on the basis of low wages.
“Rather than enter an era of controlled production and fixed prices, we should set our eyes toward the goal of unlimited production and the level of price advantage which flows from an economy of competitive enterprise. Such are the inherent rights of future Americans.”
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If we do go after and cooperate for this global market immediately following World War II, a vast majority of our postwar problems will have been solved, and certainly it would dissolve our greatest of all fears for coming peace days—that of unemployment. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce’s Committee on Economic Policy estimates that if postwar prosperity is to be achieved some 50 million Americans will have to have jobs, 11 million more or less who will return from service.
It would appear that the required high levels of employment for the postwar period can be achieved, for employers should have the incentives to put men to work with the greatly enhanced buying power of this nation’s public and the needs of the world to be met by America, or so the postwar picture looks today.
Emerson D. Schmidt, reporting for the CEP, says:
“In 1930 we had a shortage of employment offers because there was not sufficient incentive to induce employers to invest and expand. Utilization of all our manpower falls into two problems: (1) Using existing plant and equipment and (2) Creating new investment in providing jobs. Not only must the businessman have incentives to utilize what equipment he has, but in our type of society there must be constant expansion in employment facilities if we are to have prosperity. This is true for two reasons: (1) Our net labor supply increases annually at a rate of 700,000 people because of excess of births over deaths. (2) If saved portion of people’s income remains uninvested in real capital, this constitutes idle purchasing power and must bring stagnation.
“Prosperity is impossible without new investment. If safety of existing investments in factories, mines, forestry and service enterprises is impaired because of low earnings, incentives to make new investments in additional job-creating facilities will lag.
“Investment takes place only after careful prediction of the future. Every investment is an exercise in forecasting. Once dollars are converted into brick and mortar, into machines and equipment, these dollars become a sunk cost and as a rule they can be recovered only by making facilities profitable.”
Therefore the cry is for blueprints for the postwar world, so as to build wisely and well.
In this Chamber of Commerce report quoted above the economist, Emerson D. Schmidt, dismisses the short work-week for labor as no solution to labor problems. As he states, a “solution to unemployment is sought by reducing the length of the work-week, thus spreading employment. This is no real solution to the problem if we wish to hold our standard of living or increase it, because it divides up unemployment and does not materially increase output.”
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But in this blueprint for the postwar plans there is another “timing” and “saving” element which should be included now, before the war ends, to create a better and more orderly and efficient postwar world. I refer to r The World Calendar, of which I am an advocate.
There is no gainsaying the fact that The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters definitely simplifies office operation, manufacturing routine, industrial records, educational institutions and in fact all types of endeavor.
The fact that periods can be compared, that all days and dates remain constant year in and year out, that records and activities which must be planned anew each year become matters of mere routine, has convinced thousands of business men, educators, industrialists and retailers that this calendar should be adopted.
In view of the fact that this is the case, and that such organizations as the National Education Association, National Retail Dry Goods Association, New York State, Pittsburgh, Galveston and St. Louis Chambers of Commerce among others have either endorsed the calendar or have appointed study committees to investigate it, there can be no justifiable reason why the efforts toward adopting this calendar should be delayed until after the war.
The adoption of this calendar would assist war production, ease the burden of government accounting, and speed work all the way down the line. However, in spite of the support The World Calendar Association is receiving from innumerable organizations, should the adoption of the calendar be delayed until after the war, there is every reason why all the groundwork should now be laid in order that this should become a definite “must” at the peace table.
For the smooth adoption of The World Calendar, it is best to adopt it on the day, date and month when both the new World and the old Gregorian Calendars meet.
There are but few such dates: Saturday, December 30, 1944, when the following Sunday, December 31 in the Gregorian calendar, becomes the new World Holiday, extra Saturday, December W, in The World Calendar. Thus Sunday, January 1,1945, would see the new calendar in actual operation. The next date for adoption is Sunday, July 1, 1945, when both calendars meet.
In 1946 there are two dates: Friday, March 1, and Wednesday, May 1. Both these dates occur within the week, which is not as advantageous as the dates of 1944 and 1945. Action should be taken by the end of 1944 or the middle of 1945.
This becomes especially pertinent in view of the fact that 14 nations have already officially approved this orderly rearrangement of our present calendar. Unity and cooperation are without doubt one of the primary ob
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jectives of the Allied forces and the United Nations. It appears that this hoped-for unity could well be enhanced should the entire world establish a definite common denominator of time without delay.
Although the majority of nations now use the Gregorian calendar for their official correspondence, there are more people who do not use our Gregorian calendar in their personal life than those who do.
Therefore I advocate inclusion in the immediate drawing up of blueprints for pre-postwar planning of The World Calendar for adoption before World War II is over and the postwar period arrives. Make it a part of pre-postwar accomplishment for the better ordering of the new world we anticipate.
IT’S EASY—IF YOU HAVE THE TIME
INDICATIVE of the time wasted and the energy consumed in trying to find the day of the week of any date, we are indebted to Adam Rosenthal, a member of the St. Louis Advertising Club and manager of a life insurance agency in that city. Mr. Rosenthal has as a business card a formula by which the day of the week of any date can be ascertained, but the mental problems involved are, to say the least, complicated.
With his permission we are reproducing it below.
Add—(a) Century key
(b)	Year of century
(c)	One-fourth of that year (drop all fractions)
(d)	Month key
(e)	Date of month
Divide total by 7 and ignore quotient.
Remainder equals code for day of week.
Century Key	Month Key
1600	to 1699 is 4	*Jan. is	3	Jul.	is 2
1700	to 1799 is 2	*Feb. is	6	Aug.	is 5
1800	to 1899 is 0	Mar. is	6	Sept.	is 1
1900	to 1999 is 5	Apr. is	2	Oct.	is 3
2000	to 2099 is 4	May is	4	Nov.	is 6
		June is	0	Dec.	is 1
♦ In leap years Jan. is 2 and Feb. is 5
	Answer	Example:
1	Sunday	Date—Dec. 7, 1941
2	Monday	Add— (a) 5
3	Tuesday	(b) 41
4	Wednesday	(c) 10
5	Thursday	(d) 1
6	Friday	(e) 7
0	Saturday	
		7 | 64
(Memorize the form-		9 and 1 over
ula and baffle your friends.)		1 = Sunday
COPYRIGHT 1943. ADAM ROSENTHAL.
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U. S. DEPARTMENT HEAD GIVES ALTERNATE DATES FOR CALENDAR CHANGE
H. W. Bearce, Chief of the Division of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards, Department of Commerce, long interested in calendar change, has written many articles for the Journal of Calendar Reform. His department has been a constant source of information relative to past and future days and dates.
MUCH has been written regarding the earliest date on which The World Calendar can be put into operation. This date is Saturday, December 30, 1944, when both the Gregorian and The World Calendar coincide. The following day, December 31 in the old calendar, would then be the Year-End Day on the extra Saturday, the World Holiday, December W, in the new. Thus the day, Sunday, and the date, January 1, will be initiated as the beginning of the year for all future years.
However, The World Calendar could be put into effect without any perceptible jar to our social or economic structure at a time when the first day of a quarter, i.e., January 1, April 1, July 1, or October 1, falls on Sunday. It could, in fact, with no interruption or discontinuity of dates or days of the week, be put into use when the first day of the first month of any quarter falls on Sunday, the first day of the second month of any quarter falls on Wednesday, or the first day of the third month of any quarter falls on Friday.
There would, in fact, be certain advantages gained by adopting it at some time other than Sunday, January 1, 1945. The date that would serve admirably as a starting time would be July 1, 1945, when Saturday, June 30, 1945, is followed by Sunday, July 1, 1945. There is, therefore, no necessity for waiting until January 1, 1950, 1956, or 1961, when January 1 falls on Sunday, before putting The World Calendar into use.
For the sake of comparison it is worth while to place side by side the two calendars for Sunday, July 1, 1945, to Saturday, December 30, 1945. From July 1 to August 30, the calendars are identical, then they change by only one or two days. In The World Calendar, the old date, December 31, is
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changed to the new World Holiday, December W, and, as we have seen, the beginning of the year is Sunday, January 1, 1946.
[The chart for the third and fourth quarters follows, this according to Mr. Bearce’s design.]
Gregorian Caler.d.ar
Vorid, Calendar
The differences are seen to be slight; and yet by these changes the calendar becomes perpetual, dates and days of the week become stabilized, the quarters become equal, school schedules and holidays become fixed, and statistics for corresponding calendar periods become comparable.
Unnecessary delay would be avoided; the fiscal year of the Federal Government and many private businesses begins on July 1; time would be afforded to become familiar with the new calendar before anything at all unusual would be required. The transition from the old to the new would be so simple and easy that the change would scarcely be felt.
Are not these slight changes justified, in view of the advantages to be gained?
Two other dates on which the change can be made are on the first day of the third month in the first quarter, Friday, March 1, 1946, and on the first day of the second month in the second quarter, Wednesday, May 1, 1946. These other possibilities are not as good because they break into the quarter-year divisions and also into the week itself. Concentration should therefore be directed to either the Saturday, December 30th date, end of 1944, or Sunday, July 1, 1945. Between the years 1946 and 1950 no such date is available. It is wise, therefore, for the change to be made before 1947 if civilization is not to wait until Sunday, January 1, 1950.
In view of the many benefits to be gained with The World Calendar there is no logical reason for postponing its adoption to the second half of this century.
*The extra Saturday, December W, the Year-End Day or World Holiday, follows December SO.
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EDITORIAL JACK OF ALL
TRADES SEES HOPE
IN NEW WORLD CALENDAR
By Richard Stephenson
Probably Mr. Stephenson’s greatest bid for fame is as Editor of an authoritative primer on police work. This book, Police Methods for Today and Tomorrow, is widely read and is in the library of practically every police chief in America. Magazine editor, newspaper reporter, Mr. Stephenson has a wide experience in the publishing field. He was public relations counsel for the Brewery Industry Foundation, and served as a senior information officer with the United States Treasury Department for several years.
WHEN you’re a reporter, writer, author and public relations counsel, the calendar doesn’t mean too much to you. Life seems to roll around in a succession of days, some dull, some exciting and— of course—every one filled with back-breaking or skull-breaking work.
Pay days, if there were any that came with any regularity, always seemed to be fixed on a Friday. There was an exception to this rule, and it was when I was a publicity man for the Treasury Department. Then, pay days rolled around on the 1st and the 15th.
This was the first time that I realized the calendar could play tricks on a fellow. Some of the' older employees, veterans in the service of Uncle Sam, would occasionally bemoan the fact that they had to wait or to work two or three days longer between certain pay periods. And their songs of woe were seconded, in a much sweeter tone, by my good wife, who would point logically to the fact that it was necessary to tread lightly for a few days if we didn’t want the wolf to have pups on our doorstep.
The wolf, I might point out, and I are friends of old. He’s never been very far from my doorstep—or from me.
Of course, during the days when I was a reporter, covering the court house of a big industrial county, I’d curse the legal phraseology of the courts and the books of law from time to time. Elections are usually held on the Tuesday following the first (or is it the second?) Monday in Novem
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ber. Or, the Supreme Court would convene, by some neat legal masterminding, so I thought, on such and such a Tuesday after such and such a Monday in such and such a month. I’d have to tell the eager public all about that, after resorting to the calendar for a few minutes.
Then, I’d be able to write a paragraph or two, saying that the court would be in session on Tuesday, September 18, or 19, or whatever it happened to be.
I didn’t take the time to figure out that those ponderous announcements were dictated by the tricks the calendar we’re living by could and does play on courts of law, and our entire economic and social system.
The Federal Income Tax being a popular subject at the moment, brings to mind an occurrence during my Treasury days. The 15th, that fatal 15th, fell on a Sunday. What made it a particularly obnoxious and terrifying 15th was that the quarterly income tax payments fell due. The Internal Revenue Bureau, from Commissioner Guy Helvering (now a Federal Judge) on down to the 64 Collectors throughout the country and its possessions, announced with great clarity and frequency that payments received as of midnight Monday, the 16th, would be credited without penalty.
Despite these announcements, some of which I had an active hand in, hundreds and thousands of queries came in to swamp the beleaguered and overworked staff of deputies. A city editor with an inquisitive twist to his mind posed a question that I’ll confess I couldn’t and wouldn’t try to answer. It was: How much did the Government lose in interest on the two-day lapse in income deposits necessitated by the day’s grace?
If your income tax isn’t giving you enough trouble you might try to figure that one out on your next sleepless night. It might be better than counting sheep.
The fact that a great many business men, and the number is growing by leaps and bounds, are giving some serious thinking to this question of the calendar, was driven home to me.
A friend of mine who publishes a daily paper met me shortly after New Year’s Day. He was mad, mad clear through. He has a reputation, I might point out, for his business acumen and frugality. In other words, he makes money out of running a newspaper and likes it.
His tale of woe ran thusly: Christmas fell on a Friday last year. He and his staff tried to decide how many papers to publish on the Saturday following Christmas. It seems that about half the store owners decided to lock their doors on that Saturday, while the other half were going to stay open.
By the Wednesday before Christmas he was in a quandary. His astute circulation manager confessed, with a fallen face, that he couldn’t figure out how many papers would be sold on the corners and in the stores, while
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the advertising manager admitted that he didn’t know how many columns of advertising the Saturday issue would carry.
The result was bad—very bad. My friend the publisher still refuses to tell how many thousands of papers he was stuck with on the Saturday following the Christmas that fell on Friday. And the loss wasn’t confined to the paper stock alone. Think of the labor costs that were added to the debit side of that day’s books I
It didn’t make my friend feel any better to console him with the thought that thousands of other publishers throughout the country were in the same boat. But it did give us some new inkling of the confusion that arises from a calendar that won’t stay put.
It might be human nature, but these men, who shrug their shoulders if they guess wrong at the track or on the Yanks, Dodgers or some prize fighter, fly into a towering rage if proved wrong at their given trade or profession. And so it goes with a calendar that refuses to remain the same year after year. These shifting dates and wavering holidays are as dangerous to the publishing business, and any other commerce for that matter, as the shifting quicksands on some beach area. To paraphrase the night club M.C.: “it ain’t good.”
Of course, there are times when the variations in the present calendar aren’t funny. One of the most striking examples of these is the fund drives that the welfare associations put on annually.
I had some first-hand experience with these welfare agencies when I wrote publicity for the Newark Welfare Federation. This agency was the central fund-raising vehicle for 55 private relief agencies that devoted their every effort toward alleviating the distressing conditions among the poor of Newark. One month was devoted to the fund raising. It took these agencies about one million dollars a year to operate. They needed this money badly—needed it because their patients or clients needed the services these monies provided them with.
Thus, every day was important, extremely important, during campaign time. Every day during the drive so much money had to be pledged by the residents and workers of Newark. Time was of the essence. Campaigns are seldom extended beyond the date publicly announced for their closing. Thus, money had to flow into the coffers of the Federation day and night during the month picked for the drive. And if there were more than four Sundays during the campaign month, it meant a falling off in revenue.
The reason for this is obvious: Volunteer workers devoting as much of their day as possible and all of their nights during a busy campaign week are plum played out at the end of the week. By the time Sunday rolls around they need rest. They have to have it in order to carry on during the next week at their own jobs and the work of fund-raising.
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Given The World Calendar, there would be none of these problems. There would be none of the monetary losses that some campaigns for such worthy causes as welfare work suffer because of the extra Sunday or Saturday that turned out to be the first of the month. This calendar offers gratuitously a perfect plan with every quarter a perfect unit of an even 91 days, or 13 weeks or 3 months, approximating one season. And, in addition, every day and date agrees year in, year out.
The present tricky calendar of ours assumed greater significance during the time I worked as an editor for one of the larger publishing groups. Magazines are planned months in advance. Closing dates, the day when the last “t” is crossed and the last “i” dotted, are inexorable. You observe them or else.
But in order to turn out a magazine that will stand up against the competitors’, a great deal of elasticity must prevail in the editorial and mechanical departments. You live with that changing calendar in front of you. Sometimes a quarter will have 92 days, sometimes 90 days. Whichever way you figured it, there was always overtime.
Little things contribute to the success or failure of any venture. And the circulation of any magazine or paper depends on little things. If for some reason or other—an extra holiday or a month with more Sundays than Saturdays—a magazine fails to reach the stands when it should, there can be trouble.
The minor delay of a day or two gives the hard-riding and zealous competition a head start. The entire national sale is affected, the advertising proposals must be changed to meet the loss in circulation. Then, there is the disgruntled dealer who loses a sale and the regular reader who takes another “book” and perhaps likes it better than yours.
All this woe because of the calendar, that is so hopelessly without plan, wherein nothing fits.
Among other things, I’ve written a police textbook. And I’ve spent a lot of time in civil and criminal courts. Dates play a major part in any court action. So important a part, that if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a lawyer level his finger at some hapless person in the witness box and thunder, “Where were you on such and such a date?” I’d retire to the sunny South for life.
And, as I look back at the countless thousands of people I’ve met, I realize how important The World Calendar is to every man jack of them. Lawyers, judges, court officers, editors, publishers, business men, advertisers, government workers and ad infinitum.
What with war, taxes and just everyday living, life is complicated enough without the annoyance, the unnecessary annoyance, of a shifting, tricky calendar.
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“CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS”
BY WAY OF ARTHUR HALE
A nation-wide audience, according to Mutual Broadcasting System consisting of more than 15 million people, tunes in on Arthur Hale’s “Confidentially Yours” six days a week. Through the efforts of Transradio News, this commentator gives to his listening audience facts and figures not usually a part of the news stories you read each day in your newspapers. They are behind-the-scene word pictures about people and events, so interestingly presented that Arthur Hale’s “Confidentially Yours” is considered one of the top radio features. Below we give a portion of his broadcast for October 1, 1943.
WE have stories for you tonight about one of New York’s most interesting women, and about one of this city’s most unusual organizations.
One of New York’s most interesting individuals is Miss Elisabeth Achelis, who is devoting most of her time—and a great deal of money—to a campaign for adoption of a new World Calendar—a calendar which would become common to all nations.
Unlike many workers for many causes, Miss Achelis is not seeking profit. In fact, she is independently wealthy, and personally pays a portion of the expenses of The World Calendar movement which now has many thousands of members in the United States and 31 affiliated calendar committees in other nations.
The World Calendar, simply explained, calls for a calendar dividing the year into four quarters of three months each. Each quarter would have 91 days, the first month having 31 days and the remaining two months, 30 days each. The 365th day of the year would become a World Holiday, and the extra day in leap year would be taken care of by another holiday. Under this plan, the days of the month would always fall on the same day of the week, and holidays would be on the same day every year.
Fourteen nations have formally endorsed the idea of the common calendar and agreed to adopt it when other nations do. Now, Miss Achelis hopes that The World Calendar may become a reality even before the nations sit down at the postwar peace table.
The World Calendar Association sees a possible entering wedge in
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Russia’s calendar difficulties. After the revolution Russia abolished the Gregorian calendar, used in most of the English speaking world.
The name-days of the week such as Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., vanished from the minds of the Russian people. In place of it there was established a purely Russian calendar which called for five days of work known as first, second, third, fourth and fifth day. The five days were followed by a sixth identified on the Russian calendar simply as Free or Rest Day. When Russia returned to the six-day work-week another calendar was introduced which provided for the seventh day as Free or Rest Day. Rest days were staggered in the interests of non-stop production. In order to minimize confusion, workers were given cards of different colors, the color denoting which was to be the worker’s particular weekly rest day.
Foreign office officials in Moscow and those charged with the responsibility of dealing with foreign nations in the matter of trade were faced with the confusion of having to bear in mind the days of the week and dates as they applied to other nations including those using the Gregorian calendar. Time and again Russian officialdom has publicly admitted the difficulties under which the country labored owing to its calendar problems.
Recent correspondence indicates that there is a possibility that Russia may adopt The World Calendar—although Moscow hesitates to confuse her situation still further and will not take the action unless she is convinced that the other major powers will follow suit.
1944 CALENDAR CONTRAST CARDS READY
AS has been the practice for the past several years, The World Calendar Association has again printed calendar contrast cards.
Printed on cream color stock with the legend in blue, these calendars for 1944 briefly and concisely, and, one might say, at a single glance tell the convincing story of The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters.
It has become the habit for many people interested in calendar reform to write the Association for a supply of these small but useful calendars. An adequate supply is on hand so that those who want the calendar contrast cards for 1944 for personal use or for distribution among friends can be assured that they will not be disappointed.

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THE COUNT AND
THE CALENDAR
(A satirical fable)
By George Kent, Former Director of Public Information, League of Nations Association of the U. S. A.
MY friend, Count d’Idio, is a refreshing contrast to most people I know. The others think only of getting things done quickly, efficiently; they think only of their comfort. They crowd their kitchens with labor-saving devices, ride in the latest model cars—when they can get them—sleep and lounge on soft, springy beds and couches.
Not so the Count. He adores the difficult and roundabout. When offered an innerspring mattress he sighs aloud for the days when he slept on the ground with a rock for a pillow. Turning on a chromium faucet, he remarks, “Comfortable, yes—but it’s better to take a pail and walk a half-mile to a spring for your water. Then you appreciate it.”
To all the comforts and short-cuts of modern life, he has the same retort: “Effete, debilitating I” I have known the Count for a long time and I cannot help observing that between the words and actions of the Count there is a wide divergence. I have observed that he sprawls an inordinately long time on the mattresses he disdains, that far from walking great distances for his water, he will not walk the steps necessary to have his breakfast in the dining room but insists on having it served in bed.
To everybody his inconsistencies, say I.
But it is the Count’s outspoken opinions on problems of the day that interest me most. He is as set against all change and progress as he is (verbally) against plumbing and good beds. On the subject of the calendar he is particularly forthright.
“I love the old calendar,” he says. “It’s crude and difficult, of course— but so is nature. The old calendar makes a man think when he wants to discover a date. And that’s a splendid thing. What is the mind for if not to think? Besides, it cultivates the sense of poesy in the people; my happiest moments have been spent incanting: Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. .. .”
Usually he will add: “We must do things the hard way if we are to develop our characters, and if civilization is to survive. And the old calendar is hard and wrong and awkward. Best of all, it has naught to do with
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the modern tempo. This mechanical era of ours, in which everything clicks and moves with the maximum of efficiency, requires, no doubt, a new calendar, more in the spirit of the time. But I’m naturally against all this.
“The calendar is to this age what the spinning wheel is—a reminder of old times, a breath of antiquity floating through the twentieth century.”
Arrant nonsense, you will say. Certainly. But the Count quite convinces himself of his own arguments. Yet I remember a day when his actions seemed to belie his words as far as the calendar was concerned. If I remember rightly, he actually cursed our “spinning-wheel system” of reckoning time.
Descendant of an old Spanish family, possessor of a gaudy coat of arms, the Count is poor and is obliged now and then to work for a living. The episode I have in mind occurred at a time when the Count was in love with a sweet girl of my acquaintance who had the great merit of being wealthy. A marriage with the young lady, he was convinced, would assure him a life of happiness and he was doing everything possible to bring this desirable event to pass.
The opportunity for such a consummation arrived in the form of an invitation from the girl’s family to spend a day at their place in the country, a village so remote that there was only one train a day to be had by anyone who wanted to visit it. The Count accepted the invitation and made his preparations.
He was then working in New York and on the Saturday morning he was to set out for the country, he received a check for services he had rendered one of his occasional employers. The check was important for it represented all the money the Count possessed at the time. The train left at noon and so at 11 o’clock the Count, suitcase in hand, presented the check at the bank for cashing.
The teller glanced at the check and pushed it back through the wicket. “Sorry,” he said, “wrong date.” The Count examined the check, stared at the date, saw nothing wrong, pushed it back again. “How do you mean, sir?” he queried indignantly. “There is nothing wrong with the date.”
The bank clerk sighed and put his finger on the date. “Mister,” he said, “whoever gave you the check needs a calendar. Remember, Thirty days hath September . . . well, this check is dated September 31 and there ain’t no such date. If you can get whoever gave you the check to write you another one with the correct date, I’ll be glad to cash it.”
The Count swore as only a Spaniard can swear. He damned the calendar with its irregular, unbalanced system of reckoning time, this way, that way, up and down, purgatory, hell, and from every one of the 409 angular degrees of limbo—and dashed from the bank to telephone. It was Saturday, drawing close to noon, and he had to wait for a booth. His employer was out but was expected soon. The Count chartered a taxi, dashed for the
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office and when he arrived had to wait 15 minutes before the man, who had committed the error in the dating, arrived.
A stout good-natured man, this employer, he cackled over the error he had made. “Never was able to keep those things straight in my mind, why doesn’t somebody change the darned calendar? It’s as old fashioned as shoe buttons.”
The Count stood there pale and thin lipped, as the man wrote a new check. No cash was available. The check was the best he could do for the scion of Spanish grandees. To make a long story short, the Count missed the train and, in missing it, lost the girl. At least that is what I’ve been told. Life is full of grotesque episodes of this kind.
Count d’ldio, I understand, returned to his little apartment where hung a calendar presented to him by the local grocer, a lovely thing featuring a basket of fish. And there he spent 15 minutes firing both barrels of his shotgun at the pad of misshapen dates. The superintendent of the house summoned the police and the Count was taken to court. This part of the story is a matter of record and can be found in the files of the Seventh Magistrate’s Court in New York City.
The Judge, a sympathetic individual, saw the logic of the Count’s action, and released him with this remark:
“Young man, you only did what all of us have wanted to do to the calendar at one time or another. But remember you can’t reform the calendar with a shotgun.”
Count d’ldio, a jewel of inconsistency, never quite forgot the incident but often I have heard him rhapsodizing over that sign of a bygone age— the present calendar. “It’s a rough-hewn instrument,” he says, “like the wooden plowshare. It is a monument.”
To me privately he said under his breath, after one of these discourses, “Imagine sewing up a rip in your pants with a monument. Imagine a WAC or a lady welder in a crinoline. That’s the twentieth century with the old calendar.”
To every man his idiosyncracies, say I. Confidentially, let me say that in Count d’ldio, who talks against beds but sleeps in them, who berates plumbing but wallows in hot water, we have a typically ardent supporter of the streamlined calendar, especially one like the perpetual World Calendar of equal quarters, wherein days and dates stay put, a calendar which modernizes without destroying.

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THE THIRD MILLION
WAS THE EASIEST
By Joe Roberts, Press Representative, “Stars On Ice,” Center Theatre, Rockefeller Center.
IT was in the summer of 1940 that Miss Sonja Henie, three-time Olympic winner and tenth consecutive world’s figure-skating champion, together with Arthur M. Wirtz, Chicago executive and operator of the huge Chicago Stadium, made arrangements with G. S. Eyssell, managing director of the Center Theatre, to convert the Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center into America’s first and only ice theater.
The premiere of “It Happens on Ice,” on the evening of October 10, 1940, found in the audience many of Broadway’s foremost actors, national political figures and New York socialites.
More than three million people have paid to see the first and second editions of “It Happens on Ice,” and the first two editions of “Stars on Ice,” of which the second is still playing at the Center Theatre. It is believed that this combined figure established a new all-time high in attendance for a legitimate show in New York.
Even the most optimistic of Broadway showmen gave the ice show at the most sixty days when it opened in 1940. A combination of excellence in performance, special features, the manner in which it is produced, together with careful planning, has made all of these pessimistic show veterans “eat their words.”
After all, ice reviews on a mammoth scale are only about seven years old. In the spring of 1936, Miss Henie and Mr. Wirtz, she the glamour girl of the silvery surfaces, and he a successful businessman, recognized in each other something that was needed to bring ice skating as stage entertainment to the heights of their conception of what it should be.
So they planned a production of stature in keeping with the finest traditions of the musical comedy stage.
In this production only seven years ago, Miss Henie appeared as a star in the first huge all professional ice carnival at the Chicago Stadium. She has made skating history.
Today, as co-producer of “Stars on Ice,” she finds time to present and is ^starred in the “Hollywood Ice Review,” a touring ice show on the road
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less than three months, playing to thousands of people in the principal cities of America.
The operation of the Center Theatre is big business beyond the conception of the average member in the audience. There are one hundred and one champion skaters in the cast. An orchestra of sixteen musicians led by David Mendoza, furnishes the special music for this extravaganza. The pay roll of the non-professional people is huge, because the stage crew, the engineers for the ice plant, publicity, box office and executive staffs number over one hundred.
The ice plant is a factory in its own right. Fifty tons of ice are manufactured every twenty-four hours to make this novel stage possible. Someone with a sharp pencil has figured that this would supply a city of ten thousand people with ice sufficient for their needs. Bringing these figures nearer to earth, it means that two thousand homes could be supplied with fifty pounds of ice each, a day.
The stage, ice covered, includes forty-two hundred square feet, and is one hundred feet wide and sixty feet deep. The brine necessary to cover this vast stage with ice one inch deep is circulated through a total of more than thirteen thousand feet of pipe. The plant is never turned off.
It is in operation twenty-four hours a day. But the operation of this huge plant does not approximate the headaches that are occasioned by the production of the show itself. More than ninety members of the company and the theater staff have been called to active military service. Three members of that famous quartet, “The Four Bruises,” are with the armed forces. Such famous skaters as Skippy Baxter, Neil Rose, Meryl Baxter, and Tommy Lee are among those who have answered the call of their country.
But the Army and the Navy are not the only factors with which Catherine Littlefield, the director, has to contend. Romance has blossomed nineteen times, and of these nineteen couples three have produced offspring who will probably be skating at the Center Theatre ice show when they reach the ripe old age of seventeen.
The cast does nine shows a week, including Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday matinee. There are six night shows, with no production either Monday afternoon or Monday night.
In spite of this continual grind, William H. Burke, the executive director, finds time to take the entire show to West Point each year, where it is produced on the Army ice rink. One thousand tickets a week go to soldiers and sailors. These are distributed through the USO. Arrangements have been made to entertain wounded soldiers from the Halloran Hospital on Staten Island and the Naval Hospital at St. Albans.
The hazards and the worries that confront those producing “Stars on
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Ice” are mirrored up and down Broadway and wherever paid entertainment is a factor. Few people realize the terrific overhead, the staggering obligations and the involved hazards in the operation of places of entertainment in this country. Jimmy Durante, in eight crowded weeks at the Copacabana, grossed an excess of $233,000. When Harry James played the Paramount Theater, the first week showed $105,000 in the box office. Playing at the Strand Theater, Jimmy Dorsey topped this figure with $112,000.
It was only a year or so ago that Frank Sinatra, a New Jersey boy who has something in his voice that, as his press agent says, makes women swoon, was earning $75 a week. Today he receives $2,000 a week for his night club appearances, an extra $1,000 for singing three songs on the Hit Parade, and Columbia has received orders for more than seven hundred thousand records of “All or Nothing at All.”
Bea Wayne, recently featured on the Hit Parade and the “Magic Key” programs, gets royalties from two million, five hundred thousand copies of “Deep Purple” alone.
It takes money, lots of money, to pay these salaries, not taking into consideration the huge pay rolls that accumulate from lesser but well-paid performers. But it is not all velvet. There are long hours of rehearsal. Few people know of the nerve-racking days spent in perfecting a production.
People in the “seats on the aisle” mildly or wildly applaud a number or an actor, never realizing, whether it is a featured skating number or maybe a few hot licks by a well-known clarinetist, the gigantic investment in time, temper and energy that has gone into that one bit of the show.
It takes upwards to $100,000 to produce a well-balanced musical comedy or icetravaganza. The financial hazard is only approximated by playing the stock market on small margins.
But Miss Henie and Mr. Wirtz, two of the keenest “showmen” in the business, felt that they really had something in their pioneering with ice shows. The success with which they have met has been the result of capable planning, instinctive showmanship, keen assistants, and exertion of the greatest kind.
Of these, not the least to play a major part in this phenomenal success was care in planning. And this extended from Marie Kennedy, the wardrobe mistress, up the executive ladder to G. S. Eyssell, the managing director of the Center Theatre itself. In this planning, the calendar did and does play a definite and distinct part.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have had to refer to the calendar during this run to determine days upon which additional advertising should appear. Week-ends interrupted by holidays, months with extra Sat
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urdays or extra Sundays when additional thought of necessity had to be given the advertising appropriations add to our worries.
The same condition obtains from the box office or front of the house to the back stage. Every executive must make constant reference to the calendar, whether it be in anticipation of the delivery of new costumes, the cleaning and repairing of old ones, or the number of people required as ushers. And all this because the calendar changes every year, having no definite plan.
In every phase of show business, not only at the Center Theatre, but throughout the entertainment world, the calendar plays a basic part. Name bands on tour must plan their itinerary to avoid certain “dead nights.” Dramas as well as musical comedies must anticipate with the keenest care opening dates, jumps from one city to another, the apportionment of advertising money, and good nights and bad nights.
For example, the average show has a matinee every Wednesday afternoon. Should, with our wandering calendar, a holiday occur on Wednesday, that show suffers the loss of one performance, because, as a rule, holidays call for an extra matinee. So you can readily see that a calendar that does not “stay put,” with holidays running helter skelter, can cause people in show business a terrific headache.
That is why so many men in this business, producers, press representatives, directors and accountants alike, see in The World Calendar of twelve months and equal quarters a way out of this dilemma because it is so well planned. Not only would a great amount of time be saved, time which could well be directed to extra efforts, but a formula would come into being which would make possible a definite plan of action in the front of the house as well as the back of the house.
This calendar plan would be of utmost benefit as well to those who depend upon the show business in part for their volume. Delivery dates for costumes, scenery and equipment could be more definitely established. Newspaper schedules would naturally become practically routine.
As a matter of fact, I can see no phase of the entertainment business wherein this simple rearrangement of our present calendar would not be of the utmost benefit. To paraphrase one of the “Four Bruises”: “What’s holding us up ?”
OK9
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TEXAS PROFESSOR
SUGGESTS PLAN TO
GET STUDENT HELP
J. W. Baldwin, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Texas, interested in The World Calendar, has developed the nucleus of a plan which would enlist the support of students and instructors alike. His ideas are so basic they cannot help but impress anyone interested in calendar reform. These ideas, expressed in a letter, are reprinted in part below.
NOTHING has impressed me more forcefully and more favorably in a long time than The World Calendar. It is the most practical proposal for a reform of the present crazy-quilt calendar which we have racked our brains over for centuries. What a boon to mankind would be the adoption of the calendar which you propose!
The bulletins which you sent me have been studied in my classes which are preparing teachers for social studies in the secondary schools, and have impressed these teachers and prospective teachers as offering an opportunity for a reform of the present calendar which it would be tragic to ignore. I have handed some of the bulletins to members of the University faculty, and after brief examination their comments have been, “What are we waiting for?” Not one has failed to register enthusiasm.
I am wondering what would be the best way to get this information to a much larger percentage of the educators than those who now have it. Do you have any plan for getting the information into the hands of college professors, and through them into the hands of college students?
I should be glad to assist in any way I can to help you with such a plan in this University of 700 instructors and 11,500 (peacetime) students— about 8,000 at present. It seems to me that from my office or from the office of the President, or from some other center on the campus, copies of this bulletin might be sent to all members of the staff through faculty mail with a cover letter requesting that they be brought to the attention of students in their classes or passed on to others who might be interested, or returned through faculty mail to the one who sent them for redistribution to other people in teaching positions or positions of leadership in the community.
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The high school principal on the campus just passed my office and said: “I want to get started on that calendar now.” It seems to me that it is not a matter of getting backing for this reform, but a matter of bringing it to the attention of people who would be glad to push it with the proper authorities. Would it not be wise, if you have not done so, to send copies of these bulletins to county and city superintendents, and to state departments of public instruction, and so forth?
It looks like you really have something which does not have to be sold, but merely presented. It sells itself. One cannot fail to see the advantages in hundreds of ways. I shall take the matter up with any group meetings where it is convenient here, and undertake other efforts which you may suggest.
The students who are taking my courses with the intention of teaching in the public schools this year are taking their copies of the bulletin with them to use in their schools and communities.
AMATEUR ATHLETIC UNION ENDORSES CALENDAR
The Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, under the supervision of which practically all of America’s amateur athletic contests are conducted, at its annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, December 4, unanimously endorsed The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters.	'
The formal resolution follows:
“The Amateur Athletic Union of the United States looks with favor upon the adoption of The World Calendar and urges the Congress of the United States to give serious and speedy consideration to the adoption thereof.”
The World Calendar Study Committee, headed by Gustavus T. Kirby, Chairman of the Westchester County Planning Commission and long associated with amateur athletics, had previously given no little study to The World Calendar plan. The action of the Union followed the recommendation of this Committee.
It was brought out in a discussion that a calendar that “stays put,” wherein every day and date remains the same, year in and year out, would be of indisputable value to an organization beset as the Union is by the intricacies of athletic events involving practically every amateur body in the United States.
The influence of the Amateur Athletic Union is tremendous and includes supervision of all types of amateur athletic contests, from inter-scholastic meets to the preparation and development of American participants in the Olympic games. This Union’s appreciation of the need for a stabilized calendar can but be the thinking and the reasoning of those business men, school authorities and amateur sportsmen making up its list of divisional heads, directors and officers.

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CALENDAR REFORM
ACROSS EIGHTEEN CENTURIES
As shown by source materials available in the Columbia University Library
By Bertha M. Frick, with the collaboration of S. A. Ives
This installment which deals with England’s problems of calendar adoption concludes the article prepared by the Curator of the Plimpton, Smith and Dale Libraries of Columbia University. The previous installment appeared in the Third, Quarter issue of the Journal of Calendar Reform.
V
ALTHOUGH the reform had won in Italy and other Catholic countries, it was by no means universally accepted. No attempt will be made “ here to recount its struggles in all the countries of Europe but it is of special interest to witness its fate in England, since this determined the policy of the American colonies in the matter. Recalling the effective work of the thirteenth-century Englishmen (Grosseteste and Roger Bacon) in pointing out the errors in the calendar, it might be expected that succeeding generations would have continued on the way so well begun. But one will look in vain for such a logical development.
It is easy to understand the fate of the “Popish Calendar” in England if one recalls the strife between the Catholics and Protestants at that time. In 1570, Pope Pius V had issued an edict excommunicating Queen Elizabeth; a few years later, Pope Gregory himself had attempted to depose Elizabeth by force of arms. Considering the times, a great deal of credit should be given to Elizabeth for paying any attention whatsoever to her archenemy’s proposals for calendar reform. However, on receiving notice of the intended change, she called upon the learned John Dee, the supreme scientific authority in England at the time, to give his opinion on the matter. On February 26, 1582, he submitted his report to Elizabeth’s minister, Lord Burghley, under the flourishing title, A Playne Discourse and humble Advice for our gratious Queene Elizabeth ... to peruse and consider as concerning the needful Reformation of the Vulgar Kalendar.1
» This has never been printed but is among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford. See Charlotte Fell Smith’s John Dee, p. 134.
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Although Dee believed that eleven days ought to be omitted in order to make the civil year agree with the birth of Christ, he was willing to consent to ten days, “the better to agree with all countries adjacent.” However, for practical reasons, he was opposed to dropping the ten days at one time. He proposed that the loss be spread through the summer months, allotting twenty-eight days each to May, July and August, with twenty-nine days for June, assuring the Queen that such a distribution “would not affect any holy days.” Burghley appointed a committee of three to go over Dee’s account, two of them being men of high reputation in the scientific world—Thomas Digges and Sir Henry Savile. A favorable report was rendered, and on March 16, 1585, the matter was presented to Parliament. The bill, entitled, “An Act giving Her Majesty authority to alter and new make a calendar according to the calendar used in other Countries,” was read a second time two days later, and then submitted to the Council of State, composed of Archbishop Grindell and three other bishops. But after consideration, the Council rejected the measure on the single ground that it emanated from the Church of Rome.
In 1645 a group of scientists at Oxford agitated the question of changing the calendar. One of their number, John Greaves, Savilian professor of astronomy, went on record as favoring the main points of the Gregorian calendar but disagreed with the idea of subtracting the ten days in one year. His argument reads:
For tho’ I grant that this were a quick Cure of a lingering Disease, yet it is against all Rules of Art in curing one Malady to make ten. For it cannot be, but that the Defalcation of ten Days in one Year must be of infinite Disturbance in the Commonwealth in all Contracts where necessarily a certain Time is defined. ... I shall therefore humbly recommend to his Majesty’s Wisdom and favourable Consideration . . . that for forty years Space there should be no Bissextile or Intercalary Years, or as we call them Leap Years inserted in the Calendar, by which Course it is most Evident, that ten Days will be subtracted in forty Years, and these forty Years, will be each of them Anni Aequabiles, consisting of 365 days as our common and ordinary Years do.
About the year 1700 interest in calendar reform was aroused again. In that year, if the Julian system were to be maintained, a day would have to be added for leap year. Since countries using the Gregorian calendar would not add that day (the century year not being divisible by four hundred) the Julian calendar would then differ from the Gregorian by eleven days. Furthermore, at this time the German Protestant states, the Dutch Reformed states and Denmark were changing to the Gregorian system. It was to be expected, therefore, that the reformers would take advantage of these arguments to push their cause. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London presented both sides of the
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question, including in their volume for 1699 three papers on the subject: the report made by Lord Burghley in 1582, the account written by John Greaves in 1645, and a group of letters by a contemporary mathematician and divine, John Wallis. James Hodgson, F.R.S. and Master of the Royal Mathematical School, writing of the matter in 1747 (Introduction to Chronology), maintained that:
The reasons why the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland did not then conform to it [the Gregorian calendar] was in a great measure owing to . . . letters written by the Reverend and Learned Doctor John Wallis; one to His Grace of Canterbury, another to the Lord Bishop of Worcester, and a third to Sir John Blencowe, who severally requested the Doctor’s Opinion of the Affair.
The burden of Wallis’ argument was that the Julian year had been in use so long that its worth was thereby proved. His conclusion reads:
It would be much more advisable (if the Papists would be as compliant as they would have us to be) for the Papists to return to their old Julian Year, than for us to embrace their new Gregorian . . . That the Julian Year is in itself a better Form, and more adviseable, than the New Gregorian, is undeniable; and all Astronomers, even Papists themselves (if not otherwise bigotted in favour of the Pope’s Supremacy and the Infallibility of the Roman Church) cannot but know it.
Again the agitation came to no account. Another fifty years rolled by, and the clamor for a calendar in agreement with the rest of Europe became louder. It must be remembered that England’s difficulties in calculating dates with other countries were further complicated by the fact that the British year began on the twenty-fifth of March. The result of this was the confusing fact that the expression for any English date between January first and March twenty-fifth would differ by one year, as well as eleven days, from the expression for that same day in most other countries.
An idea of public opinion of the time can be gained from articles in a contemporary periodical. The Gentleman’s Magazine, one of the leading journals, included comments and letters from its readers on pertinent topics of the day. Among these the “awkward English calendar” figured prominently. Since it was an era of literary disguise, most of the articles were signed with fanciful names. Even the editor styled himself “Sylvanus Urban!” In 1745 appeared a communication dated “Maryland, Feb. 2, 1745,” and signed, “Hirossa Ap-Iccim,” which presented plans for calendar reform similar, in many respects, to some present-day proposals. The measures suggested were: (1) Add four years to make the year agree with the year of Christ’s birth; (2) Divide the year into thirteen months of twenty-eight days each, the 365th day to be celebrated as Christ’s day and the thirteenth month to be named “Georgy” in honor of King George;
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(3) Establish Easter and all other festival days upon the same day each year. The Maryland contributor proposed to call this new calendar the “Georgian account, in perpetual memory of the reigning monarch.” In a later issue the editor commented on this “ingenious” gentleman’s proposals for a “new, correct, rational, regular, and easy account of time,” adding that if the author would send him the whole scheme he would “endeavor to publish or make some proper use of it.”
The measures which finally brought about the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the establishment of January first as the beginning of the. year were due largely to the political influence of Lord Chesterfield and the astronomical knowledge of his friend, the second Earl of Macclesfield. Lord Macclesfield, considered the foremost astronomer in England, began the campaign with his Remarks upon the Solar and Lunar Years, published in the Philosophical Transactions in May, 1750. The next step came on February 25, 1751, when Lord Chesterfield, in a “brilliant and witty speech” before the House of Lords, introduced the bill, “An Act for regulating the Commencement of the Year, and for correcting the Calendar now in use.” On the following March 18, at the second reading of the bill, Lord Macclesfield gave a detailed explanation of the reasons for the need of the correction. Subsequently the Act was passed without a protest. The bill stipulated that the eleven days which would have to be dropped in order to right the calendar would be September third to thirteenth, inclusive, of the year 1752, with the “old year not to be used after December 31,1751.” With the Act was included an elaborate set of “Tables and Rules” showing holy days and the lessons for each day of each month. In the next session of Parliament, the bill was slightly amended to clarify the time of elections and payments of rents.
While the bill was going through the steps necessary for its adoption, the columns of the Gentleman’s Magazine were enlivened with many commentaries on the calendar. In the issue for March, 1751, the prominent astronomer and divine, William Whiston, addressed a letter to the Bishop of London “concerning the alteration of the style,” urging that all Protestant countries get together on the question of the calendar and decide on a uniform method of their own for determining Easter. The next month’s issue of the Magazine included a letter signed “Christophil Philochrone” in which the writer, although admitting the defects of the Julian calendar, argued strongly against accepting the Gregorian style. He offered as a substitute a scheme remarkably like the one proposed by Benedetti some one hundred and seventy-five years before. He suggested that the year begin with the first day after the winter solstice, that the equinoxes and solstices determine the beginning of their respective months, and that no month contain less than thirty days. He, too, proposed to call his calendar the
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“Georgian style.” Although his calendar was based on various astronomical data, his deduction could scarcely be called scientific:
Papists may well laugh at the simplicity of Protestants, if, after all the stir about, and since, the reformation, they see them take their pope’s faulty injunctions as canonical or authentic.
The August, 1752, issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine contains “a table to avoid confusion,” showing how the next month’s rent, wages, etc., should be computed for the shortened month. Apparently this proved insufficient, for the issue of the following January includes a much more detailed table for the same purpose.
That opposition to “losing” eleven days was to be met with is, of course, to be expected. A frequently-quoted ballad of the day begins:
In seventeen hundred and fifty-three The style it was changed to Popery.
As this recital draws to a close, it is refreshing to note that not all the criticism was vindicative. The Gentleman’s Magazine for September, 1752, carries an article with the caption: “Humorous letter on the N. Style” in which a certain “R. R.” writes “in greatest perplexity”:
Have I slept away 11 days in seven hours? . . . They tell me there’s an Act of Parliament for this. With due reverence be it spoken, I have always thought there were very few things a British Parliament could not do, but ... I should have guess’d the annihilation of time was one of them!
Perhaps this account of the struggles that calendar reformers of other generations have undergone will give some slight encouragement to those now working toward the sensible World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters advocated by the Journal of Calendar Reform and its friends.
Instruct the Planets in what course to run Correct old time and regulate the Sun.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A chronological list of source materials dealing with the calendar and available in the Columbia University library can be had by writing to The World Calendar Association.
OBITUARY NOTES
FRANK MICHAEL O’BRIEN, 68, Editor of The New York Sun, died September 22.
Mr. O’Brien was known among his colleagues as a forceful essayist of distinctive style. An editorial, written in 1921 for the old New York Herald, headed “The Unknown Soldier,” won for him the Pulitzer Prize for the year’s best editorial. He was born in Dunkirk, New York, educated at St. Joseph’s College in Buffalo, and had been in the newspaper business since 1893. He started as a proofreader and later became a reporter on the Buffalo Courier. But four times removed from Charles A. Dana in the successorship to the Editorship of The Sun, he carried on the traditions of his predecessor. Mr. O’Brien had long been an active supporter and enthusiastic worker in the interests of The World Calendar.
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LET'S CHANGE
THE CALENDAR
By Sam Bate, Author and Editor
From The Austin Magazine, Cheltenham, England, September, 1943
WE have put up with the idiosyncracies and eccentricities of the present calendar for long enough. It is high time we started our postwar reforms with the reform of the calendar.
Perhaps you are so used to it that you cannot see anything to reform. Well! here are a few things that are crying to be put right.
Why, for instance, do we have to put up with such a ridiculously short month as February ? Why should it only be 28 days for three years out of every four, and then, when leap year comes round, have an extra day thrown at it, like a rich relation giving something unwanted to a poor cousin ? February’s small stature is entirely due to the Romans, who used to take days away from it and give them to other months, whenever they felt like it.
Another silly thing about the present calendar is that whether you were born on a Monday or a Friday or any other day in the week, you only celebrate your birthday on the correct day of the week about ten or a dozen times during your lifetime. Why, if your birthday was on Tuesday, June 22, cannot every anniversary fall on a Tuesday ?
Another strange thing is the size of the quarters. In the legal and financial world, the year is divided into quarters, yet for some unknown reason three of the quarters are of different lengths. The first quarter is 90 days, the second 91 days and the last two 92 days each in length. The two “halves” are not equal either, for the first half of the year is 181 days and the second half 184 days!
Another anomaly affects the people who receive their salaries monthly. Seven times during the year, when the month consists of 31 days, the salary has to be stretched to include an extra day, and once, in February, it arrives three days earlier.
Admittedly the calendar as it stands now is the best in history although it has only been in use in this country for less than 200 years. Man was for centuries unable to find a method of calculation that satisfied him, or was in any degree accurate, with the result that history is full of datal inaccu
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racies. For instance, all our dates since Anno Domini are based on the false assumption which post-dates the birth of Christ by four years. Another is that Charles the First was beheaded twice! According to the Scots’ calendar he was executed in 1649, but English records say that it was in 1648.
Even now different parts of the world have different calendars. Take the Moslems, for instance. Their calendar says that this year is 1362, because they start their calendar from the date of the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. The Emperor of Abyssinia may decide to bring the Abyssinian calendar into line with ours, but at the moment it states that the present year is A.D. 1951. In Persia, it is only A.D. 1321 and in Japan 2603.
The strangest of all is the Hindu calendar. They start their reckoning from the first day of the life of Brahma. That wouldn’t be so bad if it was not for the fact that every day of Brahma’s life (Kalpas, as they are called), is equal to 4,320,000,000 of our years!
In the early days of civilization every country and almost every tribe used a calendar of its own and the Egyptians were the first to try to bring order out of chaos. They had a solar year divided into 12 months of 30 days. The five extra days at the end of every year were dedicated to their gods. But, because they did not take into account Leap-Year Day, in time the seasons were at loggerheads with the dates and the Egyptians found they were holding their summer festivities late in the autumn!
Hundreds of years later scientists tried to straighten things out by computing a calendar based on the three main datal sections in the Old Testament—Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham and Abraham to Christ. But when they tried to check these dates by Greek and other contemporary records they found that the discrepancies were anything from three to six thousand years.
Julius Caesar did get down to it in a businesslike fashion and his calendar was in use until the sixteenth century, when small errors he had made began to make themselves felt. Pope Gregory XIII reorganized it, but owing to the feeling between Catholics and Protestants it was almost two hundred years before it was officially recognized in some countries. It is Gregory’s calendar we are using at the present time.
Now The World Calendar Association has suggested a new calendar to start in 1945 which will sweep away the existing eccentricities and will give us the most perfect calendar in history.
To start with, they suggest four equal quarters of 91 days each. The first month of each quarter—January, April, July and October—would be of 31 days each and all the other months of 30 days each. New Year’s Day would always fall on a Sunday and Christmas Day on a Monday. (Thus Christmas would always be a long week-end holiday.)
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Whatever day the month started with, the same month would always start on that day every year in the future, and every month would have the same number of weekdays in it. (At the moment a month may have either 24, 25, 26, or 27 weekdays in it.)
Every four years Leap-Year Day would be added to the end of June, called an extra Saturday and made a World Holiday. There would still be an extra day to take care of, for to get four equal quarters the year was computed as 364 days. This extra day, suggests The World Calendar Association, should be added to the end of December, called Year-End Day and made an annual World Holiday dedicated to world unity and brotherhood.
Subject to the confirmation of the ecclesiastical heads who have already expressed their willingness to consider it, Easter would be fixed as Sunday, April 8; this would also give a fixed Whitsunday on May 26.
Already 14 countries have agreed to accept the new calendar including Norway, Spain and China; so if Britain and the U. S. A. agree to it, we may soon see the calendar altered for perhaps the last time.
CALENDARS, SHIP SUPPLIERS GREATEST PROBLEM
* Urp HE provisioning and equipping of ships of the new Canadian Merchant Marine has become a specialized, almost exact science,” says Raymond Arthur Davies, writing in Saturday Night, October 6, 1943, an interesting weekly magazine published in Toronto, Canada.
Mr. Davies, together with a staff photographer, visited a Canadian dock where one of Canada’s stout, new, merchant ships was being fitted for sea duty. He covered this operation with extreme thoroughness, even detailing the weight and quantity of the food necessary to keep the crew for their extended voyage.
Interviewing one of the Canadian National Railways supply men, whose duty it is to make sure that these ships go down to sea equipped with everything the crew will need on its hazardous voyage, he asked what they found to be their greatest headache. The bottleneck in equipping a ship and the items most difficult to obtain are “calendars, slates and slate pencils.”
“Why calendars?” he asked.
“Well, sir,” the supply man answered, “you just try to find calendars for 1943 along about the months of July, August or September, or a calendar for 1944 in October, when some of our ships are launched.”
“Almost everybody on a ship needs a calendar some time or other, and getting calendars ahead of time is harder than getting the proper amount of food.”
Mr. Davies could well have pointed out the advantages that this Canadian National Railways supply man would have had, had The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters been in operation.
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CURRENT PRESS COMMENT
Re-forming The Calendar
Savannah (Ga.) Press
July 17, 1943
INDICATIONS are that the movement to establish a new calendar to replace the Gregorian calendar which has been in use since 1582 will be carried on with renewed vigor next year. The question may well be asked why should this reform receive new emphasis next year. The answer is simple. In order to effect the reform without causing too much confusion, the year the change is made must end with December 30 or 31 falling on a Saturday. Such a year is 1944.*
The World Calendar Association, which carries on a constant campaign in favor of a new calendar, proposes to rearrange the calendar into quarters of 91 days each. Quarters now run from 90 to 92 days. In the new calendar each quarter would begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. A date of the month would always fall on the same day of the week and each month would have 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. A simple sum of arithmetic shows that four quarters of 91 days add up to only 364 days, and, inasmuch as every year has at least 365 days, the problem arises as to what to do with the extra day. The calendar reformers have solved that problem, too. In their calendar the usual December 31 would not be December 31 at all, but simply an extra Saturday, known as December W, and next year the day would be designated as December W, 1944.
The problem of the extra day in leap year is also taken into consideration. Under The World Calendar Association plan, leap year would be just like every other year except that after June 30 would come June W, the Leap-Year Day. One argument for the proposed calendar advanced by the Association this year is the confusion caused by varying holidays. In
the new calendar such a condition would not occur as holidays would always fall on the same day of the week each year. For instance, Christmas would always fall on Monday.
The chances are that advocates of calendar reform will put on more pressure next year as they will not get such another chance until 1950,* because under the Gregorian calendar January 1 will not again occur on a Sunday until that year.
Calendar Is Revised
By State University
Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman Review
October 13, 1943
AS a wartime move, the University of
• Washington has completely revised its calendar, shortening the regular academic year by three weeks and eliminating long vacations.
The change in calendar dates will accomplish two things, President L. P. Sieg pointed out. It will bring the regular quarter system at the university in closer conformity with the Navy V-12 semester system and it will make university students available for work in war industries during the summer at a much earlier date.
According to the revised school calendar, the present fall quarter will close on December 10 instead of December 15. The winter quarter will run from December 13 to March 3, including one week’s Christmas vacation from December 25 to January 3. Spring quarter will open March 6, closing on May 19 with commencement on May 20 instead of June 10.
•EDITOR’S NOTE: Other dates upon which both calendars meet, and upon which the transition may be made, are July 1, 1945, March 1, 1946, and May 1, 1946. See article by Henry W. Bearce, page 164.
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EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS
“I’ll Sure Pay You on February Thirtieth"
From Pittsburgh’s Future, published by the Junior Chamber of Commerce of Pittsburgh, October, 1943
REMEMBER how they kept changing the football rules awhile back and everybody yelled that they would ruin the game?
Something similar is afoot with the rules for keeping track of the date. For almost four centuries we have been struggling along with the present calendar. Of late years many movements have been underway to establish a new calendar. None of these appear to be perfect, simply because a solar year does not consist of “so many exact days,” but has 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds left over every year. Our present Gregorian calendar varies a day in about every 3,300 years.
Most practical of the proposed calendars is “The World Calendar.”
The Pittsburgh Junior Chamber’s Board of Directors passed a resolution on September 21 endorsing this calendar and recommending its adoption on January 1, 1945.
The World Calendar has many attractive features. With the same dates falling on the same days of the week, year after year, many business comparisons can be made that heretofore have been impossible. The idea of dividing the year into four equal quarters with 26 weekdays in every month has statisticians swooning with delight.
Radio broadcasting newspapers and magazines, with their four 13-week contracts, have already set up such a calendar. The stability and simplicity of the new calendar seem to meet the need of industry, government, social life, agriculture, science and religion. It has the approval of 14 governments including Brazil, China, Mexico, Spain and Turkey and is sponsored by numerous chambers of commerce, associations, federations and church organizations.
Clocks and Calendars
From Distribution and Warehousing, New York City, October, 1943
A POSSIBLE postwar development may be international adoption of a 24-hour clock and a simplified calendar.
The 24-hour clock is already established. The Army, the Navy, the Merchant Marine and the Weather Bureau use 24-hour time, and most countries throughout the world have adopted it. All that would be necessary for its general use here would be public acceptance and a law making it mandatory in the same way that wartime or daylight saving time was adopted. After all, any method of reckoning time, whether by clocks, calendars, moons, or events, is purely arbitrary and man-made.
Our present calendar, the Gregorian, has been in use since 1582. According to The World Calendar Association, it would be materially improved if it were simplified by rearranging the lengths of the months and equalizing the year’s quarters into 91-day periods. Each quarter would begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. A certain date of the month would always fall on the same day of the week. December 31 would become December W, Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, thus giving each year its full complement of 365 days. December 31, 1944, for example, would not be Sunday, December 31, but rather December W, and the day after would be Sunday, January 1, 1945. The problem of February 29 would be taken care of by having an extra day in June to be known as June W, or Leap-Year Day.
Fourteen governments are understood to have approved the reformed calendar. In the United States the National Education Association, various scientists’ societies, women’s clubs and state chambers of commerce have endorsed it. The arguments in favor of it sound plausible. Indeed, a new calendar for the postwar world might be an excellent way to start a new era.
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One Day for Play
By WILLIAM HICKEY
From London Express, September, 19t3
“QOON you will be discarding this 0 obsolete calendar.” So I am assured, in confident tones, by The World Calendar Association. They refer to the present arrangement of the civil year, as instituted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
The World Calendar Association points out that the existing calendar differs from year to year; the quarters are unequal in length; months have a varying number of weekdays. “This calendar,” they say sternly, “is unbalanced in structure, unstable in form, irregular in arrangement.”
In its place, they propose a calendar in which each quarter has 91 days (one month of 31 days and two of 30). Each year and each quarter will begin on a Sunday. “Balanced, perpetual, harmonious.”
As for that little business of the 365th day, which just won’t fit into the equal quarters, it is to be a World Holiday at the end of the year. It will be called “December W.”
Apparently, the change will relieve sales managers and advertising men. It will alleviate the toil of insurance workers.
Farmers will find their tasks easier and their profits higher. And America’s war effort will be increased through a saving in clerical labor.
Give us “The Fifth Freedom,” demands The World Calendar Association—freedom from the Confusion of the Calendar.
She Fights to Give World
A Streamlined Calendar
By JEROME DREIFUSS
Feature Editor, World Feature Service
From Greensburg (Pa.) Review, October IS, lSlfS
TF MISS ELISABETH ACHELIS wins
-L her unrelenting campaign against the inertia of an entire world, she will manage to do the following—give us one holi
day at the end of the year, fix it so that all holidays will fall on Monday (so that we shall have three-day week-ends), make it so that the calendar will not vary and one will serve us a lifetime, help bankers, merchants, accountants, lawyers, workers out of muddles.
What Miss Achelis, a mild but persuasive and indefatigable maiden lady of handsome looks and white hair, wants, is to change our calendar. This trimly and modishly dressed, independently wealthy woman of a New York socialite family has, since 1929, been a tireless apostle for calendar reform. The World Calendar Association, of 630 Fifth Avenue, New York City, which she founded and earnestly works at, is the fountainhead of her activities.
In 1929, she heard a lecture on calendar reform, an idea backed by the late George Eastman, a goofy stunt with 28-day months, and 13 of them. Miss Achelis recognized the need for a better calendar, but rejected this one. Then she heard of one proposed a hundred years ago.
The idea is simple, and, briefly stated, works this way: The 365 days of the year are divided into four quarters of three months each. The first month in each quarter has 31 days, the rest have 30, making 91 days in a quarter. That accounts for 364 days of the year; the 365th is called “Year-End Day” and is an international holiday. Leap-year days are given to June.
They almost put over the 13-month monstrosity at the League of Nations at Geneva, but valiant Miss Achelis went there and single-handedly defeated it. Since that time calendar reform has become her crotchet, life and everything. She speaks to women’s clubs, has traveled extensively, wangled 14 countries into accepting the idea pending world agreement.
“The trouble is that everyone agrees the idea is good and of benefit, that is what prevents them from doing enough about it,” Miss Achelis told us. “But I am confident that in 1945, when the year starts on a Sunday, we shall have a World Calendar.”
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FROM THE MAIL BAG
A
We should like to say that actually, the textile industries of the whole world would derive great benefit from having the year divided into equal quarters. We congratulate you on your initiative since a great deal of confusion in industries would be avoided by putting your plan into practice in perfect mathematical form. We thank you for your kind attention in asking for our opinion with regard to The World Calendar.—Manuel Campanella Rodriguez, General Manager, Workmen’s Administration, Mexican Silk Mill, Inc., Mexico, D. F.
Personally, I quite approve of revision of our present calendar.—James Washington Bell, Secretary, American Economic Association, Evanston, Illinois.
I thought it might be of interest to you that Professor Martin Fleck of Eastern New Mexico College lectured to my Business Administration students on the new World Calendar. One week after his lecture the class voted to adopt the new calendar by a margin of 19 to 6. Those who opposed the new calendar did so upon the objection of stabilizing Easter. It is significant that such a large majority favor the adoption of the new system. Professor Fleck is exerting much influence in our locality for the new calendar.—Dr. Ira C. Ihde, Assoc. Prof, of Economics, Eastern New Mexico Coll, Portales.
This is something we really need. In all fields, manufacture, mining, business, agriculture, and the professions, as well as in all the processing industries, there is great need for simplification in time and record keeping.—Prof. E. R. Gross, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N. J.
May I add my vote of approval and endorsement to the many others you have received in favor of your calendar reform plan. As a statistician, I am especially appreciative of the need for calendar revision.'—Paul H. Jacobson, New York City.
Certainly your World Calendar would provide a significant streamlining of the war effort—significant in that it would
furnish additional indication of the all-out effort to supply and equip our army in its struggle against the enemy of our country and our civilization.—Lt. Henry Alexander, U. S. Army.
We have pretty carefully studied over your proposal and we agree with you that now is as good a time as any to change days and dates of the world to agree with this suggestion.—L. G. Sever, Exec. Vice Pres., Mt. Vernon Car Manufacturing Co., Mt. Vernon, Ill.
I hope you can get the present calendar situation straightened around because there is no denying the fact that it leads to a lot of expense, suppositions, etc., trying to compare the operating figures of one month with others in many instances. —Owen L. Coon, Chairman of the Board, General Finance Corp., Chicago.
I have been receiving the Journal of Calendar Reform for several years, and am most heartily in sympathy with your aims and procedure. You are doing a generous work for the common good.— Rev. William T. Kane, S.J., Librarian, Loyola Univ., Chicago.
I find the Journal of Calendar Reform which you send me both interesting and instructive.—Dr. J. S. Battye, Principal Librarian and Secretary, Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.
You know I have always been interested in following the program of The World Calendar Association. During the readjustments that are in store this would seem to be an appropriate time to inaugurate what must inevitably mean a change to the good in our calendar arrangement. Let us hope also that by the time this would take effect in 1944 that the world will be at peace again and international cooperation in science be inaugurated on an even more permanent basis.—Dr. Harlan T. Stetson, M.I.T., Needham, Mass.
By 1945 may we see a new order in many things—one of them, the calendar. —William H. Barton, Jr., Exec. Curator, Hayden Planetarium, New York City.
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THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION
Elisabeth Achelis, President	Emerson Brewer, Director
Harriet A. Lillie, Secretary-Treasurer
AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE William H. Barton, Jr. Henry W. Bearce Mrs. Frederic Be^gs
Rev. William Adams Brown, D.D. Dr. Clara B. Burdette Mrs. Frederick H. Clausen
Capt. J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. (Ret.) Mrs. Gustav Ketterer Mrs. Rowland H. Latham Bishop William T. Manning Charles S. McVeigh Hon. Dave H. Morris Prof. Wm. Starr Myers Dr. L. S. Rowe Howard C. Smith Bishop Ernest M. Stires Julius F. Stone Rabbi Martin M. Weitz P. W. Wilson Dr. Mary E. Woolley
FOREIGN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Admiral Jos£; Guisasola (Argentina) Dr. Eugene Delporte (Belgium) Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino (Brazil) Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir (Canada) Prof. Alberto Cumming (Chile)
R. P. Eugenio V. Rosso, S.S. (Chile) Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yti (China)
R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, S.J. (Cuba) Dr. Herbert Blume (Danzig) Barney N. Morgan (Dominican Republic) Lord Desborough (England) C. David Stelling (England) Paul-Louis Hervier (France) Abraham Frowein (Germany) Athanase Politis (Greece) E. Keith Eason (Ireland) Amedeo Giannini (Italy) Dr. Joaquin Gallo (Mexico) Juan Rivera Reyes (Panama) Luis Montero y Tirado (Peru)
R. P. Antonio RomanA, S.J. (Spain) Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden) Raymond Mage (Switzerland)
Dr. M. I. Dereoglu (Turkey) Edgar J. Anzola (Venezuela)
Membership is based on active interest in the study of adequate and effective improvement of the calendar. Owing to lack of space, a large number of names have been omitted. They will be printed in future issues.
Arnold Abrams, New York City
F. E. Anderson, Army Insp., Albuquerque Lillian G. Brown, Teacher, Polson, Mont. W. J. Brownstone, Merchant, N. Y. C.
Jules Brunet, Industrialist, Montreal Bertha Mays Clarke, Los Angeles Rev. Antonio da Monterosso, Buenos Aires H. Daniel, Medellin, Colombia H. Dissley, Dairyman, Portales, N. M. Fanny Eitel, Librn., No. Bessemer, Pa. W. J. Franke, Gov. Emp., Rensselaer, N. Y. Soc. de Geografia e Historia, Guatemala Bernard A. Gross, Atty., New York City Grosvenor Library, Buffalo, N. Y.
Banco de Descuento, Guayaquil, Ecuador Harvey High Sch. Libry., Painesville, O. E. N. Hill, Supt. Schs., Humboldt, Kan. Sheldon Horowitz, Student, Bronx, N. Y. Industrial Dept., Detroit Board of Commerce George Ingraham, Advertising, New York City Jewish Nat’l and Univ. Library, Jerusalem O. C. Kerney, Assn. Exec., Newcastle Miss H. Kirschner, Student, New York City Rev. Walter Lazenby, Jr., Portales, N. M. Lions International Ser. Clubs, Chicago Mrs. Enda Luke, Miami, Fla.
Inst, y Observ. de Marina, Cadiz, Spain B. R. Matteson, Publisher, Albion, Ind. Marie McDonnell, Librn., Palestine, Tex. J. H. McKinney, Insurance, Owensboro, Ky. E. F. McKune, Agri., Denver Dr. E. C. L. Miller, Phys., Richmond, Va. Earl S. Miller, Printer, Binghamton, N. Y. J. H. Miller, Agt., Fayetteville, W. Va. Helen A. Miner, Stenog., Spokane, Wash. John C. Mitchell, Educ., Philadelphia A. C. Mitchill, Librn., Newark, N. J. Arthur H. Mockridge, Dover, N. J.
R.	L. Montgomery, Student, Atlanta, Ga. L. S. Moody, Businessman. Augusta, Ga. Dr. Charles S. Moore, Pierce City, Mo. G. G. Moore, Galveston, Tex.
John S. Moore, Org. Off., Dayton, O. W. E. Moorehead, Educ., Lancaster, Pa.
Elmer E. Moots, Educ., Mt. Vernon, la. J. L. Morrill, Univ. Pres., Laramie, Wyo. Marco Morrow, Ed., Topeka, Kan. Ohland Morton, Wilburton, Okla.
B. H. Moses, Univ. Dir., Endicott, N. Y. F. Myers, Meteorol., Tatoosh Is., Wash. J. A. Nelson, Stock Checker, Berkeley New History Society, New York City Ruth E. Northey, Lynn, Mass.
Owosso Chamber of Commerce, Mich. J. P. Peterson, Educ., Minneapolis Rev. Peter H. Pleune, Louisville, Ky. Russell A. Plimpton, Art Exec., Minneapolis Maurice T. Plummer, Auburn, Me. Prof. James P. Poole, Hanover, N. H. V. P. Popovich, San Francisco George M. Potter, Org. Exec., Alton, Ill. Elizabeth Powell, Teacher, Elkton, Va. Newman M. Powell. Teacher, Yorkville, O. H. P. Powers, Assn. Dir., Gallop, N. M. Mrs. O. K. Powers, Berkeley Laurie Pratt, Los Angeles Rev. Otto Press, Editor, St. Louis Elwyn G. Preston, Jr., Treas., Boston Mrs. Jean C. Price, Chicago Mando Primo, Teacher, Sheffield, Ill. Cap. John H. Prichard, Buffalo J. G. Pruscha, Org. Exec., Passaic, N. J. Reeta Pullou, Teach., Lambertville, Mich. R. V. Rammage, Hammond, Ind. Lee A. Richmond, Chicago Bill Ritner, Stud., San Marino, Cal. C. Dudley Roberts, Los Angeles Rev. Ernest W. Robinson, Portland, Me. Mrs. Helena H. Rogers, New York City E. B. Rollins, Educ., W. Somerville, Mass. Sister Rose de Lima, Educ., Convent Station, N. J.
Adelaide C. Rothballer, Stenog., Buffalo J. M. Rowse, Mountain View, Cal. Christian Rutbell, Endicott, N. Y. Morris Sanders, New York City M. Scheenbach. Adv. Mgr., Woodward, Okla. Rev. Fred. Schweitzer, Ridley Pk., Pa.
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Lewis Sealy, Hotelman, Brooklyn Alverda Sell, Teacher, Bergey, Pa.
John P. Sherrard, i'rin., Buffalo
Carlton M. Sherwood, Org. Off., N. Y. C.
T. L. Shull, Bduc., Valley Stream, N. Y. Dr. R. A. Silk, Port Jefferson Sta., N. Y. G. F. Simmons, Univ. Pres., Missoula, Mont. Gaya Prasad Singh, Legis., Muzaffarpur, Behar, India
Prof. Jorge Soto, Bogota, Colombia
Lyda Simms, Teach., Guntersville, Ala.
Rev. Dr. George A. Simons, N. Y. C.
Rev. A. G. Sinclair, Bloomfield, N. J. Margaret I. Skauen, Newton, Mass. A. B. Slattengren, Ins. Exec., Chicago O. F. Sloeth, Auditor, Charleston, W. Va. Joseph J. Sott, Instr., Clifton, N. J.
Arthur de Souza Costa, Min. of Fin., Rio de Janeiro
Rev. Paul Sperry, Washington, D. C.
M. J. Spinks, Bookkeeper, Dallas
Dr. J. Sudweeks, Teach., Provo, Utah
S.	A. Thompson, Co. Off., Washington, D. C.
Dean E. T. Towne, Grand Forks, N. D.
Dean Lake Traxler, Chicago
Arthur R. Tucker, Ed., New York City Kenneth B. Walker, New Hyde Park, N. Y. Prof. Patterson Wardlaw, Columbia, S. C.
Mrs. Burnett D. Warner, Chicago
Prof. Paul E. Werner, Washington, Conn.
George H. Wettach, Banker, N. Y. C.
E. Grace White, Educ., Chambersburg, Pa.
Mrs. Georgia Wicks, Los Angeles
Rev. J. H. Wierts, Fort Meade, Fla.
H. M. Wiley, Co. Off., Wheeler, Tex.
Booth M. Williamson, Peoria, Ill.
Rev. Thos. A. Williams, Wichita, Kan.
Ed E. Wilson, Publisher, Rock Is., Ill.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
ARGENTINA: Comite Argentine del Calen-dario Mundial, Admiral Josd Guisasola, Chairman, Ministerio de Marina, Buenos Aires,
AUSTRALIA: Committee on Calendar Reform of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, C. W. Allen, Secy., Solar Observatory, Canberra.
BELGIUM: Belgian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Professor M. Dehalu, President, I’Universitg de Liege, Liege.
BOLIVIA: Comitfe Boliviano del Calendario Mundial, Don Moises Santivanez, Chairman, Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre.
BRAZIL: Comitd Brasileiro do Calendario Mundial, Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino, Chairman, Rua Raul Pompeia No. 133, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Rational Calendar Association, Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir, Secy., 82 Jane St., Toronto 5.
CHILE: Comite Chileno del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Cumming, Chairman, Calle Manuel Rodriguez, Santiago.
CHINA: Chinese Association for the Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu, Director, National Institute of Astronomy, Kunming, Yunnan.
COLOMBIA: Comit§ Colombiano del Calendario Mundial, Bogota.
COSTA RICA: Comite Costarricense del Calendario Mundial (Igualmente de Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador y Nicaragua), Don Teodoro Picado, Chairman, San JosA
CUBA: ComitS Cubano del Calendario Mundial, R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, Chairman, Belfin Observatory, Havana.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Comitfe Domini-cano del Calendario Mundial, Barney N. Morgan, Chairman, Box 727, Ciudad Trujillo.
ECUADOR: Comity Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde, Chairman, Calle Cienfuegos 158, Santiago, Chile.
ENGLAND: Rational Calendar Association, C. David Stelling, Director, 38, Parliament Street, London.
FRANCE: ComitS National pour la Reforme du Calendrier, Senateur Justin Godart, President; Paul-Louis Hervier, Secy., 5, Rue Bernoulli, Paris.
GERMANY: Deutscher Ausschuss fiir Kalen-derreform, Dr. Grosse, Geschaftsfiihrer, Neue Wilhemstr, 9/11, Berlin N. W. 7 — Der Weltbund fiir Kalenderreform, Dr.
FOR REFORM OF THE CALENDAR
Rudolph Blochmann, Secy., 24 Lornsen-strasse, Kiel.
GREECE : Greek National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. S. Plakidis, Secy., Observatory of University of Athens.
HUNGARY: Hungarian Committee for Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Paul Vajda, Secy., 9 Eotos Utca, Budapest.
IRELAND: Committee for Calendar Reform, E. K. Eason, Secy., 80, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.
ITALY: Italian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Amedeo Giannini, Secy., via del Seminario, 113, Rome.
MEXICO: Comite Mejicano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Joaquin Gallo, Honorary President; Dr. Horacio Herrera, Chairman, Sociedad de Estudios Astronomicos y Geoflsicos, Av. Observatorio No. 192, Ta-cubaya, D.F.
PANAMA: CornitS Panameno del Calendario Mundial, Juan Rivera Reyes, Chairman, Panama City.
PARAGUAY: Comity Paraguayano del Calendario Mundial, H. E. Senor Ministro Coronel don Luis Irrazabal, Chairman, Calle Moneda 1938, Santiago, Chile.
PERU: Comite P.eruano del Calendario Mundial, Don Luis Montero y Tirado, Chairman, Casilla 220, Lima.
POLAND: Polish Committee for Calendar Reform, Albin Jakiel, Chairman, Krasiu-skiego, 21 m. 27, Warsaw.
SPAIN: Spanish Calendar Reform Committee, Rev. Father Antonio Romani, S.J., Chairman, Observatorio del Ebro, Tortosa.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Emile Marchand, Secy., Mythenstrasse 2, Zurich 2.—Comite International de Cooperation de 1’Association Universelie du Calendrier, M. Raymond Mage, Secretaire General, Palais Wilson, Geneva.
TURKEY: Committee on Calendar Reform, Dr. M. I. Dereoglu, Secy., P. O. Box 1121, Hanhaym Han No. Io, Istanbul.
URUGUAY: Comite Uruguayo del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Reyes Thevenet, Chairman, Liceo de Ensenanza Secundaria Hector Miranda, Calle Sierra 2268, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Comite Venezolano del Calendario Mundial, Don Edgar J. Anzola, Chairman, Apartado de Correos No. 207, Caracas.
YUGOSLAVIA: Yugoslavian Committee on Calendar Reform, Georges Curcin, Chairman, Poenkareova 25—III, Belgrade.
THE CALENDAR FOR EVERYBODY
By Elisabeth Achelis
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“TIME” IN JEWISH HISTORY
By Rabbi Martin M. Weitz
Beth Hillel Temple, Kenosha, Wisconsin
Orthodox Jews, Seventh Day Baptists and Seventh-Day Adventists raise definite objections to calendar reform—not to a world calendar as a whole, but to the loss of the seven-day sequence of weeks. The author examines these objections in this series of what he picturesquely calls “Footnotes on Time Among Forgotten Jewries.”
IT MIGHT prove interesting to attempt a survey of differing calendric customs for “marking time” within one world community in order to understand fully that days and their ways can survive as variant cultural lags with different cultural values in different times and places in the same world religion.
It would be resultful, then, to trace some “days” in the calendar of Israel and to observe what they were and are in and near Palestine, Babylon, Egypt—major arenas in the life-pattern of Israel. Let us begin our “footnotes” with “New Moon” and “Sabbath,” among Israel’s oldest historical and religious events.
As far back as the time of David, we observe a new moon celebration implemented with sacrifice enacted by his clan. The new moon was never mentioned among earlier older Hebrew codes, for the fourteenth or nineteenth day of the month was designated as a Sabbath, with the first day as the new moon and the fourteenth day as the full moon. That Babylonian names are basic for the Hebrew calendar, and more specifically, that the fifteenth day of every month was known as Shapatu, was a discovery made by Dr. Pincus.
The seventh day, as Sabbath, must have come from very early sources. The number seven was sacred and the Sabbath was full of restrictions, both among the Hebrews and the Babylonians. The Babylonians, however, have similar restrictions for the fourteenth, twenty-first and twentyeighth days as well as the seventh. Such a day prohibited a ruler from tasting roast flesh, wearing a robe or clean apparel, from mounting a chariot or announcing a decision. A soothsayer could not express an oracle nor could a physician do any healing—a practice considerably modified with humanitarian intent by the Hebrews, for, in Hebraic law, any great law could be set aside for the preservation of human life.
Such data as a background suggest that the Sabbath evolved from an irregular and four-fold monthly experience to a regular weekly event. That it became a “day of reckoning” for the whole Babylonian culturezone (including the early Hebrew culture), which embraced the Fertile Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, is evidenced by
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available references to major and minor peoples other than the early Hebrews, major ones such as Assyrians, and minor as Samaritans.
The Samaritans were really on the “rim of the wilderness,” for they had little of direct relationship with Israel though much cultural osmosis occurred. They were completely lost to the area from which the Assyrians had uprooted them. The Samaritans have been dually influenced by early Assyrian-Babylonian exposures, as well as by later Hebrew patterns. Samaria, in a way, forms a barometer of calendric change, especially in the first centuries of its life, because new festivals invaded its partially familiar calendar. Especially since its emergence in 722 B.C.E.,* until 520 C.E., when it reached its zenith in population, power and influence, Samaria religiously and culturally, if not politically, maintained a separate and semi-independent life which extended to its colonies in various parts of the Near East, North Africa and Europe. (In a letter, Obadiah Yareh Da Bertinoro, a distinguished Italian rabbi, observes that no less than fifty Samaritan families resided in Cairo, Egypt, as late as 1490, when he sojourned through Egypt and Palestine, it was his opinion that 500 Samaritan families were extant in the world in his day. A scant 100 families remained in 1930.) Often the Samaritan group enacted measures deliberately to confuse erstwhile co-religionists who disowned them about the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, 450-40 B.C.E. (?), even as the erstwhile co-religionists shunted them out of the Jewish heritage by the deliberate adoption of the Assyrian block letters for the Hebrew alphabet and the incorporation of Babylonian names for the months instead of the Aramaic words used by both.
Citations as far back as 163 C.E. state that Samaritans set up false signals to confuse Jewish neighbors in their celebration of the New Year rites. Because of this, Rabbi Judah (163-93 C.E.) abolished fire signals and substituted messengers, free from Samaritan interference. It is unlikely that the Samaritans adopted Babylonian names for the months, especially when their opponents did so in order to emphasize the cleavage. Thus the Samaritans retained the older method of numbers for months, a method indigenous to their new homes and current among the Israelite peasants who remained and whom later they absorbed.
Another instance of Samaritan development of their own calendric practices, as a result of strained relations with the Jewish community in Judea, is the feast of in-gathering—the Feast of the Booths. The solemn cutting and sacrifice of a first sheaf of the new crop was a meaningful rite connected with the “day after the Sabbath,” which was identified with and which followed the last of the so-called Mazzot Festival Days, according to Morgenstern in his Supplementary Studies in the Calendars of Ancient Israel.
Samaritans observed what we know as a later Sadducean custom and adhered to the older practice of reckoning a 50-day period from “the day after the Sabbath of the Mazzot Festival until the Sabbath Festival.” A specific record is found II Chronicles 30: 1, 10, indicative of differing attitudes on the part of Samaritans and Galileans toward the central religious authority of the Temple in Jerusalem. This initial rift was deepened with time and with later apologetics and polemics in Judaism
* B.C.E. means Before Common Era. C.E. means Common Era.
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and Christianity. A common attitude toward the central sanctuary, however, according to some scholars, can be traced to about 300 B.C.E.
Other divergences by Samaritans from the changed and standardized calendar fixed by Judeans are: celebration of the Sabbath from midday Friday until midday Saturday, adhesion to the ancient rather than revised reckoning of the Passover; celebration of a festival now lost and almost forgotten, the “day after the Sabbath”; complete refusal of identifying the New Year Day with First of Tishri (September-October), as well as hesitation of utilizing Babylonian nomenclature for months. Perhaps the Samaritan refusal of the second Passover recorded in II Chronicles 30: 10 is due to their objection of redating the Passover, for fear of rechanging their sacred fast (according to J. Jeremias’ Die Passahfeir der Samaritaner). Samaritans and Sadduccees, in earlier centuries, and Karaites and Falashas, in later centuries, retained earlier festivals, dates and usages for the most part, whereas Rabbinic Judaism used renamed months and emended early usages so as to become preservative forces for Israel.
Another indication for early divergence exists in references to Shiloh, a city compared to Samaria. According to Judeans, both these cities, Shiloh and Samaria, were notorious for intemperance, inasmuch as Israel, directly north of Judea, was a vine-cultivating area easily given to excess, even as was Samaria, successor to Israel’s soil and “spirits.” Thus feasts of vintage meant more in the north of Palestine even with the Samaritans who occupied that area after 722 B.C.E. than with the Judeans of Southern Palestine. No doubt Babylonian influence was felt for centuries in certain festivals and rites of fertility but not in names of the months. (When Nazarite orders arose even in the Samaritan milieu to protest Northern festival excesses, they emerged from the none-too-fertile hill country to Judea to emphasize the semi-pastoral simplicity known to early Israel.)
Here is an excellent transposition of cultural lags in the Hebrew calendar. The Judeans, before the Babylonian Exile (586-520 B.C.E.) followed a simple, semirigid calendation, unpalatable to Northerners. About this time, however, and because of the presence of Samaritans and an assumed need for self-immolation, the Judeans —now Jews—after their Exile in and exposure to commercial Babylon, greatly shifted the calendar. They renamed months, revised some contents from their original simplicity by way of Babylonian loans, whereas the Northerners—now the Samaritans— became the defenders of the older but simpler version of the calendar, free from Babylonian names, but now unpalatable to Judeans!
Celebration of the Jubilee is another instance of how a late group, the Samaritans, follow the earlier version, while the earlier group, the Judeans, evolve a better but later version. Samaritans calculated the seventh year of release differently from the Jews. According to the Talmud, the seventh year of release is dated from the conquest of the land and from tribal distribution, which it claims took fourteen years. This occurred in the year of the Creation 2489, an experience followed by 850 years or 17 Jubilees between that event and the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. The last Jubilee occurred on the tenth day of Tishri in the fourteenth year after the destruction of Jerusalem.
Samaritans, however, insist, in their Book of Joshua, that the first Jubilee was simultaneous with the crossing of the Jordan and they cite 2794 instead of 2489 as the first Sabbatical cycle. It may be that this is the earlier as well as the simpler reckoning, for the Talmudic calculation may be centuries later than the citation in the Samaritan Book of Joshua. Evidently later than the Samaritan Bible is the Talmudic ruling for finding the year of release: “Add one year and divide by seven the number of years since the Destruction of the Second Temple, or add two for every century and divide the total sum by seven.”
A parallel conflict with its impress on calendation is evidenced in the order of the services and in the Bible cycle of readings. The Samaritan cycle is more imperfect than that of the Jews. In their Taulidah (Chronicles), they ascribe computations to one Eleazer, later expanded by a high-priest at Damascus, Jacob ben Ishmael (d. 1346?), and so relayed to 1856, when their high-priest Solomon died. This “Chron
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icle” (an apology for Samaritan interpretation) begins its account with the traditional calculation of festivals and jubilees on the assumption that such chronology was direct from Adam to Pincus and through him to the Samaritan priesthood. This Chronicle is not a mere date-line for the calendar; it is the “life-line” for the priestly dynasty. But upon examination, its chronology is disturbing and dates misleading.
Early Samaritan records are simpler and their cycles have more order than chaos, especially for the first month and for the seven Sabbaths following Passover (March-April), on to the Feast of the Harvest (September-October). Divisions for the seventh month (September-October), including all the festivals through the Harvest Feast, are likewise organic in early Samaritan records, as are contents on circumcision, marriage and burial. All these records were compiled into the Defter, which was the first and foremost liturgy in Samaritan life. It is a composition by various authors of different times and, unlike Al-Taulidah, it is a “liturgy,” a basis for major events, as birth and death in the life of the individual or crops and solstices in the life of the community.
From both the “liturgy” and the “chronicle” it is evident that the Samaritans were not bereft of all their ancient pre-Palestine practices before their abduction by Assyria, even as they were not wholly “introduced” to Israel’s religion though they did retain zealously Israel’s earlier and comparatively simpler calendric content.
Another instance of a whole movement, this time within Jewry and not near it, which was slightly influenced by Samaritan procedure and nearly disrupted the Jewish calendar by a change in observance of days rather than days themselves, was Karaism.
From the Eighth through later centuries, Karaism as a Jewish movement insisted on the “strict construction of the Constitution,” so to speak (the Torah or Law), rather than the “loose interpretation” thereof (the Talmud). Karaites professed to follow the Bible literally to the complete neglect of rabbinic injunction. Actually, they incorporated much of Rabbinic Judaism, either directly or in change, but they also borrowed profusely from “out-groups” of pre-Medieval Jewry, such as the declining Samaritans and the rising Saracens. After the death of their founder, Annan, in 780 C.E., his views, although impractical for daily life, were followed with but slight concessions to daily demands. After the Tenth Century, however, Karaism spent itself because of a too rigid adhesion to the discipline rather than the spirit of the Torah or Law.
Calendrically speaking, the Karaite observance of the Sabbath and feast days is of special interest. They considered such days Memorial Days during the existence of the Temple but no longer binding at all, since the loss of the shrine in 70 C.E. Fortunately for the Jewish calendar and Jewry, Karaism was “lost” before the days were, which it discountenanced. (Among its more palatable beliefs, however, was its insistence that “resurrection of all dead” was allegorical, not actual, that the Temple was a part of the past rather than the future in the life of Israel.)
Sabbath observance was a most sombre as well as solemn experience among Karaites. They allowed no light nor fire; they permitted no departure from the home; they prohibited even light burdens on the Sabbath. Sabbath practices strangely paralleled other “Jewries,” as the Falashas of Ethiopia and the Bene Abbes of Libya. (A most interesting
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calendric practice among Karaites was the act of circumcision, performed at the close of the Sabbath, so that healing might begin on Sunday.) They were equally rigid in their prohibition for food preparation on holy days and their insistence that mazzoth, the bread of affliction, be made of barley; that the first of Tishri be a day of self-castigation rather than of trumpet-blowing and self-declaring; that the first of the year be the first of Nisan (March-April) not Tishri (September-October),—a practice “loaned” from the Samaritans (?); that Pentecost (in May-June) be celebrated on Sunday; that Chanukah (in December) be struck from the calendar; that Purim be a two-day fast instead of a one-day feast (preceded by a minor fast) ; that the seventh and the tenth instead of the ninth day of Ab (July-August) be fast days for loss of Jerusalem; and that the new moon be fixed by the earlier, simpler, but more confusing method of observation rather than computation. Annually, observes Bertinoro, the few families that lived in Cairo, in 1490, would send messengers to Jerusalem to observe the month of spring. Because of dependence on observation for intercalation, some Karaite communities would add a month while others would not!
Computation displaced observation as early as 165 C.E. in Babylonian Jewry when Samuel, an astronomer and scholar in Nahardia, rearranged the calendar. Feasts were not lifted but shifted from their former places in the calendar when he computed a cycle for 60 years. Mar-Samuel,' in Babylon, also computed a solar reckoning of 365 days and six hours as the basis for the calendar. Rab-Adda, another Babylonian, determined the year as 365 days, five hours, 55 minutes, and 25 and 5/27 seconds. A later authority in the same area, Saadiah (892-942 C.E.), revised calendar rules by computation.
These are instances of how Babylonian rabbis in early centuries of the Common Era departed from older lunar-premised cycles, by way of solar reckonings, how they accepted early Babylonian equivalents for names of months, introduced by the Exile but established with later rabbinic fixation of the calendar; and also how Samaritans and similar “out-group” Jewries were left in their own orbs, rather unmoved by the vital changes experienced among Jewries of Babylon, Palestine, Egypt, etc., via the “Oral Law” interpretation of Rabbinic Judaism and calculated systematic calendation.
During all these processes of calendric construction, it is not strange to find that the pattern which influenced Babylonian Jewry during and after the Exile (586-520 B. C. E.), and again after the loss of Jerusalem (70 C. E.), percolated to all corners of the Babylonian-Persian zones of empire, thus reaching half-forgotten Jewries, distant, isolated, semi-primitive Yawists, who used Babylonian names for their months. One of these, a “lost world” in Israel, an island in the Nile, was the Jewish colony of Elephantine, which lost all ties with Jerusalem in its Egyptian life, but which used Babylonian names for months at the same time and perhaps even earlier than they were in vogue among the Jewries of Palestine and Babylon.
This Nile colony might have first utilized Egyptian names, for many recovered
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papyri suggest but a limited infiltration of Babylonian influence through Egyptian or Jewish missionaries or soldiers, which displaced earlier Egyptian nomenclature. Certain papyri, dated 408 B. C. E., according to Morgenstern, indicate that Jews of Elephantine wrote to the Persian governor of Egypt (for Egypt was in the Persian Empire then), who no doubt was acquainted with the Babylonian as well as the Egyptian cycles and names, yet who probably cited Babylonian rather than Egyptian names for months. Such “months” could not have come to Egyptian Jews by way of Palestine, for the Jews of Elephantine used such Babylonian names for months long before their citation in the Biblical saga. This island colony, inhabited by Jewish mercenaries in the employ of the Pharaohs, was settled long before the rise of the Persian Empire—certainly before its invasion of Egypt. This Jewish colony flourished, probably as early as 640 B. C. E., under Egyptian and not Persian-Babylonian control. Here is an excellent illustration of how two calendars—at least as regards their names for months—Egyptian and Babylonian, vied with each other for adoption by an incoming group of hired Israelites. A special papyrus (numbered 30) contains the Babylonian and corresponding Egyptian names for all months but Tammuz and Mar-hehwan, which occur without corresponding Egyptian terms.
Even as the Elephantine colony could choose between two competing calendars, one predominatingly solar and the other decidedly lunar, so too is it probable that another element determined matters. It is just as likely that Jews already in Babylon since 586 B. C. E., had influenced Darius II (known as Nothus, 424-405 B. C. E.) „ possibly about 419, “in the seventeenth year of Darius,” to extend his edict not only to allow the return of Jews to Palestine, but also to permit the practice of a standardized calendar for the sake of religious and cultural unity. This is a measure which would unify Jewry, an already loyal group throughout all Persian satrapies, by means of a cycle of time containing Babylonian-Persian names for months and regular Jewish festivals permanently affixed therein. This influence in time may have penetrated even beyond the physical zone of Persian power to the more distant out-posts of Jewry, as far as the forebears of the Falashas on the highlands of Ethiopia. These were in some respects a long-time settlement of early temporary colonies, as the Elephantine site on the Nile, and thus were responsible for much conversion of and comingling with native stocks. It is altogether probable that these invading mercenary soldier-settlers of Egypt were Israelites, transferred by the Pharaohs from sites such as the Elephantine isle to the headwaters of the Blue Nile and Lake Tzana (named in later centuries after the Constantine of Ethiopia who introduced Coptic Christianity about the third century). It is probable that these Judean soldiers in the employ of Pharaohs spread early Judaic influence, syncretized with primitive practice about them, as far inland as the Pharaohs held sway, even into Ethiopia. We know that Judaic practices were used even before the introduction of Coptism and it is possible that the numerous semi-Judaic festivals, now observed by Falashas, had their origin in this synthesis of early pre-exilic Israelitish patterns with primitive tribalisms of the immediate environs. Such patterns were crystallized after the adoption of Babylonian names for months and before the completion of the Bible canon. The Falashas use some Babylonian-named months, and also use the Pentateuch as their only blueprint for life. Again this is indicated in that they know no Hebrew and nothing of the Talmud.
The same synthesis which developed among the Samaritans emerged after a fashion among the Falashas and in comparatively parallel centuries. For the Debtera, the priestly order of Falashas, is strongly similar to the Defter of the Samaritans. The Samaritans and the Falashas may not have influenced each other in the least, but both cultivated a common life-pattern amid the cracking of great empires, when Jewries elsewhere crystallized a “Mobile Center” in Law, Calendar, etc. This mobile center held them in unity but left such groups as Falashas and Samaritans as isolated “out-group” semi-Judaic communities rather than Jewries.
A word or two about the Falashas—Dark Jews of the Dark Continent—and their calendation. Falashas, in common with Ethiopians, speak the native tongue, and use their sacred speech, Gheez, for the Orit, their Holy Writ. They have no Hebrew books. They know nothing of Purim or Chanukah—very important events in the
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Jewish, calendar elsewhere. Their Sabbath is considered to be a female deity and it is an example of early Mosaism plus the primitivism of the Ethiopian highlands, for Sanbat Kadmai—Sabbath—is a rigorous observance. Sabbath is the kernel to the Falasha calendar and was a “reality” prior to heaven or earth. Sanbat is an angel over the sun and the rain—the two climatic powers of the region—who will lead them to Jerusalem under the guidance of a Messiah, a Falasha version of Elijah. They sanctify the new moon by fasting and utilize only four Babylonian names for months: Nisan, Ab, Lui and Teshran. Festivals are fixed in a lunar-and-solar calendar year which adds a month every four years, whereas the regular Jewish calendar carries seven intercalated months every 19 years. An effort toward syncretism is apparent, too, in the fast days which occur invariably on the tenth of each month (an advance notice of the Day of Atonement?), the twelfth day of the month in honor of Arch-angel Michael and the fifteenth day as a remnant from Passover to Pentecost, reminiscent of the “day after the Sabbath of the Mazzot Festival until the Sabbath Festival,” cited earlier in this article.
The yearly celebration of the Passover is an example of how their whole calendar goes astray, for on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth days of Nisan, Falashas irregularly but religiously eat only sparse Shimbera-bread and slaughter their Pascal Lamb at the sunset of the fourteenth day. Different communities venture their own calculation by observation for the Passover Festival! Thus, Falashas may celebrate the same festivals in different places weeks apart. On Tabernacles (September-October) they do not enter booths customary with Israel generally, but they do eat matzohs (unleavened bread), an experience unknown in other areas except for Pass-over (March-April), which is cited by Morgenstern as a Palestinian practice in early pre-Christian centuries. The festival of in-gathering—the last day of the ninth month —is a forgotten festival in the tegular Jewish calendar, but is one quite alive among Falashas, for on such a day they ascend mountains to pray and fast and offer gifts to their own order of Nazirites.
Their calendar is measured by fast rather than feast days. Not only are the tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth days of each month fast days, but also the second and fifth days of each week. A special fast season of their calendar is the first-to-ninth day of Tammuz, in commemoration of the loss of the First Temple, but strangely enough they make no provision for the Second Temple which is an event that happened after the forming of their own pattern.
Other minor and major Jewries had calendric vicissitudes, just as different experiences affected them as a people. Little is known of the Chazars, a people of unknown origin who maintained an independent kingdom from about 620 to 1015 C.E. They lived in the Crimea before the rise of Russian monarchy and their leaders adopted Judaism much in the same manner and about the same time as Clovis’ conversion to Christianity. Chazars, as Samaritans and Falashas, combined Judaic or rather Mosaic “laws” with native customs, even as the Indians in Latin America synthesized indigenous Indian belief with invading Catholic ritual. Although the Chazars maintained independence for five centuries, it is doubtful if Judaism, outside the royal family, really received more than lip service. The calendar and its festivals were probably accepted indiscriminately because of “royal command.”
“Jews with the queues” might be another name for the Tio Kino Kia-wan, a small group of Jews who were—for they no longer are—Chinese in nationality and Jewish in religion. They may have emerged as a small group of Jewish traders whose missionary influence on their immediate
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neighbors brought about a self-contained religious community. No exact date is known for their appearance in China, but some records suggest a time as early as the Third Century B.C.E. Brief references to them appear in Chinese literature and often they are mistaken for Mohammedans. Specific references to them are made in 1229 and 1254 C.E., in connection with taxes and army service in local insurrections. Their entire community existed at Kai Fung Foo, about a synagogue in which 70 families worshipped. A record dated 1489 reports that the earliest residents there had come from Western lands, that an earlier structure had been built in 1163 C.E., that the founder of the Ming Dynasty had awarded them land and honor in 1139, and that festivals were observed, some of which are partially Chinese in derivation. Their calendar suggests a Sino-Judaic synthesis, with Jewish content reflective of Babylonian Jewry, because Babylonian months and many Talmudic practices were known to them.
From the above references to Jewish communities, both large and small, in ancient days, and their relation to “days and ways” of the calendar, we find that many of them had common points of departure, and that such departures led to further change in calendation or to a deeper retention of earlier and simpler calendation. In either instance, calendric changes were often parallel with life-adjustments and such adjustments proved most fruitful calendrically when old festivals were retained but revitalized with new spirit in the format of new calendation.
Even as the Jewish calendar itself was a balance of various Jewish calendars of the past and is now a standard lunar-solar framework, so the common and uncommon festivals and calendric practices among existing “out-group” Jewries, as Samaritans and Falashas, remind us of what the Calendar of Israel might have been. They serve as a further reminder a that it can be changed today, if necessary, even as it was done previously and that it might have continued with confusion although picturesquely had it not been faced with crisis and conquered by change.
Whenever Jewish communities have dwelt outside of Palestine they have been minorities and often have followed a religious calendar entirely different from their secular calendar which was similar to the people among whom they dwelt. This is exemplified as early as the Elephantine colony in Egypt and as late as the diminished Samaritans in their Arab environment.
If the World Calendar in no wise sacrifices the week as is charged by many co-religionists it may indeed be another great reform worthy of consideration. If it sanctifies the week additionally in that it can reintroduce an ancient Jewish practice—a instead of 2Jf hour “coverage” for major rest days and festivals, it may well be time to lengthen again the one-day and one-week festivals by one-day for each. Thus Passover would be celebrated by all for eight, not seven days, and New Year’s, for two, not one
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days. Orthodox Jewry celebrates eight and not seven days for Tabernacles and Passover, and two, not one, for New Year and Pentecost, in order that Jewry all over the world shall be able to celebrate these festivals simultaneously. This practice of a lengthened festival in general is proposed in part by The World Calendar in its Year-End Day and Leap-Year Day, so that on each of these instances there would be two days of leisure celebrated simultaneously by the world-at-large.
Speaking for ourselves only, some of us differ with all orthodoxies, when we accept the Bible as “Man’s account of the Divine” rather than “the Divine’s account of Man” and the calendar as man’s instrument for measuring time instead of as a divinely ordained system of time. “God’s time” is no longer an adequate charge to be made against calendar revision, for “God’s time” has been tampered with for centuries—even as mistakenly labelled “God’s ways” were disturbed by social welfare, birth control, and efforts for peace in the modern world. “God’s ways” to one may be “God’s ills” to another. It would be best not to cite one for contempt of court if he simply disagrees with the other litigant in the case under question. “God’s time” has even been heard as a charge against the international date-line. The crossing of the international date-line and its change of an entire day is a practice which according to some originally interferred with “God’s time,” but what is it now but a scientific reality in the laboratory of life?
We find from perusal of the history of Judaism that rigid restrictions as advanced by Karaism lost influence, even in behalf of the Sabbath, and that the liberal interpretations gained strength. Rabbinic Judaism ever permitted infringement of any or all rituals or laws, affecting even the Day of Atonement, if it meant salvation of life.
If manifold revisions can be cited in the past, not for convenience but for necessity, it may well be within the spirit of the “liberal interpretation” of our “constitution” for Religion-and-Culture, Judaism, to think through anew the problem of double-day Sabbaths every week (to insure Saturday for the Jew and Sunday for the Christian), lengthened Jewish festivals every season, and an improved world calendation in the form of a Year-End Day every year and a Leap-Year Day quadrennially.
However, these two days, according to many, would disrupt the sequence of weeks and would prove disturbing to dissenting minorities who believe in the Divine Law and who fear that a shift in the Sabbath would violate God’s Sabbath. To them it is more than a struggle over a day; it is the Day that is the centrality of their “way to God.”
Many elements within Jewry itself, one of the three minorities mostly involved, have changed even their days of Services from Saturday to Sunday and have shortened festivals by a day. If a universal two-day Sabbath by way of the five-day-work week could be established within the framework of The World Calendar, mayhap many Sunday Services current in Liberal Judaism would revert back by preference to Friday evenings or Saturday mornings, thus saving the seventh day as the Sabbath for those who so prefer.
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Thus far, Orthodox Jews, Seventh-Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists raise definite objections, not to a World Calendar as a whole, but to the loss of the seven day sequence of weeks. From what we know of the changes of the calendar, especially in the past, the alternations of even the Jewish festivals and the varied interpretations for the “lost” and “lifted” days, we realize that the Calendar, even as the Bible, is not in a special way inspired but in a special sense inspiring. As the Bible may be man’s human blueprint for divine goals, so the Calendar may be man’s chronicle of time to achieve such goals through the leisure of a double Sabbath Day, security in a five-day-work week, and spirituality in the Sabbath (Saturday, Sunday, or both). The interruption of the sevenday-week sequence, in our humble opinion, does not violate spirituality, if one accepts our definition of it as “man’s assertion of his highest purpose,” or the “enshrinement of one’s highest aspirations” by means of “personal therapeutics”—comfort and solace for individuals—and “social dynamics” —challenge and change, even calendar change. The World Calendar makes available more rest on more days, proffers symmetry upon the current calendar, and encourages a “liberal construction” rather than a “strict construction” of our religious “Constitution.”
OBITUARY NOTES
ANDREW W. MELLON, former Secretary of the U. S. Treasury, died on August
26. He had long been in favor of calendar reform, and had publicly advocated international action in its behalf.
T)OBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON, Director of the Hall of Fame at New York University, and poet of long renown, died on October 14. His interest in calendar reform dated from the year 1934, when the matter was brought to his attention by Bishop Manning.
Other members of The World Calendar Association who have died during the past few months include: Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Little Rock, Ark.; Col. W. C. Babcock of Washington, D. C.; Rev. Dr. William S. Young of Los Angeles; Ogden L. Mills, former Secretary of the U. S. Treasury, New York City; Rev. Dr. Francis H. Sprague of Boston; Prof. Frederick S. Dunn of the University of Oregon, and U. S. Senator Nathan L. Bachman of Chattanooga, Tenn.; Judge E. E. Good, of the Nebraska Supreme Court; W. R. K. Taylor, member of the New York Stock Exchange; Charles S. Smith, salesman, Hopkinsville, Ky.; Miss A. Marie Boggs, Bureau of Commercial Economics; B. C. J. Loder, Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, The Hague; Frank B. Kellogg, former Secretary of State, St. Paul, Minn; Newton D. Baker, former Secretary of War, Cleveland, Ohio.
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DISCUSSION OF LEAP WEEK
By P. W. Wilson
Formerly Member of British House of Commons
A T the Dayton Conference of the Federal Council of Churches, held ZA in December, there was a valuable and instructive discussion of what is meant by calendar reform. By an important decision, the Federal Council accepted the principles of The World Calendar, and the occasion was a subject of comment in the press. Whereupon a number of distinguished Rabbis of the Jewish Community sought an opportunity of stating their position. In response to their request, an invitation was given them to appear before representatives of the Federal Council in New York City.
The tone and temper of the discussion was a welcome contrast to what, a few years ago, was the attitude of some calendar reformers towards the opposition of Seventh Day Adventists, certain Jewish and other minorities. It was with the utmost respect and sympathy that agelong beliefs, observances and susceptibilities were taken into careful consideration.
A problem has to be solved and it is well that the problem be clearly understood. The purpose of what follows is not controversy but a friendly and cooperative approach to what, after all, is a situation in which there is a common interest.
For thousands of years, the Jewish community throughout the world has been honorably associated with the calendar. It is to the Jew that mankind owes the Sabbath—that merciful provision of one day rest in seven which has become an industrial right as well as a spiritual, and cultural privilege. Nor would it be easy to mention any contribution to health, to sanity, to happiness more beneficent for people of all races and religions than the Holy Day in every week. Any attempt to eliminate the Holy Day, whether of the Jew, the Christian or the Moslem, from any week anywhere, will be resisted by all who have ever advocated The World Calendar. As a trustee of the Rest Day for Man, universal and never to be interrupted, the Jewish community deserves the unshaken support of all reasonable and responsible people.
The Jewish community is also a factor of importance in the promotion of international brotherhood and, within the range of its influence, this community stands for peace. Of that inter-racial and inter-religious solidarity—the ability of man, despite all dissensions, to work out a destiny that shall be of common advantage to all mankind—calendar reform is an expression, and it may prove to be a very significant expression.
The inclusion of trusted Jewish leaders within the developing comrade
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ship of calendar reform is thus a consummation devoutly to be wished, and three questions arise. First, what is agreed ? Secondly, what differences await discussion? Thirdly, what is the larger issue involved?
Over what would be the perfect calendar, there is no debate. Everybody is of but one opinion that, according to logic, there should be one calendar for this planet, in which every year, every quarter, every month, every week, every hour, every minute and every second, respectively would be of uniform length. Indeed, zealous exponents of the decimal system might be tempted to add that all these divisions and subdivisions of time should be related to one another by multiples of ten so that everybody would be able to count the clock on his fingers!
The Hebrew Scriptures have taught us, however, that we have to live in the universe which God created, that God is above all systems and sovereign over all uniformities. It is not He Who fits into our scheme. It is we who have to fit into His scheme, and the Calendar is an adjustment of time, as we understand time, to His arrangement of the sun in the heavens and the stars in their courses.
That adjustment is, even today, far from perfect, and in his dealings with the Eternal, the spirit of man will not rest satisfied until perfection, so far as he can conceive of it, swallows up imperfection, nor is there anything in Hebrew annals that tolerates an ideal less exalted than this. The Scriptures—Law and Psalm and Prophecy—are an everlasting Magna Carta of the Best that man in his most exalted moments can ask or think.
The Jewish people are not to be held responsible for the anomalies and irregularities of the Gregorian calendar. No religious community— Jewish, Christian, Moslem, whatever it be—has a reason for upholding what originated in the Paganism of a Roman Empire that has disappeared. A proposal to arrange the months of the year according to simple commonsense—to get rid of a February with 28 days and other absurdities— challenges no faith and wounds no feeling. Everybody—according to the measure of his interest in the subject—favors such an adaptation. Nobody —up to this point—has any reason to be against it.
Over the simple arithmetic of the year, there is little room for argument. Here it is a question, not of opinion, but of the multiplication table and, with clear logic, Rabbi Moses Hyamson, who has devoted years to this problem, sees what is mainly important to calendar reform. The workable year must consist of 364 days or 52 weeks of seven days, and four quarters of 91 days. Within the quarters, the months of 31, 30, 30 days— included in the World Calendar—would correspond.
There is one difficulty and only one difficulty to be considered. Some may think that the difficulty is of great importance. Even they must admit that it stands alone. That difficulty is the length of the year.
The astronomical year consists of 365% days approximately, and a
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calendar year of 364 days thus falls short by 5 days in 4 years. According to the present calendar, there is one day added for three years and two days added for the fourth or Leap Year. In a World Calendar, how would those extra days be accounted for ? That is the question over which the Jewish Rabbis express a genuine concern.
The position may be explained, perhaps, by a simple illustration. Suppose that a person lives in a house that has one clock. It cannot be regulated and it gains just one minute a day. It has thus a tendency to go fast. How should such a clock be adjusted to astronomical time?
One plan would be to let the clock run on, say for a month, and then stop it for a half an hour. Another plan would be, every night, to stop the clock for a minute. Which plan would be best?
Obviously the second. By adjusting the clock every day, its error is kept strictly within one minute, and one minute is not much of a deviation from scientific punctuality. But a clock that may be 10 or 20 or 30 minutes fast, is seldom in accord, even approximately, with correct time. For catching trains and keeping appointments, it has ceased to be an exact instrument of workaday chronology.
The calendar is a kind of clock and if the year in the calendar consists of 364 days, it means that the clock goes fast. It gains 5 days in 4 years and has thus to be adjusted to astronomical time. The question of the calendar is thus identical with the question of the clock—is it to be set right at long intervals or is it to be set right at short intervals?
A plan to which Rabbi Hyamson draws our attention, consists of an adjustment of the calendar, not each year, but after a term of years. This plan requires either a Leap month, so-called, or a Leap week.
First, let us look at the Leap Month. If 5 days are gained in four years, it follows that, in 28 years, 35 days will have been gained. It is thus suggested that, every 28 years, there should be inserted in the Calendar a month of exactly 5 weeks; and let us see how it would work. At midnight of December 30th, the last day of the new Calendar year, there would begin—not January 1st, but Leap Month 1st; and only at midnight of Leap Month 35th would January 1st commence.
All of us are aware that it is difficult to set a watch by the sun dial or to tell the time on the seashore by the tide. This plan of saving up days for 28 years would be a similar separation of the calendar from solar time. A clock that has stopped entirely is at least right twice a day. This calendar would only be right three to four times in a century.
Its error would accumulate to a maximum of no less than 35 days— and we do well to consider what such an error would mean. In 1582, the calendar—previously arranged at the Council of Nice in 325 A.D.— was 10 days ahead of the vernal equinox. That error was less than a third of 35 days. Yet Pope Gregory XIII thought that it was sufficiently serious
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to be corrected. According to the proposal for a Leap Month, the calendar, eight years after each correction, would show an error greater than that which, in 1582, had accumulated in more than 1200 years and at the adjustment, a year of 364 days would suddenly become a year of 399 days!
An alternative plan provides for a Leap Week. The extra days accumulate, year by year, until a complete week has been obtained. That week is then inserted—like Leap Month—between December 30 and January 1.
The magnitude of the maximum error in this case is less than 35 days. But it is, in fact, as serious. A day is added for every ordinary year and two days are added for Leap Year, which arrangement works out in more than one way. Take the following progression:
1 + 1 + 14-2 + 1 + 1 = 7 days
The week is there accumulated in 6 years.
But let us put the progression thus:
1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 8 days
In this case, six years yield 8 days, not 7, while five years would only yield 6 days. We have thus to run on to a second week thus:
1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 14 days
It thus requires 11 years to obtain a complete week or weeks and, in fact, two weeks are required to adjust the calendar, not one. Thus the years, corrected by Leap Weeks, would be of three alternative durations— 364 days, 371 days, and 378 days.
There have been measures taken with a view to eliminating the variable Easter. The Leap Month and the Leap Weeks would involve variations far more inconvenient than Easter has been in their effect on human life. The solstices and equinoxes, as solar anniversaries, would vary by as much as 14 days, and the nautical almanac would be thrown into a confusion that might be a danger to shipping.
It is no merely personal opinion that the Leap Month is fantastic and that the Leap Week is impossible. In 1931, the League of Nations, after full consideration, issued a report on calendar reform in which this particular device was described as “inferior to the existing calendar.” It was added that such a plan “cannot be considered at all.” The verdict must be accepted as final.
In The World Calendar, the adjustment of the year is annual and no large error is allowed to accumulate. There is Year-End Day annually after December 30th. There is Leap Year Day, quadrennially, after June 30th. The discrepancy between calendar and astronomical time is thus kept within the irreducible minimum which is possible according to the essential circumstances of the case. It will thus be seen that there must be some reason—which he holds to be a strong reason—why Rabbi Hyamson
prefers a Leap Month or a Leap Week to a Leap Day. About that reason, there is no mystery. He holds that Leap Day changes the progression of the weeks and so interrupts the continuity of the Jewish Sabbath.
There are those who, greatly daring, have argued that a passage in 44^//	Leviticus—XXIII 15-16—reveals Moses as a calendar reformer. Does
not the language suggest that the law-giver treated seven weeks as 50 days and so introduced a Year Day into the Hebraic festivals? The passage is carefully explained by Rabbi Hyamson in a different sense. Still, it does not appear entirely to exclude such an interpolation of a day. In any event, it gives the impression that there cannot be anything of moral obliquity in such an inserted day.
Time—as a great and highly honored Jew, Albert Einstein, has made clear—is by no means so simple an element in existence, whatever our
existence may be, as we are apt sometimes to suppose. Let us suppose that a man uses one of the weeks of his life in order to fly round the
world. If he flies east, he reduces 7 days of his life to 6. If he flies west, he extends 7 days of his life to 8. Yet it would be difficult to suggest that such a man, giving thanks in a synagogue for his safe return, was failing to keep the Sabbath merely because, for him, the Sabbath had ceased to be a seventh day in his calendar.
Let us imagine for a moment that the whole world fell asleep one evening and did not awaken until the day after tomorrow. Would this mean that the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob would withdraw the shadow of His wings from those who are, in body and soul, the children of Abraham? What is it in the synagogue that has endured through the ages? What are the depths of emotion, of loyalty, of faith, of worship that, through the centuries, have inexhaustibly sustained this society of man for whom is reserved some destiny yet to be fulfilled? Surely they are not to be measured by a detail of chronological exactitude.
The learned Rabbi has insisted that the word Sabbath does not signify only a day of rest. It signifies Rest itself and the principle of Rest thus emphasized by Hebrew tradition, is no outworn principle. We have today the five-day week. That short week is not destroying the Sabbath. On the contrary it is associating Jew and Christian in a double Sabbath, human and divine, which both are able to celebrate in unison.
And so with the Year and Leap Days. These also are days, not withdrawn from the Sabbaths of the Year but added unto them. They are among those Holy Days which man may use as holidays.
According to The World Calendar, in so far as it affects the matter at all, the Jewish Sabbath is set in a strategic position. It remains what it has been—the day on which every week ends. It becomes the day on which every quarter ends. More important than all, it becomes the day on which
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every year ends. The place of the Sabbath in such a year is impregnable.
No ecclesiastical organization is more sensitive over ritual and times and seasons than the Roman Catholic Church. No organization has to consider a more bewildering complexity of festivals. In dealing with the calendar, the Church has displayed caution. But she has been more than careful to refrain from attaching faith to dates. Eternity, not time, is, as all mystics are assured, the measure of religion.
Through all ages, the Jewish people have concentrated their minds on life itself. That has been the glory of the Hebraic mission—life and home and happiness defended against the oppressive encroachments of power. If it can be shown that calendar reform guarantees 52 fixed Sabbaths in the year and safeguards those Sabbaths within every year, and if this acceptance of the Sabbath can be extended as a blessing to all mankind— might it not be worth while for the guardians of the Sabbath to consider this opportunity of leadership along the path of well-being for all people ?
NOTES FROM CALENDAR HISTORY
By A. K. Clevenger, Civil Engineer, Claremont, Va.
DECISION between the various proposals for calendar reform is a comparatively easy matter for anyone who realizes one clear lesson of history—that all true progress comes from gradual change. The only practical change in our calendar is one which proposes no undue upheaval.
Delving into calendar history, I have been particularly interested in the question of when the calendar first became public property. We know, for instance, that for thousands of years the priests guarded it as one of their most valuable secrets. They kept the records of the heavenly bodies and the time measurements which came from these records, as the sole property of the temple. Rulers and statesmen, merchants and farmers, had to consult the priests when they wanted to know about future dates— when to travel, marry, plant, hunt, and so on. The temple doled out the lucky and unlucky days, cast horoscopes, kept family records, measured days, weeks, months, quarters.
Only gradually did the calendar emerge from a mass of weeds which had grown up with it, weeds that were superstition and sorcery and augury and conjecture.
Perhaps the first group to become “calendar wise,” outside the priesthood, were the Roman lawyers, who were a species of left-handed priests handling all the “unholy” or civil matters of law, as distinguished from matters of the “holy” or temple law. Their clients consulted them to ascertain the proper days for commencing law suits.
The secrecy of the calendar had lasted a long time. But finally came the dawn. Sometime about 315 B.C., Cneius Flavius, son of a freedman and scribe to Appius Caecus, the edile, conceived the idea of making the law calendar public. He struck off copies of it and hung the copies around the forum, white tablets which stirred up such public interest that Flavius was made a praetor, the first freedman to be thus honored. The lawyers set up a great hue and cry, fearing that the publicizing of the calendar would ruin their business. But the calendar was out of the temple to stay. The blow that this democratization of time dealt to the patrician classes was noted by Livy, who spoke of the reward given to Flavius as an indication of how “a faction of the lowest people is gathering strength to destroy sacred things.”
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AGAINST EXTRA DAYS!
By Dr. Abraham Adolf Fraenkel
Professor of Mathematics, Einstein Institute, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
The following article received from Jerusalem is a clear statement from a distinguished thinker. While it does not represent the views of the Journal of Calendar Reform, it is offered to Journal readers in a spirit of fairness, with factual comments.
THE movement for Calendar Reform and its principal bearer, The World Calendar Association, has great merits, and the realization of many of its aims should be desirable. The differences between the lengths of a month, which are being neutralized by the Reform, derive historically from contingencies and give rise to inconvenience in practical life. The Christian Churches seem to face positively a relative stabilization of Easter for about the second Sunday in April. That would involve great practical advantages; on the other hand, the historical arguments (the coinciding of the Jewish Passover with the first full moon after the spring equinox, and the relation between Easter and Passover according to the Concilium of Nicaea) cannot be decisive1.
On the other hand, I wish to justify the opinion that serious arguments are in opposition to the extra days and to the discontinuity in the sequence of weeks, implied by the extra days2; arguments of such importance, that they might prevent the introduction of The World Calendar within a reasonable course of time—a fact everybody would be sorry for. The arguments are based on three aspects: the chronological, the religious and the practical one.
Chrono logical: Astronomers in particular3, but also historians4 have often stressed the point of how regrettable it would be, if the periodicity of the week of seven days, which has been undisturbed since thousands of years, were interrupted. We know that a Monday of many centuries ago
1	As stabilization of Easter is solely a religious matter and outside the reform of the civil calendar, The World Calendar Association leaves this matter to the religious authorities for decision.	c
2	The one or two extra days were conceived by an Italian, Catholic priest, AbbS Mastrofini, in his booklet dealing on the matter, 1834 ; it received three Nihil O^statsSna two Imprimaturs of his bishop.	,
3	The International Astronomical Union, Commission 32, in 1922, approved the extra days in the new civil calendar and favored the 12-month revision. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1932, Page 78. The British Astronomer Royal, Dr. H. Spencer-Jones, approves The World Calendar. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1938, Page 65. Dr. William E. Castle’s questionnaire to members of the National Academy of Sciences, which includes astronomers, showed that 76 per cent favored the new civil calendar. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1942, Page 10. Resolution approving The World Calendar by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1936, Page 55.
Truslow Adams, foremost American historian, favors the new time-plan. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1937, Page 113. Dr. Dixon Ryan. Fox, President of Union College, Schenectady, New York, states : “Future historians would thank us if we could place the dates s° that the weekday and the month-day always came together. For example, if an historian finds the date September 13 he immediately knows that it was on Wednesday in the middle of a week. This might give a different interpretation to an event than would be given if the date rfi°U,d kn°W haPPened Erectly after a Sun^y,” See Journal of
N.B,
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differs from a Monday of this year by a number of days divisible by seven1. Furthermore, the weekday is the same for the people of the various nations and religions. (Cf. also Professor W. L. Kennon in this Journal, 1940, p. 183.) This universality and periodicity would be definitely disturbed by the extra days. It may be sufficient, moreover, to refer to what has been pointed out by Professor S. Brodetzky (of Leeds University) : The Jewish Foi'um, Vol. X, p. 374, 1927.
Religious: I am not authorized to express a view about the attitude of Christian Churches to an interruption of the seven days period by extra days. Many symptoms show that, in any case, the Holy! See takes a negative position in this matter. Indeed, it has always expressed its view in respect to a relative stabilization of Easter, intrinsically excluding the absolute stabilization implied by extra days. (Cf. the article of Abbe Chauve-Bertrand, this Journal, 1941, p. 10.)2
The attitude of the Jewish faith is diametrically opposite to the conception inspired by Dr. H. W. Bearce’s article (this Journal, 1940, p. 106). Transferred from Saturday to the Hebrew Sabbath, the extra days would mean a clear violation of the biblical commandment, to count six days3 in every case and to rest on the seventh—a commandment which is kept so rigorously as to produce a large literature in respect to passengers crossing the Pacific in the one or the other direction (change of date)4. Dr. J. H. Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, as well as Dr. I. Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, have therefore expressed public protest against any reform containing extra days, both orally and in pamphlets.
It is true, as Dr. Bearce mentions, that for their own religious purposes the Jews use their own calendar, a luni-solar calendar which is most interesting from the mathematical point of view. Nevertheless the extra days vitally affect the observing Jew who keeps away from work and business on Saturday (which is, by the way, only half a working day in many countries) ; his Sabbath would coincide every year with another weekday.
1 In chronological reckonings the day is rarely mentioned, merely date, month and year.
2 The Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, at Geneva, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church have approved The World Calendar. The Western European representative of the Eastern Orthodox Church has approved it also, and the Vatican has frequently said that there exists no dogmatic objection to calendar reform.
During the pontificate of Pope Pius X, the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce received, in 1912, the following statement: “The Holy See declared that it made no objection but invited the civil powers to enter into an accord on the reform of the civil calendar, after which it would willingly grant its collaboration in so far as the matter affected religious feasts." See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1942, Page 81.
The former Lord Archbishop of Canterbury has officially declared himself in favor of calendar reform. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1936, Page 13.
Abb§ Chauve-Bertrand states: “Everything living develops and changes; we must be continually abandoning something of the past in exchange for something better in the future ; the most ancient and venerable of traditional institutions must themselves be modified from time to time ; and more than once people have regretted that reforms did not come about When they were first desired.” See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1941, Page 14.
• There are many instances, particularly preceding the war, where industries and laborers worked five days only and not six as commanded in the Bible.
« The International Date-Line not only changes dates but incurs also the loss or gain of a day in the week.
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Last, not least, the Moslem1 peoples would not think of changing their weekly day of prayer, Friday, on account of any convention of the Western countries: The Indian Moslems2 (almost 100 millions of active propagandistic tendencies) not more than those of the Near East and Africa.
Finally, in respect to the practical and political aspect of the problem, it may be sufficient to quote one example which clearly shows the difficulties of the introduction of extra days into life: the British administration in Palestine and India. The Government of Palestine has among the officials of its central and local departments Moslems and Jews as well as Christians (these being either Europeans or Arabs). The administrative work of the various departments is therefore distributed in order that the Moslems have their weekly holiday on Friday, the Jews on Saturday and the Christians on Sunday—an arrangement which is, naturally, achieved not without some difficulty. The relation between the Moslem and the Jewish days of rest, it is true, would not be affected by the proposed Reform, each of the two creeds preserving their custom of counting weekdays. On the other hand, the extra days would imply a change in the position of Sunday every year3 (in leap years even twice), and would compel the Government to change the whole organization of work annually, a process which is almost impracticable. A similar situation would arise in India where, besides the Hindu religions, Islam and Christianity play an important part.
It seems that these arguments, among others, have influenced the representatives of Great Britain at the League of Nations, many years ago, to adopt a negative attitude in respect to the Calendar Reform proposed4.
Let us summarize: There are all reasons for and none against a Reform, which gives precisely 13 weeks to every quarter (except the last, containing one or two supplementary days), in order that every quarter should begin with the same weekday; this would hold as well for the second and for the third month of every quarter.5 (The 365th day, as well as the addi-
1	Mohammedan Turkey officially approved The World Calendar containing the one or two extra days, and Moslem Afghanistan for all international purposes. Fourteen countries have approved the civil World Calendar, among them eight Roman Catholic, two Protestant, one Eastern Orthodox, one Buddhist, and the two Mohammedan countries.
2	Indian Hindu approval has been obtained through The Reverend Swami Omkar: “It is easy to see how happy this arrangement of The World Calendar is for all humanity—regardless of religion or race or nation. It is another step toward the universal brotherhood of man. The World Calendar has therefore my wholehearted approval and support.” See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1939, Page 29.
3	See footnote 2, Page 126.
4	Great Britain’s Answer, April 22, 1937: “The Government of the United Kingdom are of the opinion that any consideration of the draft Convention would be premature pending further discussion of the principle involved in the reform of the calendar and of the particular method of reform to be adopted. They consider that the time will not be ripe for any further examination of the matter by the League until propaganda by those in favor of the alteration of the calendar has achieved more widespread and solid results than it has hitherto. His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom remain of the opinion that, until the fixation of Easter has been achieved internationally, no useful purpose is served by attempting to proceed with the larger question of calendar reform.” No fixation of Easter can be had in our changeable calendar ; the decision for a fixed Easter rests with the churches rather than with governments and secular groups. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1937, Page 134.
3	At the League of Nations’ Conference in 1931, the minutes show that the majority of opinions were for a perpetual calendar that included one or two extra days. See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1942, Pages 8 and 41.
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tional day in leap years, could be inserted in December). Consequently, the whole year’s calendar is defined in a simple and conspicuous way, if the weekday of the New Year is known.1 Furthermore, if the Holy See and the other Churches agree to a relative stabilization of Easter, this could be fixed for the second Sunday of April, i. e., between the eighth and fourteenth of April. To postulate more than that, would mean less—it would mean the postponement of the Reform as a whole ad calendar graecas, for chronological, religious and practical reasons!
OTHER JEWISH OPINIONS
DR. JULIAN MORGENSTERN, one of the most eminent American authorities on the Jewish calendar, and President of The Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, from which a great majority of American rabbis have been graduated, wrote The World Calendar Association, February, 1942, giving his point of view, reprinted here with his permission.
“In principle, I am in sympathy with the project of The World Calendar Association, particularly if it is not at all the purpose of the Association to interfere unnecessarily in the religious calendars and ceremonial observances of various sects. I believe that it would be expedient for the Association to emphasize this fact over and over again. . . .
“With regard to the traditional Jewish religious calendar, the great difficulty in the way of correlating The World Calendar with it lies in the fact that The World Calendar would throw the traditional Jewish Sabbath out of place, in six years out of every cycle of seven years. I fear that this is an insurmountable obstacle for Orthodox Jews. I have given thought to the matter and see no way in which this obstacle can be surmounted. Otherwise, there is no difficulty whatever in the recognition and employment of The World Calendar by Jews for civil purposes.
“Of course, should our Government ever officially recognize the civil World Calendar, American Jews would accept this calendar readily and employ it for civil purposes. It would then become their responsibility to find a way to harmonize their traditional religious observances with the new and now official calendar.
“They have faced this problem before and found a solution.* And I have no doubt that they could do it again if the need arises.”
Other opinions are of value such as those of Rabbis Ephraim Frisch, Martin M. Weitz, Edgar Siskin, George Solomon and Dr. Abraham Cron-bach.
“I rise to discuss the paragraph which has to do with the calendar changes. I am not an authority on the calendar, and have not studied the question of the effects the proposed changes in the calendar will have on the Sabbath. I am speaking with the greatest sympathy for our Orthodox brethren. I think there is entirely too much magnification of the importance of this issue. I think it misrepresents us to the world. If the world is going to be benefited by the change of the calendar as proposed, then we Jewish people of the Reform wing at least ought not to stand in the way.
“I am speaking with due reverence as to what a divinely ordained Sabbath means to me; it means that the human mind and human society thought out under Divine inspiration a day of rest. The mathematics and the calendar of it does not mean so much to me, and I do not think they mean much to my colleagues. As to the wanderingness of
1	On this premise there could be no perpetual calendar.
8	See Journal of Calendar Reform, 1933, Pages 111-114.
JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
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the Sabbath, it may have wandered before, for all I know; I think it did in the process of calendar changes. We are interested in a great institution and idea, and not in its geography or in its time location; and I do not think we would suffer any serious consequences if once a year the Sabbath was an Elijah—a wanderer.”—Rabbi Ephraim Frisch.
“The Sabbath evolved from an irregular and fourfold monthly experience to a regular weekly event. ... If The World Calendar sanctifies the week additionally in that it can reintroduce an ancient Jewish practice—a 48 instead of 24 hour ‘coverage’ for major rest-days and festivals, it may well be time to lengthen again the one-day and one-week festivals by one day for each. Thus Passover would be celebrated by all for eight, not seven days, and New Year’s, for two, not one days. Orthodox Jewry celebrates eight and not seven days for Tabernacles and Passover, and two, not one, for New Year and Pentecost, in order that Jewry all over the world shall be able to celebrate these festivals simultaneously.”—Rabbi Martin M. Weitz.
“I am in favor of any kind of intelligent progressive calendar reform. The question of tradition doesn’t particularly trouble me, especially when balanced against the social benefit which might conceivably derive from some effective calendar reform.”— Rabbi Edgar Siskin.
“I am heartily in favor of calendar revision and see no reason why Liberal Rabbis (and, for that matter, Orthodox as well) should not approve. The calendar has undergone change from time to time, not always wisely. This proposal is considered and sensible and affects no principles.”—Rabbi George Solomon.
“I am with you in the matter of calendar alteration. . . . When you come right down to it, what the Orthodox Jew wants is not so much one day of rest in seven as a day of intervals with which the Deity will be satisfied. With increasing obliviousness to tradition Jews will eventually be prepared for calendar change.”—Dr. Abraham Cronbach.
Simplification
By Enoch Karrer
SIMPLIFICATION of the calendar is a good idea. There is no reason why on petty grounds such as myth and worship of the Past, we discommode ourselves and make necessary continuous expenditure of nervous energy every day of our lives. Men have changed calendars before to suit their present needs and philosophies. Such changes have sometimes been in the direction of simplifications whose benefits we have inherited; sometimes not. We have the same rights, the same incentives, and equal abilities, to better our customs, habits, and social structures; yea, it is our duty to make them more fitted to our new world, not only for ourselves but for the sake of those to follow. Such mechanical things may seem insignificant and bothersome to make, but they have tremendous spiritual effects.
A new calendar for a new world is befitting the times.
To simplify our calendar may be a first step in taking hold of other things we have inherited, and that, although requiring change, we cannot change because we hold them in awe, or reverence, or by habit, or in fear. Some of,these have kept us from fully and effectively arriving at and trying out the most ideal form of government; namely, a representative democracy. To mention a few: uniform price of things, a uniform price for a new world, a uniform system of measurement, a simplification of our monetary system, a simplification of language.
Would it not be a wonderful consummation to get a calendar reform a-going in or before 1945?
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CALENDAR REFORM—AND WHY
By Elisabeth Achelis
President of The World Calendar Association
Address Before the Amateur Astronomers Association, November 4, 1942
IANCELOT HOGBEN, in his illuminating book, Science for the Citizen, । devotes the entire first chapter to the coming of the calendar with these significant words in the opening sentence:
“. . . up to the present philosophers have only interpreted the world, it is also necessary to change it.”
and further are these trenchant observations:
“The recognition of the passage of time now became a primary necessity of social life .... man learned to measure things. He learned to keep account of past events. . . . The arts of writing, architecture, numbering, and in particular geometry, which was the offspring of star Ibre and shadow reckoning, were all by-products of man’s first organized achievement, the construction of the calendar. . . .
“Science began when man started to plan ahead for the seasons, because planning ahead for the seasons demanded an organized body of continuous observations and a permanent record of their recurrence.”
Here we are told clearly and directly that science began with the need for planning and recording the seasons in an organized manner for man’s daily social and civil needs. This is a surprising statement, isn’t it? How many of us associate the birth of science with the seasons—the calendar?
Now the calendar has always been based on three immutable laws of nature: the day with its inflexible alternating light and dark periods; the seasons, of which there are four in the temperate zones; and the year, which completes the annual circuit of the earth’s journey around the sun.
Man’s constant concern has ever been to keep the calendar in accord with these basic laws of nature, and were it not for two other elements that have entered into it, our time-system would be comparatively simple and natural. But the month and the week, which are outside of nature’s laws, have complicated it. Not until today is the real problem of our calendar being solved, and this is the subject of my talk to you tonight.
The month, although it originated with the four phases of the moon, has been an independent time-unit for more than 60 centuries. Previous to this epochal change, the moon calendar of 354 days had been man’s time-system practically throughout the entire world. There are people today who are still using this ancient calendar, hoary with age. It was only upon careful observation and study, through many hundreds of years, that man gradually became aware that the moon had no relation whatever to the seasons. With the ever increasing need for planning and producing more crops for the better nourishment of the people, the careful recording
Journal of CALENDAR REFORM
Consider The World Calendar TODAY for a better, more ordered World TOMORROWI
FIRST QUARTER
PRESENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR
1944
PROPOSED WORLD CALENDAR
FIRST QUARTER					
JANUARY	FEBRUARY	march
S W T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F Si
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2526 27 28 29 30 31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 23 24 25 26 27 28 29	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30 31
	a	ECOND QUARTER	
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2324 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 2122 2324 25 26 27 282930 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
THIRD QUARTE		
JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	8 M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 .30-31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1314 IS 16 17 18 19 202122 23 24 25 26 272829 3031	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 2021 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
		FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S MwT W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 2930 31	.12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 2324 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 2829 30 31 *
This calendar haa 52 weeks and must borrow from another week to complete the year. This causes the calendar to ehanpe every year and is responsible for Its confusion. Also note varying number of days in each quarter.
FIRST QUARTER				
JANUARY.	FEBRUARY	MARCH
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031	12 3 4 9 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
SECOND QUARTER				
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 **
THIRD QUARTER			
• JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 > 28 29 30
FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031	e	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
* A WORLD HOLIDAY. DECEMBER W, the Year-End Day. an extra Saturday, follows December 30th every year. *★ A WORLD HOLIDAY, JUNE W, the Leap-Year Day. another extra Saturday, follows June 30th in leap years.
THE WORLD CALENDAR
THE WORLD CALENDAR of 12 months and equal quarters is a logical rearange-ment of our present calendar. Every year is the same and begins on Sunday, January 1.
THE YEAR is divided into equal quarters of 3 months—13 weeks—91 days. The months are arranged in 31-30-30 days: each month has 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. The various time units all agree at the end of quarter-years.
* THE 365th DAY at the close of every year is the Year-End Day, the extra Saturday, December W (the old December 31). ** The 366th day, the Leap-Year Day (the old February 29) is placed in the midyear on another extra Saturday, June W. Both are World Holidays.
This year is significant because the last four months are identical in both the old and new calendars. With Sunday, the old December 31, becoming the extra Saturday, December W—a World Holiday—The World Calendar could begin the new year on Sunday, January 1, 1945.
YOU have the opportunity to apply this calendar and observe its benefits YOURSELF in the last four months of this year.
The Last Four Months of 1944 Are Exactly The Same in Both Calendars
A NEW CALENDAR FOR A NEW WORLD
VOL. XIV FIRST QUARTER, 1944	No. 1
4 TTENTION of the readers of the Journal of Calendar Reform is ZA directed to a different presentation of the calendars on the inside of the front cover. It shows clearly that this year 1944 is significant, because the last four months in the Gregorian calendar are fortunately identical as to days and dates with the last four months of The World Calendar. Beginning Friday, September 1, through Saturday, December 30, the calendars are interchangeable. Then the old December 31, a Sunday, becoming the new December W, an extra Saturday World Holiday, the new World Calendar would begin on Sunday, January 1, 1945. This indicates clearly how easy the change is. No dropping or adding of days is required.
There are many people keenly aware of the need for and the benefits resulting from this improved new calendar of equal quarters of 13 weeks, months of 26 weekdays plus Sundays, and the World Holidays that bring accuracy and stability to the ordered and well-balanced arrangement.
In war, peace and in all postwar planning this new reliable calendar is of the greatest value and commands recognition. To continue working with the planless, disordered and vacillating Gregorian calendar hardly seems a wise policy. Civilization would have to fumble as in the past, handicapped and hindered, because of the continuous and unwise use of the present extremely awkward and unsatisfactory calendar.
New buildings are not erected on outworn and insecure foundations. New conditions do not thrive on changeable and confused schedules. To deny this is to be blind to the fundamental law that like begets like, faulty foundations beget faulty results and good foundations beget good results. The tomorrows depend upon the acts of today.
There is a rule that progress is made slowly and does not come full blown into our lives. Gradually advancement is made, first by a few then by the many. For example in the realm of time, Roman Catholic countries alone adopted the Gregorian calendar; American and Canadian railways, Standard Time; and European railways and the Armed Forces, the 24-hour clock. These separate improvements were not universally accepted at once. Nations, groups, organizations and individuals would do well to consider the benefits of The World Calendar as it affects their various affairs, preliminary to general world adoption.
JOURNAL	OF
CALENDAR REFORM
January, February, March
1944
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL	I
A WELL-NIGH PERFECT CALENDAR	Elisabeth Achelis 3
CANADIAN SOCIETIES HOSTS TO OFFICERS OF CALENDAR
ASSOCIATION	13
DEATH COMES TO NOTED CHURCHMAN The Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D. 18
WIDE AND GENERAL INTEREST IN WORLD CALENDAR CONTINUES
Emerson Brewer 20
BOOK EDITORS REVIEW NEW BOOK BY THE ASSOCIATION HEAD 23
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT HEAD AND MATHEMATICIAN
CLARIFY ADOPTION DATES	Elisabeth Achelis 27
LONDON EVENING NEWS CARTOON	31
INTERNATIONAL DATE-LINE SEEN AS FORERUNNER OF
WORLD CALENDAR Commander Wendell Phillips Dodge 32
WHAT DAY IS TODAY?	Frank C. Waldrop 40
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS	43
EMERSON BREWER, Editor published by THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC.
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING: 630 FIFTH AVE., N. Y. C. 20
FIRST QUARTER 1944
3
k WELL-NIGH
PERFECT CALENDAR
By Elisabeth Achelis
Abridged from an address given before the Ottawa and Montreal Centres of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, January 19, 20, 1944.
A LTHOUGH not a scientist, I feel deeply privileged to talk with you ZA this evening on a subject which is closely linked to science. The accomplishment of astronomy in the measurement of time, the calendar, is one of proud achievement. It deserves full and lasting praise. From the beginning of science, astronomers, first with the naked eye and later with super telescopes, have meticulously measured the movements of the celestial bodies and the planet Earth, better to ascertain the regular coming of the seasons and the accurate length of the year. From the earliest moon, star and Egyptian calendars down to the present Gregorian, the work has been admirably done. The calendar rests on a sound basis. We all realize that it is not as yet perfect. The calendar’s beginning should really harmonize with one of the seasonal beginnings, but this is not of immediate importance. The present need is to improve the internal arrangement, better to serve the present and coming generations.
That the Gregorian calendar does not meet present requirements is clearly proved by the astronomers themselves. They have substituted a more dependable and stable time-system of their own to offset the erratic Gregorian. I refer to the Julian Day method which eliminates entirely the weeks, dates, months and years in their time reckoning. Thus January 1 of the new year, 1944, was the 2,431,091st day, and the year will close on the 2,431,457th day. The astronomer realizes, however, that counting by days only would be extremely awkward for daily life, entailing unnecessary hardships and inconveniences. The method of counting by the varying time-units, as day, date, week, month, season and year, is too valuable to discard. But he does demand, and justly so, that there is planning and order in the arrangement of the calendar, which is woefully lacking now.
The desire for order and stability in the calendar has also been recognized by the industrial world, and due credit should be given it for initiating the modern movement to meet this need. The various International
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
Congresses of Chambers of Commerce and Industrial and Commercial Organizations urged an improved calendar in their biennial meetings in 1910, 1912 and 1914, and the Swiss Government in 1914 was requested to investigate the entire field in order that some international action be taken. The first World War interfered and it was not until 1923 that the question was placed before the League of Nations for consideration. This resulted in an international conference being held in 1931. After a week’s conference on the subject, which also included a fixed Easter date, the League of Nations at Geneva referred the calendar back again to the various governments for further study and consideration.
It was in that self-same year that your retiring President, Dr. H. R. Kingston, devoted considerable space in his annual report to the reform of the calendar. The two plans that survived the 500 submitted to the League were the 13-month plan of 28 days and four weeks to every month, and the 12 months of four identical quarters, each quarter having three months of 31, 30, 30 days respectively, better known as The World Calendar. Dr. Kingston noted that the League report indicated strong opposition to the 13-month plan and general sympathy to the 12-month arrangement. Ever since that year, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada has shown continued interest. It has proudly placed itself in the vanguard of the movement, from which it has never wavered. Such loyal consistency has been most encouraging to all who are working for an improved calendar.
In the Society’s attitude toward a 12-month calendar of equal quarters, it followed the conclusion reached by Commission 32 of the International Astronomical Union when it deliberated on the subject in 1922. The Union recommended a perpetual 12-month equal-quarter calendar on the 31, 30, 30 basis. Four years later, the Committee for Maritime Meteorology likewise favored the 12-month, perpetual, equal-quarter plan. The World Calendar thus rests on good scientific ground, which has been further strengthened by the endorsement given it by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other American scientific groups.
It is being said that this is not the time to change the calendar, when the world is in mortal combat and turmoil. Why should it not wait until after the cessation of arms and the postwar period? This can best be answered by the following:
Does a person who is ill wait until a future time to be cured? No, he does not. When the Commanding General of our Armed Forces discovered that the old system of counting clocktime by A.M. and P.M. led to confusion, did he wait until a more propitious time to adopt the better 24-hour system? No, he did not. When the Armed Forces discover that certain types of airplanes or instruments are outmoded and no longer the
FIRST QUARTER 1944
5
best with which to wage victorious warfare, do they wait for the end of the war to make improvements? No, they do not. When a business man or manufacturer experiences inefficiency and loss of production and earnings because of poor management or tools, does he wait for a future time to improve conditions ? No, he does not.
When errors, loss of product or earnings, and waste of time and material are discovered, the causes are remedied immediately to bring desired results. It is gross folly to do otherwise. No war is won by delaying improvements, and no success is achieved by clinging unwisely to outmoded patterns and systems.
And now when ideas and ideals are directed toward greater world cooperation with the purpose of building a better way of life for all peoples, it is obvious that the Gregorian calendar is at variance with these ideas and ideals. For, gentlemen, the calendar has gathered unto itself the barnacles of imperfections for 2,000 years.
You will agree with me that no system, however imperfect, should be discarded until we are convinced that the contemplated change is really an improvement and will stand up under scrutiny and test. The new time-plan should be one that best meets all requirements and takes into consideration all conditions. It should be global in aspect because of our more closely knitted world and should, for the most part, function universally. The perpetual World Calendar has proved itself capable of meeting these tests.
In its mathematical structure it is well-nigh perfect. Its 12 months are arranged into equal quarters of 91 days, each quarter is further subdivided into months of rhythmic 31, 30, 30 days, that total an even 13 weeks. Each quarter, beginning on Sunday and ending on Saturday, is a prototype of the completed calendar year that will always begin on Sunday, January 1, and close on Saturday, December 30.
To complete the year, however, the necessary 365th day is placed on an extra Saturday, after Saturday, December 30. It is called the Year-End Day or New Year’s Eve and is the new World Holiday, dated December W. This new holiday is as far-reaching in its benefit as was the leap-year day introduced into the Julian reform. And the leap-year day, the old February 29, becomes another World Holiday, placed on another extra Saturday—the Leap-Year Day, June W. Thus the calendar attains stability, retains the familiar 12 months, and maintains the accurate length of the 365-day year with an occasional 366th day.
Within The World Calendar are the one or two new World Holidays which, unique in observance, are bound to exert a unifying influence on all nations. In its physical aspect, the Year-End Day or New Year’s Eve World Holiday, coming between a Sabbath and a Sunday, completes and
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
seals every year as to its exact number of 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months and 4 seasons. Thus there is present at the turn of every year no leftover of the old; the new begins with a clean slate, at scratch. The calendar ledger closes with the Year-End Day, December W, so that the ledger of the new year really begins with a new leaf.
In its broader aspect the new World Holiday, December W, becomes a great unifying day for all nations, peoples, races, governments and creeds. During its 24-hour-day observance, there will radiate a spirit of greater solidarity, of understanding, of amity and of good will. Whereas Christmas is the great Christian day of peace, good will to man, the new World Holiday may become, as its name implies, the all-inclusive World Day of universal brotherhood and unity, without interference with existing feast days. It may well be a step in the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of the tree of life that beareth 12 manner of fruits and yieldeth her fruit every month, and the leaves are for the healing of the nations. The World Holidays in their cumulative observances truly symbolize the healing leaves of nations.
Now let us contemplate for a few moments the direct advantages the new World Calendar will have on the war and home activities.
We have found that the exigencies of the war have already changed the clocktime to the 24-hour clock for the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces were quick to perceive the need of eliminating the confusion of the A.M. and P.M. method. In like manner, The World Calendar will permit greater precision, discipline, order and efficiency in the huge task of prosecuting the war, because of the better and more perfect correlation of all the various calendar units. We all know with what meticulous care war plans are blueprinted and carried out.
In one year the United States alone produced for the Allied armies 85 thousand planes, 60 thousand artillery weapons, 34 thousand tanks and almost 7 million small arms. These mountains of supplies piled up in North Africa, the Near East, India and Australia. And when the invasion of Europe is opened, the Army Service Forces will have the colossal task of supplying every item the invasion needs from tanks to safety pins. And closely following is the Dominion of Canada which has now become the fourth largest producer of munitions among the United Nations.
The responsibility of arming, feeding, clothing, fueling, transporting and healing the Army, and burying its dead, is the important function of' the Army Service Forces. It is this perfect and all-embracing planning, which correlates these various functions, that the Military calls logistics. This service in the United States is under the direct supervision of Lieutenant General Somervell, who has said: “Good logistics alone cannot win a war. Bad logistics alone can lose.”
FIRST QUARTER 1944
7
Therefore, what the General has said of logistics applies to the loose and slipshod methods of the Gregorian calendar. It has no plan, the various time-units are in constant disagreement, and it is certainly “bad logistics.” Our present calendar is costly and wasteful. It no longer efficiently serves the demands of war or the needs of the civilians at home.
While conditions on the home front are obviously different, they, too, would be greatly aided by an improved time-plan. Consider the difficulty of the manufacturer, the industrialist, the employer and also the wage earner in figuring how many weekdays or how many time-and-a-half or double-time days are in a month. Here the Gregorian calendar plays havoc with the best laid plans. Some months have four Saturdays and Sundays, thus less time-and-a-half and double-time wages are paid, whereas in months having five Saturdays and Sundays extra time-and-a-half or doubletime must be paid. When quarter-years vary in their lengths of days such as 90, 91, 92, 92 (this year being a leap year, 91, 91, 92, 92) additional inconvenience is encountered. All this inconsistency sabotages valuable energy, time, labor and money.
I should like to point out certain specific examples of the sabotage that besets almost every type of business. In 1942, Christmas came on a Friday. Newspaper publishers and their circulation-managers were at their wits end. The publisher did not know how many columns of news and advertising to anticipate for the Saturday after Christmas, because he did not know how many stores were going to open on Saturday and how many were going to stay closed. The circulation-manager was equally as frantic, because he did not know how many papers he would be able to sell, since he had no idea whether people would go to business, stay at home and rest, or go away for a three-day week-end. In consequence of all this, one New York newspaper, with a circulation that exceeds one million, discovered not only that their advertising lineage was off 65 per cent, but that they had overprinted 80 thousand papers. These were returned as useless waste. Had the perpetual World Calendar been in existence, with its regular order and agreeing days and dates, past records comparable from year to year would have better indicated the number of columns to print, the number of papers to publish.
With the constant wavering of the Gregorian calendar, October in 1942 had five Saturdays; and in the previous year, October had four Saturdays. There was thus a 25 per cent adjustment in Saturday’s figures alone. In 1943, in the United States, a further adjustment had to be made in that month because the Columbus holiday, October 12, which was celebrated on Mondays the two previous years, was celebrated on a Tuesday. And we all know a Monday holiday means a long week-end for many prospective store buyers
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Here is a more detailed example: the case of a well-known electric utility company that produced 220 million kilowatt hours in January, 1936, as compared with 258 million in January, 1937. This shows an increase of 17 per cent, but we discovered that January, 1936, had an extra Saturday and Sunday on which the day’s output is naturally less than on weekdays—30 per cent less on Saturday and 75 per cent less on Sunday. Making allowance for this extra week-end, the rate of increase became 21.5 per cent instead of 17.3 per cent.
For education, the general custom to open schools in the United States is on the Tuesday after Labor Day. With Labor Day fluctuating from September 1 to September 8, the irregularity of the opening dates for schools, year after year, is most inconvenient. Under the New York State laws, I don’t know what the laws are in Canada, a school year must include 190 teaching days to participate in the State school funds. The 190 teaching days cause difficulty when, for example, the school year opens on different dates each year. The first half of the year ending on January 25 contains 91 school days, whereas the second half ending on June 21 contains 95 school days. The so-called half-years or semesters, are far from equal and even, their internal arrangements are quite dissimilar. It is readily seen what a nightmare the Gregorian calendar is and how it causes all kinds of difficulties for the faculties and students in arranging schedules and vacations.
Wandering holidays add to the general confusion and uncertainty. Families are all too often separated at the vacation periods because these are observed differently in grammar and high schools, colleges and universities. And farmers who depend upon the help their sons and daughters can give them during vacations are at a loss to calculate this, because they change from year to year. With the perpetual World Calendar the regular schedule of holidays on agreeing days and dates will do much to smooth the way for educational, social, commercial and welfare activities.
The question arises, with the mention of holidays, as to how the one or two new World Holidays will be treated throughout the world. It is natural to suppose that the various nations will place these new holidays in the same category as their other holidays and maintain them on the same economic status. Each country is free to decide this question according to its accepted custom and legal requirement.
That the defects of the present calendar are recognized as serious detriments is clearly seen in the notable endorsements given The World Calendar by the three groups of Chambers of Commerce in England— the London, British and Empire—and by other Chambers in the United States such as the New York State, the Chicago Association of Commerce, the Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Galveston Chambers. In the labor
FIRST QUARTER 1944
9
world, the Labor Conference of American States in Chile, 1936, approved it and in the same year the International Labor Office also recognized that “the present calendar is very unsatisfactory from economic, social and religious standpoints and that recent studies, investigations and reports have shown that there is a marked trend in favor of revision.” It thus recommended that the League of Nations study the whole question. In the educational field, the United States National Education Association and the World Federation of Education Associations also favored a world calendar.
Toward the last quarter of the 19th century when travel on Canadian, United States and inter-E uropean railroads was more general, some kind of uniformity in clocktime became increasingly urgent to avoid endless confusion and misunderstanding. I refer to Standard Time.
To a Canadian, Sanford Fleming, has generally been given credit for the idea in 1878 that a series of 24 time belts, each of 15 degrees, should circle our globe. However logical and practical, it did not win favor until in 1883 the railways in Canada and the American Railway Association took the initiative in adopting the new Standard Time. A conference held in Washington a year later brought the rest of the civilized countries into the fold, and it became international in use. The world was now more closely coordinated by the regular 24 time zones that brought order and stability to the clock throughout the world. It was instrumental in making the remarkably efficient and smooth performance of radio easier.
There are others, however, who have contributed toward the principle of Standard Time—notably in the United States, Charles Ferdinand Dowd. In 1872, he published a system that is identical with the Standard Time meridians in use today. Newspapers in the United States, in 1883, carried interesting accounts of the history of Standard Time and laid great emphasis on the work done by Mr. Dowd ever since 1869.
Gentlemen, there is usually more than one person to whom credit is due. In this instance, Canada and America are justly proud to give credit to two of their citizens for having provided mankind with the superior Standard Time system.
And this naturally leads me to give credit to another Canadian (by adoption), Moses B. Cotsworth. He contributed greatly in awakening the interest and showing the need for an improved calendar. His work was most valuable. Although his particular 13-month calendar plan has been discarded, as not being the best, every calendar reformer gladly pays tribute to him. He and his associates did the hard spade work which prepared the ground for the superior, more balanced and equalized calendar of 12 months and equal quarters—The World Calendar.
Today with the present war, international communication and trans
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portation by airplanes are expedited and increased everywhere, forming the world into one large organized body. No place on the globe is more than 60 air hours away. The uniformity of the calendar, as ordered and stabilized as Standard Time, becomes imperative. A perpetual new calendar, every year the same, and eventually in use throughout the world, is the natural complement to Standard Time.
Is it too much to hope that, in following the example of adopting Standard Time, Canada and the United States will again join in taking the initiative by adopting another time-measure—The World Calendar?
No improvement, however good, has been accepted without some opposition, and changing the Gregorian calendar is no exception. Certainly the scientific group has suffered much persecution and opposition in its many achievements. We need only to recall Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe, Copernicus and Galileo, and of more recent date, Bell and Edison, Pasteur and Madame Curie, who though derided and hindered in their sincere efforts to benefit mankind yet eventually achieved their goal.
Probably the greatest opposition to The World Calendar comes from certain religious orthodox groups. Their objections to The World Calendar arise from the fact that they see in the extra World Holidays an eight-day week, which violates their tradition of “the unbroken continuity of the seven-day week since time immemorial.” This alleged concept is not justified by historical fact. For it is known that in the ancient Israel calendars there have been three different calendars employed at different times and that the revisions of the calendar were “in all likelihood, of a thoroughgoing nature.”
Between the Biblical creation of the world and the days of Moses are untold years of conjecture and unproved theory. Even after the days of Moses it is generally conceded that the method of timekeeping was changed and altered. Later even, when the Christians changed the ancient Sabbath to Sunday for their day of worship, in commemoration of the first day of the week when the Lord rose from the dead, Christians all over the world at that moment of change experienced an eight-day week— the interval between the Sabbath of old and the Sunday, the new day of observance. We cannot accept such an arbitrary attitude that enslaves man to the past but rather seek open-mindedness and response to normal progress and development.
Here I am reminded of the story of Lot’s wife, a sad commentary on all those who, looking backward, stand still. The most notable historical example of opposition to change is, perhaps, that of the fiery zealot, Saul of Tarsus, who, waging incessant war against a new religion, became blinded by his zeal. Notwithstanding this, when light and wisdom came to him, he became its foremost leader. So may we hope for The World
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Calendar with its one or two World Holidays, that those who come to oppose will remain to approve.
The real fallacy of orthodox objection is that it does not recognize The World Calendar as a civil calendar. In revising the calendar it is not the intention to interfere with religious feast days and ritual. The Vatican in 1912 recognized this in a statement, and I quote:
“The Holy See declared that it made no objection but invited the civil powers to enter into an accord on the reform of the civil calendar, after which it would willingly grant its collaboration in so far as the matter affected religious feasts.”
Among some of the religious endorsers for The World Calendar are the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Methodist Council of Bishops in the United States; the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work at Geneva, of which the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America is a member. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, in a debate on the calendar before the House of Lords, 1936, declared: “I have found it impossible to resist the plea for reform ... I think it would be a real misfortune if this matter were allowed to drift.” And the Vatican has stated there exists no insurmountable obstacle to calendar reform.
The question of adoption now becomes all important. The opportune moment to put any new calendar into operation is at that particular time when the day, date, month and year coincide in both the old and the new calendars. By that simple method the transitional year of confusion (when the Julian year became operative), and the dropping of 10 days (when the Gregorian calendar became effective), will be avoided.
Allow me to refer you to our good friend, H. W. Bearce, chief of the Division of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards, United States Department of Commerce. By transposing Sunday, December 31 of this year 1944, to the extra Saturday, Year-End Day or New Year’s Eve, December W, The World Calendar will begin the new year on Sunday, January 1, 1945. The next possibility would be Sunday, January 1, 1950.
In the face of all the advantages which I have stated and all the hardships we shall have to endure, I believe the delay has no justification and would prove lamentable. Apathy and indifference have no place in better planning for our modern world.
As the scientists of the old and the new age have ever stood in the foreground of new truths and progress, so may you today uphold their standard by approving and endorsing the perpetual World Calendar.
In the ardent desire and wish to organize and bring the world to saner, healthier and more wholesome conditions, your group can do no better than to sponsor The World Calendar—a plan that is ready at hand, that
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has been endorsed by 14 nations and many international and national organizations.
For the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada to study and endorse The World Calendar would in all probability lead to similar action by the Royal Astronomical Society of London, of which the Astronomer Royal, Dr. H. Spencer-Jones, has so splendidly given his approval. And in my own country, the American Astronomical Society and notably the National Academy of Sciences in Washington will certainly wish to take action.*
We stand on the threshold of changes in all ways of life among which belongs unquestionably The World Calendar. For Time to be really a healer, and we certainly have need of it in these catastrophic days, Time itself must be healed through its instrument the calendar, and aid in greater world cooperation, order, balance, stability and above all—unity.
* In this connection I would like to draw your attention to a questionnaire that, in 1942, Dr. William E. Castle, member of the National Academy of Sciences, sent to its 315 members on the desirability of adopting The World Calendar. Of the 168 answers received (more than half of its membership) 76 per cent approved this new time-plan.
“HERE IS A PRETTY MESS”
From The Varsity, Undergraduate Newspaper of The University of Toronto, Canada, December 3, 1943
UNNECESSARY holiday travel is deplored by the Transit Controller, but, since we live in a generally compassionate civilization, no restrictions are being imposed above those of the load limit of the available rolling stock. However, strong pleas are being voiced to avoid travel as much as possible over the holiday week-ends themselves.
New Year’s Day comes on a Saturday. The Easter term begins the following Monday. The question, therefore, arises: “Are patriotic students to deprive themselves of vital lectures and labs?” Students, for the most part, like to get what they pay for, and, although they may skip the occasional lecture, most will probably return to college over the week-end when they are requested not to travel. Their right to do this will scarcely be argued against by the Transit Controller. There is a strong element of necessity in it. But couldn’t this unfortunate dilemma have been avoided?
To the layman, unfamiliar with the technicalities of setting the year’s academic calendar, it would seem quite possible. Does it seem logical, even in peacetime, to allow more than a week in which to get home before the first of the two holidays and two days to get back? Christmas comes on a Saturday. Classes end two Fridays before. Except for the fact that it is not customary for it to do so, why could not the term have ended on the Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday before Christmas, thus allowing more time to return to college after New Year’s and avoid the holiday week-end rush?

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CANADIAN SOCIETIES
HOSTS TO OFFICERS OF
CALENDAR ASSOCIATION
INVITED to address the Ottawa and Montreal Centres of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Miss Elisabeth Achelis, President of The World Calendar Association, together with Emerson Brewer, the Director, made it a point to confer with World Calendar adherents in Toronto before the speaking engagements in the other two Canadian cities.
J. R. Gilley, Acting Warden of Hart House, University of Toronto, and W. R. Cowan, the Acting Comptroller of this student union, were hosts at a luncheon and a tea.
The luncheon, which was attended by a very representative group of people, was held at the Alexandra Palace Apartment Hotel. Those attending included:
Dr. Harvey Agnew, Secretary, Canadian Hospital Council; Past President, American Hospital Association.
Dr. R. H. Coats, Dominion Statistician (retired); Visiting Professor of Political Economy, University of Toronto.
A. B. Fennell, Registrar, University of Toronto; Secretary, National Conference of Canadian Universities.
Duncan B. Gillies, Advertising Manager, “Industrial Canada” (Publication of Manufacturers Association).
Otto Holden, President, Royal Canadian Institute.
Alan E. Hugg, Representative, Canadian Youth Commission.
D. MacArthur, Head of News Service, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Professor T. F. Mcllwraith, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto; Past President, Royal Canadian Institute.
A. W. Rogers, Secretary, Canadian Banker’s Association.
Dr. F. W. Routley, National Commissioner of the Canadian Red Cross Society. V. R. Smith, General Manager, Confederation Life Insurance Company; Chairman, Central Regional Committee, Chambers of Commerce.
Andrew Thomson, Assistant Controller, Meteorological Services of Canada. Drummond Wren, Secretary, Workers Educational Association.
After the luncheon Miss Achelis briefly discussed The World Calendar and its advantages, which was followed by a round-table discussion. Dr. R. H. Coats, with a few charming remarks, placed himself on record as favoring The World Calendar of 12 months because it was “the happy medium” between the present irregular Gregorian calendar and other more radical and disturbing types of time-plans.
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Later in the afternoon a tea was held in the Warden’s Study at Hart House. At this tea, in addition to Dr. Henry J. Cody, President of the University of Toronto, and Mrs. Cody were:
Mrs. Harvey Agnew, National President, Y.W.C.A.
Mrs. Grace Campbell, Acting Secretary-Treasurer, University of Toronto Alumni Federation.
Mrs. J. R. Gilley.
Mrs. W. L. Grant, Chairman, Canadian Committee International Student Service. Mrs. Munro Greer, President, Women’s Canadian Club.
Mrs. W. B. Horkins, National President, Independent Order Daughters of the Empire.
Miss Monica Mugan, Commentator, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Miss Ruth Northcott, President, Royal Astronomical Society, Toronto Branch.
Miss Marie Parkes, Acting Secretary-Treasurer, Students Administrative Council, University of Toronto; National Commandant, University Training Section Canadian Red Cross Corps.
Mrs. N. C. Stephens, President, Local Council of Women.
In commenting on Miss Achelis’ remarks, the Toronto Globe and Mail had the following to say in an article headed “New Calendar Helps Anniversary Forgetters”:
“On January 1, 1945, if all goes well for Miss Elisabeth Achelis of New York, the whole world will solemnly throw its 100-odd calendars into the Grand Canyon and start using her calendar.
“This is not to be treated with a light oh yeah, as many skeptics have already learned. Because Miss Achelis is a determined woman with an idea that makes sense.
“To relieve the suspense, the idea is this: The new World Calendar, as it has been named, divides the year neatly into four quarters of exactly 91 days each. This means that the first month of the quarter has 31 days, the second has 30 and the third has 30. There are 13 full weeks in each quarter, and precisely 26 weekdays, plus Sundays, in each month.
“Obviously the catch in this simplification is that 364 days aren’t enough. That’s where Miss Achelis rises to the heights. Triumphantly, she has decreed that following December 30, which is a Saturday, there will be another Saturday—a world holiday which to avoid confusion will be known as December W. The extra day of leap year is disposed of just as neatly. It becomes June W, following June 30.
“Since each date always falls on the same day, anniversaries will be easier to remember. For instance, the first of January will always be a Sunday, and Valentine’s Day will always be a Tuesday. February, which for 400 years has been a difficult month, will be relegated into obscurity as a plain 30-day month.
“ ‘The Gregorian calendar, which is the one in use now, is an unhappy family of time,’ Miss Achelis stated yesterday when she addressed a group
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15
of women at Hart House. ‘Nothing agrees, nothing matches. The months run wild in terrible disorder. We are trying to bring some order in this madness, some simple equality to make a happy family of time.’
“The calendar lady, who is president and founder of The World Calendar Association, was invited to Canada for the first time to address the Royal Astronomical Societies of Montreal and Ottawa. En route, she stopped off yesterday in Toronto to address influential men and women and sound out their reactions.
“The pity of the whole world, in the event of Miss Achelis being successful, will be reserved for those poor mites who right now are struggling with ‘Thirty days hath September, April, June and . . . ’ ”
The Toronto Daily Star, in the January 18 issue, had this to say:
“On January 1, 1945, if Miss Elisabeth Achelis of New York has her way, the jingle that starts ‘Thirty days hath September,’ will be out of date. No more will you have to work out a mathematical formula to discover whether Christmas will fall on a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Christmas Day in the New Calendar will always be a Monday. The year will begin with a new week, and every half-year and every quarter will have the same number of days.
“Next year is the best time to adopt the calendar, Miss Achelis says, because we can pass without a break from one system into the next. She pointed out that at the time of the adoption of our present calendar, just a little less than 200 years ago, 11 whole days, September 3-13, were dropped overboard. This sort of thing will be quite unnecessary if we change at the beginning of 1945.”
In Ottawa, the Capital of the Dominion, a luncheon was given for Miss Achelis and Mr. Brewer by A. J. Hills, long identified with the Canadian National Railways and now Chairman of the National Joint Conference Board of the Construction Industry, together with H. S. Southam, Vice President of the Southam Publishing Company and publisher of the Ottawa Citizen. Prior to the luncheon, in company with Mr. Hills, Miss Achelis and Mr. Brewer visited the Parliament buildings and met and discussed The World Calendar with: W. J. Turnbull, Principal Secretary to the Right Honorable W. L. Mackenzie King; A. D. P. Heeney, Secretary to the Canadian Cabinet; Scott MacDonald, Undersecretary of External Affairs; and Thomas Wayling of the Press Gallery.
At the luncheon, which was held at the Country Club, were:
A. D. P. Heeney, Secretary to the Cabinet.
Norman P. Lambert, Member of the Senate and former organizer of the Liberal Party.
Dr. T. L. Tanton, President, Ottawa Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada; Dominion Government Geologist,
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Percy J. Philip, Representative in Ottawa of “The New York Times.”
Grattan O’Leary, Editorial Writer and Radio Commentator of the “Journal.”
After the luncheon the party motored to the Government House, the official home of the Governor-General of Canada, the Earl of Athlone, where they registered in the guest’s book.
In commenting on the speech given by Miss Achelis in the Lecture Hall of the Museum before the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Ottawa branch, the Ottawa Citizen, under a caption which read “New World Calendar Would Allow Greater Precision, Efficiency,” said:
“Addressing a meeting in the Victoria Memorial Museum Hall, arranged by the Ottawa Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Miss Achelis said the time to change to the new World Calendar was now.
“ ‘No war is won by delaying improvements and no success is achieved by clinging unwisely to outmoded patterns and systems' she added, ‘we have already found that the exigencies of the war have changed the clocktime to a 24-hour clock for the armed forces, they being quick to perceive the need of eliminating the confusion of the A.M. and P.M. method.’
“Similarly in civilian life The World Calendar would overcome the difficulties of the manufacturer, the industrialist, the employer and the wage earner in calculating ‘how many weekdays or how many time-and-a-half or double-time days are in a month.’ Inconsistency in the present calendar sabotaged valuable energy, time, labor and money, she said, and cited specific instances where such ‘sabotage’ occurred.
“Dr. T. L. Tanton, Ph.D., president of the Ottawa Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, introduced the speaker, who was thanked by A. J. Hills.”
Following this introduction the editor of the Ottawa Citizen reproduced the text of Miss Achelis’ address in full.
Leaving Ottawa Thursday morning, these representatives of The World Calendar Association arrived in Montreal, Thursday noon, where they were met and entertained at dinner by Daniel P. Gillmor, President of the Montreal Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Together with Mr. Gillmor at a dinner, which preceded Miss Achelis’ talk given at the McGill University Amphitheatre, were the following executives of the Montreal Centre: Miss I. Williamson, Henry F. Hall, F. DeKinder, G. Harper Hall, DeLisle Garneau.
In discussing Miss Achelis’ address before the Montreal Centre, the Montreal Daily Star, January 21, 1944, said:
“Endorsation of The World Calendar by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada would in all probability lead to similar action by the Royal Astronomical Society of London, according to Miss Elisabeth Achelis,
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17
president of The World Calendar Association. Miss Achelis addressed members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada here last night.
“‘We stand on the threshold of changes in all ways of life,’ she said, ‘among which belongs unquestionably The World Calendar.’
“In its mathematical structure The World Calendar is ‘well-nigh perfect,’ Miss Achelis claimed. There are 12 months arranged into equal quarters of 91 days and each quarter is divided into months of 31, 30, 30. Each quarter will begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. To complete the year with the 365th day, there is to be a world holiday, known as December W.”
The Montreal Gazette, under a caption “Better ‘Time-Plan’ Seen Needed for Greater World Cooperation,” stated:
“Adoption of The World Calendar as an aid to greater world cooperation, order, balance, stability and unity, was urged by Miss Elisabeth Achelis, president of The World Calendar Association, at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada last night.
“Miss Achelis claimed that an improved time-plan was imperative as the present calendar was ‘costly and wasteful and no longer efficiently served the demands of war nor the needs of civilian life.’
“She described The World Calendar as being in its mathematical structure ‘well-nigh’ perfect. There were 12 months arranged into equal quarters of 91 days, each quarter beginning on Sunday and ending on Saturday, and each calendar year of 364 days beginning on Sunday, January 1, and closing on Saturday, December 30, she explained.”
The consensus of the above mentioned influential people, educators, government officials, scientists, publishers and business men, indicates a definite consciousness of the need for calendar revision. Canadians, keenly aware of the need for pre-postwar planning, were without exception enthusiastic in their support of a Dominion group which would foster The World Calendar plan in that sister country.

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DEATH COMES TO
NOTED CHURCHMAN
By The Reverend Henry Smith Leiper, D.D., Executive Secretary, American Section, The Universal Christian Council For Life and Work; Member, Advisory Committee, The World Calendar Association
THE Reverend Dr. William Adams Brown, Presbyterian minister, professor emeritus of the Union Theological Seminary, and a former member of the Corporation of Yale University, died December 15 in the New York Hospital, which he had entered as a patient on December 3,1943. He would have been 78 years old on December 29.
Dr. Brown became a member of the Advisory Committee of The World Calendar Association in 1938. In accepting this membership he said, “I am glad indeed to have my name associated with something in which I believe so much.” His death is a real loss to the Association.
Dr. Brown took an important part in the founding of the World Council of Churches. As chairman of the Joint Executive Committee of the American Section of this Council, president of the American Section of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, chairman of the Department of Relations with Churches Abroad of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and a member of the Executive Committee of the World Conference on Faith and Order, he worked increasingly and unsparingly to bring about greater cooperation among the churches of the world.
As president of the American Section of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, and concurrently chairman of the Joint Executive Committee of “Life and Work” and “Faith and Order,” a position he held until his death, he took an active part in all the calendar deliberations and resolutions passed by that body at its various meetings. He was a convinced advocate of a fixed Easter.
He retired from the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in 1936, after serving 44 years. It is noteworthy that a member of his family had been associated with the Seminary during its entire existence.
In 1942 Dr. Brown was given the great honor of representing the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America at the enthronement of the Most Reverend William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury in London.
He led the American Section at the Oxford World Conference on Faith and Order in 1937, at which Miss Achelis was an associate delegate. The
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19
following year he was an American delegate to the Ecumenical Conference at Utrecht, the Netherlands, a conference of church representatives of the provisional committee to frame a constitution for the World Council of Churches. Dr. Brown was the author of more than a score of books, nearly all of them on religious subjects. He wrote a highly significant autobiography several years before his death, A Teacher and His Times, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940.
OBITUARY NOTES
THE MOST REVEREND GEORGE WINSLOW PLUMMER, Primate and Metro-x politan of the Holy Orthodox Church in America and Archbishop of New York, died January 23, 1944, in St. Luke’s Hospital after a four-day illness. His age was 67.
Born in Boston, Archbishop Plummer was graduated from Brown University in 1900 and also attended the Rhode Island School of Design. He had been a theatrical electrician, a police reporter for the old New York Journal and had also been associated with the Cosmopolitan and the Delineator, as a young man.
Archbishop Plummer had been a member of The World Calendar Association since 1932.
ANDREW FLEMING WEST, 90, dean emeritus of the Princeton University Graduate School, died December 27, 1943, at his home on the Graduate School grounds. He had been professor of Latin for 45 years.
Since 1934 Dr. West had been interested in The World Calendar Association. At the time of his resignation from active work in 1927, The New York Times, commenting editorially, said: “He still keeps and will keep to the end of his days the Deanship of Classical Studies in America.”
A controversy over the Graduate College between Dr. West and the late Woodrow Wilson when the latter was president of Princeton ended in a victory for the former. The controversy became nation wide, and in 1910 Isaac C. Wyman, upon his death, left $2,000,000 for the carrying out of Dr. West’s plan. To this was added $500,000 by Colonel William Procter.
/^URTIS H. VEEDER, a member of The World Calendar Association died December 27, 1943, in the Hartford, Connecticut, Hospital. He
been 82 years old in January.
since 1931, would have
Mr. Veeder, an inventor and manufacturer, was president of the Veeder Manufacturing Company of Hartford until his resignation in 1928. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Mr. Veeder at 18 years of age built what was then a new type of bicycle, which he later sold for $1,000. Among other of his inventions are bicycle saddles, a bicycle cyclometer, automatic casting machines and a liquid tachometer. In all, he held 95 American and 74 foreign patents.
OKS
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WIDE AND GENERAL
INTEREST IN WORLD CALENDAR CONTINUES
By Emerson Brewer, Director, The World Calendar Association
ORGANIZATIONS as diversified as is commerce and industry itself, groups made up of executives, business men and professional men representing practically every phase of endeavor, have within the past two months either formally passed resolutions endorsing The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters or voted the formation of committees to study this new time plan.
Indicative of the wide divergence of interest of those organizations which have passed resolutions is the Chicago Association of Commerce, embracing chambers of commerce and business organizations in greater Chicago, on one hand, and the Suffolk North Association of Ministers, a Massachusetts religious organization, on the other.
Probably the most varied of all is the membership of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, which includes men interested in steel, oil, shipping, merchandising, manufacturing and the various professions.
Manufacturers, fabricators of war materials as well as durable goods for present consumption, are conscious of the need for a stable calendar. This was pointed out by H. G. Malin, Secretary of the Manufacturers’ Association of Delaware County, Chester, Pa., an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers. The resolution of this Association follows:
“RESOLVED, That this Association does hereby favor and endorse the adoption by international agreement of the proposed World Calendar, re-arranging of the present Gregorian Calendar into four equal quarters of 91 days each and providing for an unnumbered day immediately following December 30th of each year as a World Holiday, and for the intercalation of an extra day (also a World Holiday) next following June 30th of every fourth year; the first month of every quarter to commence on a Sunday and have 31 days, and the two succeeding months of every quarter to have 30 days each; and
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Delaware County
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21
member of Congress and the Two Senators from Pennsylvania
be advised of this action taken by the Association.”
Inspired in part by A. C. Darmstaetter, President of Darmstaetter’s, one of the leading stores of Lancaster, Pa., the Pennsylvania Retailers Association endorsed The World Calendar and recommended that the parent group, the National Retail Dry Goods Association, continue with their study of calendars as the various time plans affected retailing and retail inventories.
Last year the Directors of the National Retail Dry Goods Association, meeting at the Hotel Pennsylvania for their national convention, instructed Lew Hahn, Executive Secretary, to appoint a committee to make this study for this large national organization. The report of this committee has been delayed and that some action be taken to expedite this move was the feeling of the Pennsylvania Retailers Association.
Dan Ferris, Executive Secretary of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, under the auspices of which practically all of America’s amateur and interscholastic athletic events are conducted and supervised, has notified their members and affiliated members of the endorsement of The World Calendar by this large organization.
The location of the organizations which recently have passed resolutions favoring The World Calendar of 12 months is in itself a picture of the broad national interest in this change.
Other organizations which passed resolutions include:
Lions Club of Pittsburgh
Danville, Kentucky, Chamber of Commerce
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Chamber of Commerce
Cumberland, Maryland, Chamber of Commerce
Chillicothe, Missouri, Chamber of Commerce
Hagerstown, Maryland, Chamber of Commerce
Palatine, Illinois, Lions Club
Portales 20-30 Club, New Mexico
Akron, Ohio, Toastmasters Club
Penryth Club, Toronto
Williamsburg (Brooklyn) Kiwanis Club
Camden, Tennessee, Lions Club
Association of Professional Engineers of the Province of New Brunswick
Many organizations have appointed study committees to investigate The World Calendar and to report their findings to the Board of Directors.
Here, too, the interest is broad and the membership all inclusive, ranging from employers in the manufacturing field to members of chambers of commerce and accountants.
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Among those which have appointed study committees or have the appointment of these committees as a part of the agenda of the Board of Directors is the American Newspaper Publishers Association, a group composed of the owners and publishers of daily papers throughout the United States. In regard to this appointment, Linwood I. Noyes, President and Publisher of The Ironwood Daily Globe, Mich., said: “I will be glad to present your thought and will write you following our next regular board session.”
The support and interest of these men, who with radio station operators have such a part in molding public opinion, marks the development of general public interest that has been very gratifying to The World Calendar Association.
Grant Stone of the Cleveland Press, and President of the International Affiliation of Sales and Advertising Clubs, conscious of the need for such a calendar has appointed a study committee made up of James E. Shaw, of Buffalo, Chairman; Lee Trenholm, Toronto; Paul Rathert, Pittsburgh; Carl Abbey, Jamestown, N. Y.; C. E. Cole, London, Ont.; and Joseph T. Labadie, Windsor, Ont.; and the report of their findings will be made at a later date.
Other organizations, committees of which are giving thought to The World Calendar, include:
American Institute of Accountants
Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Chamber of Commerce
East Providence Business Men’s Association
Vernon, Texas, Chamber of Commerce
Midland, Texas, Chamber of Commerce
Oconto, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce
Montpelier, Idaho, Chamber of Commerce
Industrial Bankers Association of America
Geneseo Civic Club, Kansas
Associated Employers of Oregon, Inc.
Elizabeth, New Jersey, Chamber of Commerce
Independence, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce
Olean, New York, Chamber of Commerce
Wisconsin State Chamber of Commerce
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal Centres
Canadian Chamber of Commerce
GMO
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BOOK EDITORS REVIEW
NEW BOOK BY THE
ASSOCIATION HEAD
The complete comments on the book, The Calendar for Everybody, by book editors and critics associated with newspapers and magazines from coast to coast are too many to record here. The first review with which the survey opens is from the Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind., typical of those received in this office. It is gratifying to the author to note in reviewing these criticisms that all of the critics were sympathetic, interested and felt, to quote one, that the writer had established not only a good argument for The World Calendar plan but had written an interesting history of calendars in general. Excerpts from other publications follow the Journal-Gazette review.
UTT is amazing how long mankind will sometimes allow itself to be | handicapped or inconvenienced by institutions or arrangements of its own making. An excellent example is our present calendar.
“Some few years ago Elisabeth Achelis had her interest unexpectedly aroused in the deficiencies of our calendar and soon became so convinced of the need for change as to devote herself to the matter.
“A thorough study of the development of the calendar from its beginnings (4236 B. C. or 3251 B. C.) through its various changes followed. And in these pages the important facts are recorded. Perhaps the most valuable function of such a book as this is to show the calendar for what it is—a man-made instrument full of inaccuracies at first, later changed several times to rectify the errors, sometimes altered to feed an ambitious person’s vanity or not altered because of a group’s prejudice. In short, so thoroughly a human product as to have no sacrosanct qualities whatever.
“Several plans have been promulgated for a new calendar that would be an accurate and also a simpler and more convenient recorder of time than is ours. Miss Achelis points out the difficulties our Gregorian calendar presents to some industries, accountants, banks, etc.
“The World Calendar is presented by the author as one that best fits our needs. It divides the year into quarters, each quarter composed of three months, the first one of which has 31 days and the other two have
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30 days, so that each quarter has 91 days. A world holiday, December W, the year-end day, an extra Saturday, follows December 30 every year to make the 365th day. In leap years there is another world holiday, June W, the leap-year day, which follows June 30 and is another extra Saturday. Such a calendar makes every year the same.
“Calendar-makers need not be dismayed for instead of making new cheap calendars every year they can spend their time and effort on creating artistic effects. ‘They can be fashioned in gold or silver, bronze or marble, with precious or semi-precious stones. They can be made elaborate or simple, stationary on the wall, or portable for desk or table use, wallet or purse.’
“Miss Achelis enumerates the benefits which The World Calendar brings to science, religion, industry, home, labor, agriculture, government, statistics, education, law, finance, radio, transportation, summer enterprises, entertainments, history.
“The proper time to change is ‘when both the old retiring and the new incoming calendars glide smoothly together.’ ‘The next easy progression will be Saturday, December 30, 1944, when both the old and the new calendars meet.’
“Mixed in with the sanity of the discussion is a much deeper feeling on the part of the author. ‘The world holidays, each coming between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday, are like the hands of God stretched out from ageless time to welcome both the Saturday and the Sunday of rest, prayer and worship in closer relationship. Like the rainbow bridge that arched the sky after the flood with the promise of better days to come, so the new calendar shines forth, after hundreds of years flooded with disorder and discord, and promises better days to come through the two new world holidays. They form a rainbow bridge of many colors whereon peoples of all climes, customs and faiths join in a spirit of greater fellowship and friendship. The world holidays are the friendly handclasps of time.’
“The time is ripe for this much needed change. Read this little book and see the reasonableness of it.”
In discussing Miss Achelis’ book, The Calendar for Everybody, the Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, Canada) book editor wrote:
“Why should we adopt a new calendar? Because it is time we modernized our civil calendar and brought it into tune with the times. The present one is full of drawbacks and eccentricities. The World Calendar will give us the most perfect time measurement yet devised.
“In civil life, the new perpetual calendar would bring many improvements. To take but one phase of civil activity—government—The World Calendar would lighten the task substantially. The fiscal year would be
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gin always on the same day and date. It would materially simplify comparisons of statistics. The records on customs receipts, income taxes, internal revenue collections and interest paid or received, will be more easily computed. And for the various government departments which require accurate quarterly financial statements, the advantages of The World Calendar, with its equalized quarterly divisions, are apparent. The same considerations apply to every other branch of modern activity.
“Miss Achelis feels very deeply the merits of the new calendar. She says it will ‘contribute towards making a better world, making life more beautiful, and making my fellowmen happier.’ After reading her book one begins to catch that mood of inspiration one’s-self.”
The Calendar for Everybody should be in every school library, writes the book critic of the Richmond Times Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) “because it deals with the subject of general scientific interest and popular importance with its vital knowledge of man’s attempt to measure time.
“This story of the calendar, from the beginning of calendar history to the present time, presents in popular form the summarized arguments for a common-sense calendar, and points out the imperfections of the Gregorian calendar to justify the adoption of The World Calendar with every year the same—no changing of the order of days and holidays in the week, which now causes a world of confusion from year to year.
“The book of 19 chapters includes an account of the failure in 1937 of the League of Nations to adopt the new calendar advocated by The World Calendar Association, and endorsed by 14 nations. This new ‘Calendar for Everybody’ is so called because every human interest—all institutions of present-day civilization would be greatly benefited by the simple time-clock of the world—benefited in the saving of time, energy and money.”
“The World Calendar is undoubtedly a sensible one,” writes the book critic of the New York Sun. “The proponents of The World Calendar are still waging a vigorous fight for its adoption. Miss Elisabeth Achelis, who gave this system of time reckoning its name in 1930, is out with a new book on the subject.” The columnist then explains in some detail the general plan of The World Calendar.
“In The Calendar for Everybody, Miss Elisabeth Achelis, The World Calendar’s sponsor, argues for its adoption and,” says the book editor of the Columbus Citizen (Columbus, Ohio), “very completely has recorded all calendar history, demonstrating how easily it has been changed many times, and how easy it would be for us to abolish the present unsatisfactory system.”
“This is a day of planning and efficiency,” says the Atlanta Journal
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(Atlanta, Georgia), “and here is a proposal for a well-ordered new calendar and an exposition of its advantages.”
The New York Times says: “Miss Achelis states the case for a World Calendar in The Calendar for Everybody. The book is her latest contribution to this universal idea of measuring time for all years and all peoples. She is practical in her argument but reverent in handling . . . the most ancient of all expressions of nascent civilization, an agency for which during thousands of years religion has been the trustee.”
In a syndicated column, appearing in many newspapers, another book critic writes: “Miss Elisabeth Achelis has written a New Year ‘must’ book under the title of The Calendar for Everybody and inasmuch as she has devoted her life and fortune to calendar reform for more than a dozen years she is able to go clear down the line in furnishing satisfactory proof that the new world needs a new practical and commonsense calendar and that The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters is just what the world needs.”
The Calendar for Everybody, Elisabeth Achelis, 1943, G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 2 W. 45th St., New York 19. 141 pages. $1.50 cloth.
CHRISTMAS GREETINGS A PROBLEM
By George Dixon
From “Capital Stuff” The Daily News, New York, N. Y., December 7, 1943
IN accordance with the traditions of diplomacy, there should be an exchange oi Christmas greetings between the gentlemen who signed the blunt “Roosevelt” (no first name or initials) and the equally emphatic “Stalin” to the Teheran pronouncement issued today, dated December- 1.
But this raises a delicate problem. The Russian calendar does not run in step with ours. Christmas in Russia is celebrated on January 7, because the Orthodox Church still adheres to the old Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar. On the other hand, the Communist state, for official documents, uses, as does the English-speaking world, the reformed calendar of Pope Gregory, established in 1582.
So far as the holy celebration of the birth of the Saviour is concerned, the land of Stalin holds this on January 7, and, among the religious, in much the same manner as we celebrate the day here—a tree for the children and exchange of gifts among adults. Like Christmas, Easter in the land of the Soviets falls on a different date— the first Sunday after the first full moon in Spring.
There are two Soviet holidays of more importance than Christmas and Easter, however, but virtually equal—in the eyes of the Soviet—the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, celebrated November 7, and May Day, May 1.

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GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT HEAD AND MATHEMATICIAN CLARIFY ADOPTION DATES
By Elisabeth Achelis, President, The World Calendar Association
EVER since I first advocated The World Calendar it has been my steadfast conviction that the interest of everyone would best be served were The World Calendar to be adopted with the minimum of disturbance. Such a time comes this year, 1944, on Saturday, December 30, when there is a natural blending of the two calendars. The following day, the old December 31, would become the new December W, the World Holiday; and New Year’s Day, January 1, 1945, observed on a Sunday, would initiate The World Calendar as our new time recorder.
Wishing to know whether any other dates would be suitable for the adoption previous to January 1, 1950, “the next available date,” I wrote to H. W. Bearce, Chief, Division of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, for information. This action resulted in an article written by him that was published in the last issue of the Journal, the Fourth Quarter of 1943.
As a result of this article, a letter was received from one of the longstanding members of the Association, B. F. Yanney, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, in which he pointed out the fact that the dates suggested by Mr. Bearce were correct, but adoption on those dates would cause serious complications resulting in the need for an adjustment of one or two days. This letter was immediately transmitted to Mr. Bearce for his confirmation. Mr. Bearce responded confirming Professor Yanney’s statements.
A letter was then written to Professor Yanney requesting more detailed information on the subject, to which Professor Yanney replied more explicitly.
Firm in my conviction that the adoption of The World Calendar should be accomplished without disturbance or unnecessary adjustments, and convinced that this information will be of extreme importance to all those who are interested in calendar reform, I am reproducing the correspondence from both Mr. Bearce and Professor Yanney.
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Wooster, Ohio, January 13, 1944 Elisabeth Achelis, President The World Calendar Association
International Building, 630 Fifth Avenue
New York 20, N. Y.
Dear President Achelis:
Permit me to say a few words in reference to Mr. Bearce’s proposal, page 164 of the Journal, Fourth Quarter, to the effect that the date Sunday, July 1, 1945, “would serve admirably as the starting point” for the third quarter of The World Calendar.
In the first place it must then be evident that the first half of The World Calendar for 1945 would have to include as its January 1 the last day, that is, December 31, of the Gregorian for 1944. Furthermore, contrary to what the proposer states, the last day of the old Gregorian year could not possibly be made a part of The World Calendar for that year. For, there are 184 days in the Gregorian calendar from July 1 to December 31, inclusive, while only 183 days are needed to make up the last two quarters of The World Calendar. What to do, then, with December 31 of the Gregorian year 1945? Well, the only thing that can be done is to make it the first day of the new World Calendar year, 1946. And so on.
There are other complications that I see involved in this departure from the hitherto publicised policy of The World Calendar Association, viz., to cause in the inauguration of the new calendar as little disturbance as possible in the old. Let what I have presented be sufficient, at least for the present. Above all, I do not intend to get mixed up in a controversy and so jeopardize the splendid work you and your Association have accomplished.
Most cordially yours,
(Signed) B. F. Yanney
Washington, D. C., January 31, 1944 Professor B. F. Yanney Wooster, Ohio
Subject: Calendar revision
Dear Professor Yanney:
Miss Elisabeth Achelis, President of The World Calendar Association, has sent me a copy of your letter to her under date of January 13, 1944, and I am glad of an opportunity to comment on your criticism of my article that appeared in the Journal of Calendar Reform, Fourth Quarter 1943.
While it is true, as you point out, that my plan of putting The World Calendar into effect on July 1, 1945, would result in shortening the year 1945 by one day, that should, perhaps, not be regarded as so serious a matter as to rule it out of consideration. It will be recalled that 11 dates were dropped out of September 1752, thus shortening that year by 11 days.
In fact, shortening the year 1945 by one day would have the advantage of “taking up the slack” that has accumulated as a result of having our Gregorian leap years slightly too often, and would correct the calendar in that respect for a period of some 3,300 years.
I am, however, inclined to withdraw my further suggestion that the change to The World Calendar could properly be made at any time when The World Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar are in agreement, for example, Friday, March 1, 1946, or Wednesday, May 1, 1946, since to make the change on either of these dates would result in shortening the year 1946 by two days. That, admittedly, would not be desirable. It would be better to wait until the change could be made at the beginning of a year, as on January 1, 1950.
I am grateful to you for your having brought the matter to the attention of Miss
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Achelis, and pointing out the desirability of making the change to The World Calendar at such a time that not only will there be no interruption or discontinuity in the days of the week, but also that there will be no change in the length of the year.
Respectfully,
(Signed) H. W. Bearce
Chief, Division of Weights and Measures
Wooster, Ohio, February 13, 1944 Miss Elisabeth Achelis, President The World Calendar Association
International Building, 630 Fifth Avenue
New York 20, N. Y.
Dear Miss Achelis:
This letter is in compliance with your request made in your supplementary letter of February 8, 1944.
I assume that there is now agreement on this statement: July 1, 1945, of the Gregorian Calendar, and July 1, of The World Calendar, do not synchronize, even though the day of the week in each case is Sunday; for in the first instance the day is yearday number 182, while in the second it is number 183.
The proposal to adopt The World Calendar on July 1, 1945, starting on that date with the beginning of the third quarter of the new calendar and dropping one day of the Gregorian year (it is not stated which day is to be dropped), is a rather abrupt departure from the Association’s principle of simplicity, stressed from its very beginning as a motivating power in securing general acceptance. I think it unnecessary to rehearse what has been said all along about the ease and smoothness with which The World Calendar could be inaugurated at the beginning of a year whose Gregorian calendar starts with Sunday. Then later it was discovered that the transition could be made also with little necessary adjustment at the end of a leap year which itself ends on Sunday, of which the current year is an example. Instances of the Gregorian style of calendar year beginning on Sunday, since the organization of The World Calendar Association, were 1933 and 1939.
This matter of when to inaugurate the new system is, in my opinion, still of primary importance. I think it is generally conceded that a Gregorian year starting with Sunday is the best type from which to make the transition to the new calendar. But to make the transition proposed, by mutilating both the Gregorian year and the first World Calendar year, bristles with complications. In the first place it is unprecedented to drop a day from a particular year in anticipation of an error of one day still three thousand years, or more, away. And it is no adequate justification of this to claim that years in the past have thus been shortened. In those instances errors had accumulated to a number of days. They had to be dealt with. They might have been annulled in another way, as suggested by an English scientist and reported on page 182 of the latest Journal of Calendar Reform. But the real point is that the problem was on hand then and there. We are not facing such a problem, the error still unprovided for by the Gregorian rules amounting at present to a rather small fraction of a day. Furthermore the proper place for this problem is in the hands of astronomers, and, on this matter, I quite agree with you in what you said in your address before the Amateur Astronomers Association, November 4, 1942. (See last paragraph, page 131, Vol. 12, Journal of Calendar Reform).
I am not familiar enough with fields of thought and endeavor outside of my own specialty, mathematics, to give in detail the specific complications that the proposed irregularity would create. Before starting this letter I re-read much of what has appeared in the columns of the Journal, including your articles and published addresses; Professor Bristow Adams, “Popular Acceptance,” “Voice of the Colleges,” with spe
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cial reference to what is said under the caption, Astronomers; James Truslow Adams, “Historian Looks at Time,” and Dr. H. Spencer-Jones, F. R. S. (Of special note is this: “Proposals for the reform of the calendar do not affect the year, as determined by the Gregorian calendar.”)
I think this will suffice, and I hope I have made my point of view clear. Above all things I do not wish to become involved too deeply in controversial matters. My paramount interest is in a successful launching of The World Calendar.
With all best wishes, I remain
Cordially yours,
(Signed) B. F. Yanney
In view of the fact that adoption of The World Calendar on Sunday, July 1, 1945, would cause the loss of one day, and on either Friday, March 1, or Wednesday, May 1, 1946, the loss of two days, which would result in complication and disturbance, it now becomes clear to us that in the interests of greater harmony and more general acceptance, we can consider as possible dates for the adoption of The World Calendar only those that do not involve the loss or the addition of days.
This is possible, as previously mentioned, at the end of this year, when both calendars agree on Saturday, December 30, and the following day, the old December 31, could be the new December W; and the beginning of the year, January 1,1945, could become the first year of the new time-plan.
Should, however, the 1945 adoption prove impossible, then I strongly urge that action be taken in 1947 (which in the United States is not a presidential campaign year), and nations and civilians will have three years to prepare and get ready for the actual operation of The World Calendar on Sunday, January 1, 1950.
----Your 1944------------
Calendar
CALENDARS are scarce. To help meet the demand, a
Sunday Dispatch calendar, with a record of important dates in 1944, is presented in Page SIX.
Cut it out, paste it on cardboard, and you have your record for the year complete.
From London Dispatch Nov. 7, 1943
Smiling Through . . . By lee
[No. 2,895] COMPLEX NEW YEAR
“ Now that’s a nice calendar* madam. Prewar. But if you remember that Mondays are Sundays until Tuesday, February 29, it will do nicely for 1944.”
Reprinted from the London Evening News, Dec. 30. 191/3
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INTERNATIONAL DATE-LINE
SEEN AS FORERUNNER OF
WORLD CALENDAR REFORM
By Commander Wendell Phillips Dodge (Ex-Lieutenant-Commander, V.S.N.R.)
An observer of world-wide experience, explorer, journalist, former Naval officer, an expert in international affairs, of world trade and sea power, Commander Dodge speaks with authority on maritime matters. He has edited many leading magazines in this country and abroad, including the fine old Strand Magazine and The Wide World Magazine of London, and for many years was prominently identified with leading metropolitan newspapers.
WITH postwar planning uppermost in the minds of the peoples of the earth while the present terrific global war still remains a long calendar problem, serious consideration of the adoption of the new World Calendar is timely since the last four months of 1944 are identical in both the old and the new calendars. And it is far-reaching in its benefits—for industry, for labor, for finance, for agriculture, for science, for law, and for government. Likewise, and particularly so, for shipping and world trade.
Does not the psalmist tell us that a thousand years in the sight of the Lord is but a day, and a day a thousand years ? And at the dawn of creation “God divided the light from the darkness” and “called the light Day and the darkness he called Night.” That evening and that morning inaugurated the first day, and three days later the calendar had its beginnings: Sun, moon and stars were ordained “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”
Man will endure and survive after the present un-Christian, un-Godly global war, as did the Patriarch Noah the flood. So, too, may man be expected to reform his calendar, even as Noah’s first calendar served to give assurance that no such catastrophe in the future ever would be permitted “while the earth remaineth.”
It is but natural, then, that everything vital concerning the calendar should issue from the sea—the ocean, incentive to colonial expansion, the great path of transportation; the ocean that comprises two-thirds of the
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earth’s surface, relegating the lands to a marginal position facing its vast expanse.
And so, it is to the maritime world that the calendar means so much more than to all other of man’s activities.
More generally observed far and wide than the Ten Commandments of some three thousand years’ history, the calendar also is older. For the calendar, preceding law, has been a writ where the law has yet to be accepted and enforced. Yes, the calendar is of remotest antiquity—the earliest man at once realized the value of time and its reckoning. Archeologists are not aware of any primitive people, capable of sculpture, who have failed to attempt some measurement of time.
Philip Whitwell Wilson, for one score and one year on the editorial staff of the London Daily Neros and a special correspondent for The New York Times in Paris when our paths crossed, in a highly informative and intensely interesting book, The Romance of the Calendar, writes:
“Can it be said that during the millennia of man’s recorded activities, however many of these millennia there may be, anything has been elaborated that, in its field of uninterrupted continuity, is comparable with the calendar ?”
And in his treatise on Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars, Professor S. Langdon of Oxford informs us that “the calendar is the framework of any civilization, the time index for all business transactions and religious observances, the rule by which all daily life is regulated.”
In order to pass as quickly as possible through history, suppose we had arrived in a Far Eastern port prior to that vicious long-planned attack on Pearl Harbor and entered the house of a Hindu soothsayer to peer into a crystal ball. Here we would see the calendar pass in review—I take you to P. W. Wilson’s narrative:
“. . . you will see dim and clouded reflections—shaven priests in their slow parades within the shadows of the Pyramids—the majesty of Babylonian monarchs—the ancient scholarship of a China that has faded with the centuries into the prehistoric—Maya maidens advancing in processional dance to the terraced shrines of Yucatan—Hebrew rabbis studying the priceless scrolls of their Mosaic law—Popes in the Vatican consulting the most venerable of their learned ecclesiastics—astronomers in their observatories filling volumes with their geometrical calculations—captains of industry examining graphs and charts of production and consumption and costs—seamen in their ships whose safety depends on the accuracy with which they use their Nautical Almanac—”
The Nautical Almanac deals with two systems of time—solar and sidereal. The first is reckoned by the successive transits of the sun over the Greenwich Meridian and is divided into 24 hours, each of which represents 15 degrees longitude. All clocks and timekeeping systems throughout
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the civilized world, including as well Japan and Nazi Germany, are kept on what is called Mean or Civil Time.
This is based on the motion of a mean, or imaginary, sun, which always moves at the same speed and crosses the prime meridian every 24 hours on the instant. Around the world divisions are called local civil or local mean time, based on the longitude of the place and the transits of the sun over the local meridian.
These local meridians have been standardized so that the local time, or zone time, is changed in periods of one hour, corresponding to 15 degrees of longitude for each hour change of time. Thus at San Francisco the standard meridian is 120 degrees west and the local time eight hours earlier than Greenwich Time, because it takes the sun eight hours after crossing the meridian at Greenwich to arrive at the 120th meridian west of Greenwich. The standard time at Manila, based on the 120th meridian east of Greenwich shows the local time as just eight hours later than at Greenwich because after crossing the meridian 120 degrees east it takes the sun eight hours to arrive at Greenwich.
Due to the ellipticity of the earth’s orbit, however, the sun does not actually move at this uniform speed, varying about 16 minutes either behind or ahead of the mean sun. This introduces what in navigation is called Apparent Time. The difference between Mean and Apparent Time is given in the Nautical Almanac for each two hours of Greenwich Civil Time and is called the Equation of Time. This is used to correct the readings of chronometers, which must, of necessity, keep Mean Time.
At the instant of Greenwich Noon, the date is the same all over the earth.
And according to Greenwich Time the 180th meridian indicates midnight—a day ends and a new day begins. This meridian is known as the Date or Calendar Line—the International Date-Line. And right here is the real compass direction leading to practical calendar reform.
Both the clock and the calendar have been receiving the attention of experts from the beginning of recorded time. Homer’s day consisted of but morning and evening. Five periods—dawn ending at sunrise; the time of sacrifice lasting until noon; full light continuing till sunset; the rising of the stars, and the time of prayer closing the day at midnight—filled out the day of the ancient Persians.
Astronomy has shown that the earth rotates on its axis with almost precise regularity, and that the stars are so infinitely distant from the earth that their direction in space is constant day by day, whatever be the earth’s position in its orbit around the sun. This provides a perfect unit of time known as Sidereal Time, which never varies.
By drawing a meridian, north and south, through any point on the earth’s surface and noting when a star passes the meridian, then waiting
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until the earth in rotating passes the meridian again, the interval between the two transits of the star across the meridian is a Sidereal Day.
A Solar Day is the same as a Sidereal Day with the sun substituted for a star—the period of 24 hours elapses while the meridian through a point on the earth’s surface passes the sun and returns to the sun. That is, they are the same except for a fundamental difference. The one is a constant, the other a variable. With the earth revolving in an ellipse round the sun and with the axis of the earth tilted at an angle to the plane of the earth’s orbit, the Solar Day lengthens and shortens during the year. A sundial indicates that day only agrees with clock time on four dates in the 12 months of the calendar year.
This brings us to the proposed modern calendar which is based upon the solar year of 365 days with a 366th day “intercalated” every four years—and with the 365th, as an extra day, giving a year of 364 days as a base, the year to be divided into four quarters of 91 days each. Well, I’ll stop right here and leave this planning to The World Calendar authorities, and content myself with a brief recital of the practical use of such a changed calendar to the maritime world of shipping and communications.
When America entered this war our Merchant Marine fleet totaled only 10,500,000 deadweight tons. By the end of 1944 we may have as much as 50,000,000 tons. Those two simple figures reveal the scope of the greatest shipbuilding and ship operation story in the history of the world.
If a rough translation is made, the United States may have five ships on the high seas where once we had only one. The shipping services may employ five men where in prewar days they employed only one. We will have a merchant fleet equal to or greater than the combined fleets of all other maritime nations.
No one would deny that this nation has assumed a tremendous obligation to American taxpayers and to the world. These vessels are tremendously vital, not only for the sake of our economy, but they are also vital to all nations. They will help set right the things so torn asunder by the misfortunes of war. They will serve as vehicles to carry the materials which will be required desperately in all corners of the globe.
The immediate problem of foresighted and thinking men is: What will this country do with such a tremendous fleet ? How will it be employed in the wisest manner ?
It cannot be impressed too strongly that this is a maritime nation, and always has been. This is a country with 7,000 miles of coastline. It has at least 60 good-sized cities along those coasts. Its very economy long has been based upon trade—not trade just in the sense of exchanging goods, but in the broader sense that so many of our world relationships have long depended upon ships—American ships.
Yes, this nation’s shipping is perhaps its most vital industry. It affects
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everyone in the United States, either directly or indirectly. In its very operation the American Merchant Marine is a great consumer of materials and services produced in this country. Our vessels use fuel, food and equipment of all sorts in tremendous quantities and require many different types of services for their continued operation and upkeep.
The money being spent on our huge shipbuilding program is circulating freely throughout the nation, with a substantial portion of it finding its way to many of the states in the country’s Western sector, states where shipbuilding a few years ago didn’t mean much in the way of employment or dollars.
Some $56,000,000 worth of ship parts are being built in Denver, which is a mile above sea level, with eight ironworking concerns and a number of subcontractors engaged in fabricating hulls, bulkheads and deck sections for fighting ships and merchant vessels.
Another area that is enjoying the benefits of millions of shipyard dollars is the Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico section, which, with only 23 per cent of the country’s population, is producing 50 per cent of our copper, 97 per cent of domestic molybdenum, virtually all of our supply of vanadium, 24 per cent of our lead and 20 per cent of our zinc—all of these metals being highly essential in shipbuilding.
Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Arkansas have over 200 manufacturing concerns that are filling contracts for ship parts and fittings that cost upward of $170,000,000. These four states, normally considered as nonshipbuilding, are producing zinc, lumber, cement, wire rope, cable, sisal, galley ranges, tugboats, barges, Diesel engines, electrical equipment, invasion barges and buoys.
Those are some of the reasons why so many of us are deeply concerned about the employment of our vast fleet once the war has ended.
In reconstructing a war-torn world, it is evident to everyone that it means virtually rebuilding a continental Europe, Russia and China. Those jobs will take ships—every available ship. The resumption of normal trade will occupy a good portion of our ships. No one knows how many ships will be needed for new trades that will develop as a result of the war.
It is not proposed to overwhelm any other maritime nation in the course of such duties and such trade. There should be collaboration with our Allies. The American people have no desire to dominate world trade, but they have the right to insist that American ships carry a substantially increased share of American trade and be permitted a reasonable and justifiable entry into world shipping.
All the nations of the world are inescapably interdependent. The domestic economy and prosperity of the United States require substantial foreign trade, both for raw materials and as an outlet for our agricultural and industrial products. Foreign trade is a balance wheel against recur
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ring periods of domestic depression. We must have a merchant fleet sufficient to serve our international requirements.
The rehabilitation of the war-torn world will be bound to occupy our present merchant fleet, not only during the immediate emergency following the peace, but for many years thereafter. We will send materials to almost every country, feed their people, cloth them and reestablish them as nationals within their own countries. We will have to ship them steel, cotton, beef, machinery, and seeds to replant their fields. The requests that these countries will make on the United States for food and other agricultural products will be staggering, and the problem of relief will exceed that of even the last war when 30,000,000 tons of goods were sent abroad. In this country, as elsewhere, industry will need to be furnished with raw materials to get peacetime employment started again. The war will exhaust the stock piles of goods and materials that each country had in peacetime.
To meet all these requirements there must of necessity be an expansion of our agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries in the postwar period. Supported by these enlarged activities of our basic industries, our national economy in the postwar period will surpass anything we ever knew in peacetime. It will be, as it must be, at a level to meet our war indebtedness and other obligations. More important it will furnish employment to men and women who have been engaged in activities related to war.
It should be evident that the production and distribution of these goods and others will require the services of our Merchant Marine. There must be ships to export these commodities to other countries—which will need them as much as ourselves.
American agriculture, American manufacturing and American industry in general have been helpful to the Merchant Marine of this country through generations. An opportunity will be provided to reciprocate. We will have the ships for everything that the American farmer, manufacturer and producer wants delivered. Behind the ships and at the service of America’s industries will be skilled and experienced management— American-flag steamship companies which are demonstrating in this war their ability to handle a large merchant fleet under the most difficult operating conditions.
Just as vital to the country and to the whole world is our Merchant Marine as a factor in our national defense. This war has proved that the effectiveness of our Army and Navy is directly dependent upon the size and efficiency of our Merchant Marine.
Just ponder how the Axis powers accumulated much of the wealth and power with which to wage wars. They insisted on carrying the bulk of their foreign commerce. Japanese ships carried almost 70 per cent of
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Japan’s commerce, Germany 58 per cent and Italy 46 per cent. The Axis nations moreover made it virtually impossible for any other country to participate in the transportation of this trade. How well they succeeded can be seen in the figures for 1938 when the Axis Merchant Marine had close to a 12 per cent grip on United States foreign commerce while American ships, flying the flag of the country that produced this volume of business, carried only 25 per cent.
In the year 1938, which already has been taken as a standard (because at that time no nation except China and Spain was directly affected by war), we were carrying only 25 per cent of our foreign commerce in a merchant fleet which totaled 12,000,000 deadweight tons. We were dealing with countries considered economically stable, irrespective of their political philosophies. We were enjoying the greatest freedom of the seas in the history of this world.
Now, we have reached a point when this country has the greatest opportunity for maritime development in its history. Let us not lose that glorious opportunity to serve not only our country, but all countries.
Everyone knows that the standards of living in the United States are considerably higher than in any other country in the world. With this go higher wages, and American seamen are known the world over for two things in particular—more pay and better accommodations aboard American ships. This means greater operating costs reflecting higher freight rates. And heretofore, at least, this state of affairs has had a very detrimental effect upon the competitive operation of American ships on the high seas.
When the war ends it is to be expected that our ship operators will have a long-awaited and golden opportunity to get off to a better start in the great international race for world trade. We will have the SHIPS.
Establishing our argument on the premise that we will have this tremendous Merchant Marine tonnage, these thousands of well-trained Merchant Marine seamen, coupled with the fact that public opinion will force us to become a maritime nation once more, means only one of two things.
The government will have to subsidize the Merchant Marine so it can compete favorably with other nations whose cost of operation is far less than ours, or we will have to operate our vessels with greater efficiency.
A vessel, regardless of its tonnage, that stays tied up to a wharf an extra day or an extra hour means increased cost of operation, which reflects itself in the necessity for an increased charge for freight handled. We have the goods, we have some inland waterways—and we have the railroads to prevent such a tie-up.
I regret to say that we have not been known internationally either as an aggressive maritime nation or as a nation that knows how to take short cuts in either scheduling, loading or unloading our sea-borne freight. But
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this global war is changing all this, largely on account of Lend-Lease and our winning of the decisive victory of transportation.
We are going to have to develop greater skill and greater care in scheduling our vessels. We are going to have to give more thought to shipping dates, dates of arrival and those things which keep a vessel tied up, neither receiving freight nor unloading cargo.
All of this calls for long-range planning and routing, which in turn anticipates all of the factors which might cause vessels to be inactive. The crux of the whole thing is timing, not necessarily timing by hours and minutes but timing by days.
This timing can only be made possible by a judicial and constant effective use of the calendar. Ships that arrive in port on holidays or Sundays may mean red ink for that day’s or that week’s cost of operation. On the other hand, when these dates of arrival—weather permitting of course—are well planned, dock charges, extra labor charges and overtime costs can be avoided. If we are going to sharpen our pencils and sit down at a table and compete with foreign nations, past masters in maritime shipping, we are going to have to cut every corner and watch every angle.
These factors impressed me tremendously when I first came across The World Calendar plan. With a calendar, international in scope, traffic problems, while they could not be dismissed entirely, would become definitely less involved for the shipper.
It is true the vast majority of shipping contracts and schedules are based on the calendar we use here in the United States, but there is that factor of shifting holidays, uncertain week-ends, irregular months and unbalanced quarters.
I am not concerned with the shipping problem alone, but I can see where the comparability and stability made possible by The World Calendar of 12 months of equal quarters would lessen the bookkeeping problem, the office maintenance problem, and the intricate bookkeeping occasioned by various types of freight and the consequential varied rates.
A plan once set up and established, a plan definitely part of an office operation, would not have to be changed with every vagary of the calendar, because The World Calendar makes every day, date and period the same year in and year out.
Personally, as an ex-Navy man and student of foreign trade, I cannot help but see that the adoption of The World Calendar would reduce our costs of operation in America’s Merchant Marine. The World Calendar would effect a saving, one of the savings which must be anticipated and become a part of our plan if we are to compete favorably with the more aggressive, experienced, less expensively operated ships of our foreign competitors. Don't forget the International Date-Line!
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WHAT DAY IS TODAY’
By Frank C. Waldrop
From Times Herald, Washington, D. C., January 1, 1944
BY courtesy of the late Pope Gregory XIII, today is New Year’s Day.
So far as he was concerned, the matter was settled in 1582. He decreed an end to the old calendar organized by Julius Caesar and ordered the installation of his own.
But the matter wasn’t settled so far as the rest of the world was concerned.
One of the consequences of his act was that in England on what should have been September 3, 1752, crowds roared through the streets, demanding: “Give us back our 11 days!”
Men thought their time on earth had been tampered with. Anti-popery politicians in London inflamed the mob with stories that it was all a Romish plot to do some unspecified harm to the public.
Mathematicians and bankers had persuaded Parliament to adopt a “Calendar New Style Act,” swinging Britain over from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar after almost 200 years’ delay.
Experts tried to explain the sense of it all, but the crowd still roared for the lost 11 days.
Those days had been clipped off the year 1752 in order to bring the new calendar and the eternal seasons into gear.
Yet, down to this day, the Church of England runs a separate calendar of its own, for religious purposes, in which New Year’s Day falls on March 25. It still prefers this era of Julius Caesar to that of Gregory XIII in calendar matters.
As a matter of fact, neither the Julian nor the Gregorian calendar is good enough.
Caesar’s calendar was a slick mathematical performance for its day— considering that the astronomers of those times didn’t even know the earth circles the sun or the moon circles the earth. They thought the sun went around the earth, if anything.
Pope Gregory’s calendar was even a better job for its day, and came very close to getting the right time for a year, the period we have in mind when we discuss the time it takes the earth to circle the sun.
That period, incidentally, is calculated by modern astronomers to be 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and about 46 seconds long.
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That is an extremely awkward and misfortunate development, because 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds cannot be divided into any arrangement of equal time intervals.
Roughly, we separate the year into four quarters; 12 months; 52 weeks of 7 days each; and 365 days of 24 hours each. Then we refine the hours into 60 minutes each and the minutes into 60 seconds each.
But still that isn’t enough. The quarters are of unequal size because the months are of unequal size, because the time stretch won’t slice evenly.
The actual time it takes the earth to swing around the sun overlaps the calendar time allowed by so much that every fourth year we throw an extra day onto the end of the shortest month to take up the slack.
We’re doing that this very year, 1944, leap year.
Why is it necessary? Well, consider what would happen, otherwise. We know the calendar exists because men like to think and plan ahead. We keep track of the passing days and that helps us foretell, within very rough limits, the future.
For instance, a farmer living in near-by Maryland or Virginia knows that by March 15 he had better have his crop lines for the year pretty well worked out. But how does he know when March 15 is?
By looking at the calendar and by that way only. You think you could keep up with the passage of time without a calendar but you couldn’t. People have tried, but they’ve never succeeded.
So, according to the calendar, January 1, each year is predictable as a cold day in this particular spot on the face of the earth.
But suppose there were no adjustment of the calendar by the leap-year method, to take up that slack period that slops over beyond the calendar allowance for a year.
In about four years, the extra 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds per year would total a whole 24 hours. Then January 1 would, in fact, come one day earlier than it had four years before. In four years more it would turn up two days earlier.
You can see what would happen. In a few generations, the calendar would be calling for January 1 on a hot day of what used to be June. And that wouldn’t be so good. As with January 1, so with all other days.
Even with this adjustment, the calendar still contains one great fault, for January 1 may fall on any day of the week, since the quarters of the year don’t work out evenly, nor do the months. This year it falls on a Saturday. Next year it comes on—a Friday, or a Sunday? You probably don’t know which, but you know it won’t be Saturday, though everybody wishes it would.
If all quarters of the year were equal, all months equal, all holidays
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falling on the same day of the week each year, everybody would find the calendar a better thing.
For instance, banks and insurance companies could calculate interest payments so they would fall at evenly spaced intervals. So could finance companies taking your note for the living room furniture. And so could YOU.
Rents could be paid at equal intervals.
Crops could be calculated to start on the best weekday as well as the right season. Business could be geared to a sensible holiday routine all year.
All these and many, many other benefits could come to us if a really universal calendar were adopted in law and in custom.
The World Calendar Association, a non-profit organization with offices at 630 Fifth Avenue, New York City, has worked out a “perpetual calendar,” along lines that are approved by leaders of all principal religious faiths in the United States, by our principal astronomers, by leaders of industry, farming, labor and by just plain people in general.
THE BACK YARD
By Paul Talbot
From United Business Service, Boston, January 8, 1944
ONCE more—as we start a new year—I urge the adoption of an improved calendar— The World Calendar.
Out of many years of study, discussion, and controversy, The World Calendar has emerged as the almost unanimous choice of businessmen, religious leaders, scientists, statisticians, and the general public. This calendar continues the 12-month year, and has four equal quarters of 91 days each. Every month has 26 weekdays (exclusive of Sundays) and “month dates” fall on the same “weekdays” from year to year. Every year, and every quarter, begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday.
The annual “odd day” falls between December 30 and January 1 and is called Year-End Day. The plan is to make this a world-wide holiday. Similarly, every fourth year, a Leap-Year Day would fall between June 30 and July 1 and would also be a holiday.
If you desire further information concerning the details or workings of this calendar, I suggest that you write to The World Calendar Association, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and ask for the Journal of Calendar Reform.
This all may seem like an “unimportant detail” in these days of world upheaval— but it is not. It is a move that will substantially benefit the human race for hundreds of years to come, and this year is the time to do something about it, because our present Gregorian calendar and The World Calendar will exactly coincide on December 30, 1944.

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CURRENT PRESS COMMENT
Worth Studying
Ottawa (Canada) Citizen
November 18, 1943
ROTARIANS were told about the new World Calendar by A. J. Hills on Monday, It is to be hoped that those who heard Mr, Hills’ address will pursue the matter further. The World Calendar would really be a great advance if it were adopted.
The present calendar is unbalanced, irregular, unsettled. Its days, weeks, months and quarters are constantly shifting. Month-dates never fall twice in succession on the same day. In these days of shrinking distances and transportation problems, it means a great deal of extra work and unnecessary personal inconvenience.
What is The World Calendar? It is an improvement on the present Gregorian calendar and retains all the progress achieved in calendar-making in the past, while clearing away the absurdities, the incongruities and unbalance of the current calendar. The World Calendar has equal quarters, 91 days each. It has monthdates that stay put—always the same weekday.
No sharp break with habit is involved in a change over to The World Calendar. It is just an improved scientific budgeting of the time-units to which mankind is already accustomed. It is a logical, grownup calendar. As already suggested, it is worth a little study by business men.
Sees Change As Moderate
Oklahoma City (Okla.) Oklahoman
November 13, 1943
EVERY so often an effort is made to revise our clumsy and unscientific calendar system.
One of the most recent movements in this direction is that of “The World Cal-
endar Association,” with offices in New York.
Its proposal for revision is moderate, as it suggests only that we keep our present 12 months, but do away with the 28-day idea for February, and, for the rest, make eight months of 30 days and the others 31.
Also in Leap Years two World Holidays would be added, in June and December, with ordinary years having one, in December.
The Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the idea, also 14 foreign nations.
There are three principal obstacles to calendar reform. One is the widespread belief that there is something sacred about the present system, because of the seventh-day Sabbath or historical concepts. Another is the interruption or disruption of contractual instruments. The third is plain inertia—“We’d rather not be bothered about it.”
However, this problem will have to be met some day. The present system is inefficient and clumsy. The calendar has been revised before, and it can be revised again. The new proposal may not be the answer to all the questions, but it is a healthy symptom.
New Calendar Book
Makes Good Case
Houston (Tex.) Post
November 21, 1943
THE World Calendar, what it is, how it would function and points in its favor are discussed by Elisabeth Achelis, its ardent advocate in The Calendar for Everybody.
Calendar reform has been a lively topic for a number of years. For a time there was talk of a 13-month year, but this has waned as Miss Achelis and her associates in The World Calendar Association have campaigned for adoption of a four-quarter year calendar which they sponsor. She makes a good case for the calendar in her book.
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EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS
Easily Arranged
By TED ROBINSON
From Cleveland, O., Plain Dealer, November 17, 1943
((XTOU spoke the other day,” writes
JL D. R., “of the probability that the calendar would soon be reformed. But you stopped there, leaving many of us in suspense. Just what direction do you expect the reform to take, and how is it to be put across? . . . And when the alteration is made, will it be permanently satisfactory? Is it possible to arrive at a final and perfect form?”
There are too many questions here to be answered all at once, but we may make a start. In the first place, we know that the ancient Egyptians had a 12-month calendar of 30 days in each month. That calendar was in some ways better than those that succeeded it; each month was the same, each year was the same. Five days were added at the end of each year to make up the 365. But of course this got further and further off as the years went by.
The Julian calendar of Rome, with the Augustan and Constantinian revisions, was almost like our own, but the making of every fourth year a leap year proved increasingly inaccurate; the Gregorian calender was adopted (with much trouble and opposition) to correct the discrepancy. We still use it; it is inconvenient and illogical. It changes every year. No two like years follow each other; the months have four different lengths; any month can begin on any of the days of the week; we can’t tell without looking it up which day the 18th fell on, or what day of the month Thursday will be. Christmas can come on any day of the week; Easter on any date from March 22 through April 25.
There are two simple programs for reform. One is the 13-month calendar in which there are 28 days in each month; so that the first day is always Sunday. There is a 29th day in December, called Year Day; and in leap years there is a 29th day in June, called Leap Day. That
is too radical a change to get itself adopted; the conversion of dates from old to new at the start would be a tremendous job—and there are other drawbacks.
The League of Nations was working on something more practical, the 12-month equal-quarter plan, when the war interrupted its sessions. This calendar, known as The World Calendar, is bound to be adopted, sooner or later. In this, the quarters are equal; each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, and contains three months, or 13 weeks, or 91 days. Each month has 26 weekdays, and month-dates always fall on the same weekdays. Each year begins on Sunday, January 1. A World Holiday, called December W, follows December 30 every year. In leap years, there is a June W, too.
It is so simple and so easily arranged that it will probably be adopted without too much opposition.
Time to Bunch
The Old Calendar
From The Democrat, McConnellsburg, Pa., January 13, 1944
JANUARY 1, 1945, will begin on Sunday if The World Calendar is adopted at that time. The months of April, July and October will also begin on Sundays. This 12-month equal-quarter calendar is the same every year. Each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, with 13 weeks in each quarter, 91 days. To keep the quarters intact there is an extra world holiday at the close of December, the Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, which follows December 30 every year; a world holiday at the end of June, the Leap-Year Day, another extra Saturday, follows June 30 in leap years. The present calendar has “grasshopping” month dates never twice in succession on the same weekday. The World Calendar has month dates that stay put—always the same weekday; it begins every year on Sunday, ends every year on Saturday.
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Miss Elisabeth Achelis has written a New Year “must” book under the title of The Calendar for Everybody, and inasmuch as she has devoted her life to calendar reform for more than a dozen years she is able to go clear down the line in furnishing satisfactory proof that the New World needs a new practical and common-sense calendar, and that The World Calendar of 12 months is just what the World needs.
A Date With Time
From The Evening Standard, London, England, December 29, 1943
A GROUP of earnest men and women scattered around the world will adjust their calendars from December 31 to January 1 this week-end with sentiments of sadness and hope nicely blended.
They are the members of The World Calendar Association, whose view is that our present calendar wastes time, being “unbalanced, unstable and irregular,” and should be discarded in favor of their proposed calendar. Their “time-plan” divides the year neatly into regular quarters, ending genially with a day to be known as December W—a world holiday.
Headquarters of the Association are in the United States, but they have supporters in this country. Lord Desborough, now 88, is a member of the Foreign Advisory Committee. Lord Desborough has enjoyed a variety of interests, from swimming the Niagara River (twice) to presiding over many official bodies. He took to reforming the calendar some years ago, and his great interest in the matter continues. Lord Desborough is at his home in Hertfordshire.
Lord Desborough reminds me that the Fixed Easter Act, which he proposed in the House of Lords, has received the Royal Assent, but is held up pending agreement among Christian denominations.
“As most nations are engaged in trying to kill each other, it is not easy to get attention paid to calendar reform,” says Lord Desborough.
“He is tremendously keen about calendar reform,” Lady Desborough told me. “He has been connected with the Association from its first days. Having a fixed Easter is another thing he is keen about.
All his views on this subject are distinct.”
I have been reading the latest issue of the Journal of Calendar Reform, published by the Association in New York. With the slogan, “A new calendar for a new world,” they set out an abundance of reasons for adopting their calendar.
It closes with a confident claim of the “global aspects, and benefits this new time-plan will bring to the entire world and to everyone.”
Faces Easter Problem
TNDICATIVE of the problems which 1 merchants face because of a variable Easter date is the following rule of the War Production Board which appeared in “Government Digest” of Washington Review, January 29, 1944:
The War Production Board has announced that Inventory Limitation appeals resulting from the variable Easter date will be promptly considered, as Easter on April 9 is 16 days earlier this year than last. Many stores merchandise some or all of their spring stocks in relation to Easter.
WPB is prepared to give sympathetic attention to any retailer who appeals on the basis that an earlier Easter necessitates some temporary adjustment of inventory control. Appeals should be filed in accordance with Paragraph (q) (3) of Order L-219 and addressed to the WPB Wholesale and Retail Trade Division, 5301 Empire State Building, New York 1, New York. If a merchant has never filed reports under L-219, completed Forms WPB-1620 and WPB-1621 must be submitted with his appeal.
2,500,000 To Go
By W. T. LOTTIS
From Collier’s, February 19, 1944
WHILE a February without a full moon takes place about five times in every century, this occurrence in 1866 was accompanied by the rarest lunar phenomenon on record. The preceding January and the following March had two full moons each, a sequence that will not happen again for at least 2,500,000 years.
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FROM THE MAIL BAG
The difficulties of our present calendar are one of the topics discussed in my course in Business Statistics.—Richard L. Kozelka, Associate Prof, of Economics and Statistics, University of Minnesota.
Truly The World Calendar Association has accomplished much, and with the adoption of The World Calendar the year 1945 will be a happy one for all the nations of the world. I see great values in the new calendar and wish you the best of fortune in bringing about its final consummation. Wishing you good success, accept my best regards and kindly convey my compliments to all The World Calendar Association members from a friend far away in Yemen—Haj Abbas Abdulla, Interpreter and Translator to H. M. Imam, King of Yemen, Sanaa, Arabia.
I should like to say that I am strongly in favor of calendar reform and consider it would be a valuable factor in world planning after the war. If the U. S. A. would approve, probably all the other nations now cooperating would also make this change.—C. Chapman, Brighton, England.
I have been very much interested in your new pamphlet. It is well written and very cleverly ties the subject in with world conditions. Sincerest good wishes for the success of your great work.—Mrs. J. L. B. Buck, Second Vice-President, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Richmond, Va.
I shall try not to miss an opportunity to aid the coming of The World Calendar.— Clyde Fisher, Honorary Curator, American Museum of Natural History, N.Y. C.
The special booklet The World Calendar ... A New Calendar for a New World is especially good. Very clear, a plain statement that should convince everybody who sees it.—McDonald Steers, Athletic Department, Yale University.
The calendar is a perpetual source of trouble and I have recently had to write to three different people who inquired about the authenticity of dates that I gave, they forgetting the difference between New
Style and Old Style, which change came in the middle of the 18th century. Anything which can be done to bring the calendar more nearly in conformity with the astronomical movements of the earth and sun will save an enormous amount of trouble. —James Truslow Adams, Historian, Southport, Conn.
A great convenience to have all years alike.—Arthur W. Smith, Prof, of Physics, Univ, of Mich., Ann Arbor.
For many years I have been in favor of a readjustment of the calendar, and The World Calendar seems to me the best so far proposed.—C. A. Chant, Editor, The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto.
No reason exists why the world should not or could not have a universal and perpetual calendar embracing a perfect perpetual cycle.—Allen J. McCallum, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The World Calendar has my unqualified approval—glad to do anything to further the cause. Press and radio should get behind it.—George W. White, Equip. Acct., Pere Marquette Railway, Detroit.
Your World Calendar appears to be a sign of the times—for we look forward to a coordinated reconstructed world, and to a world regarded as a unity, no longer a conglomerate of diverse parts.—Margaret Whyte, Nanaimo, B. C., Canada.
It will be a wonderful step forward when the new calendar is adopted as it must surely be.—Caleb A. Harding, New York City.
For a long time I have thought of a new calendar and have discussed it many times. If at any time I can be of service in promoting this new calendar in the Southeast, please call on me.—E. K. Brook, War Production Board, Atlanta, Ga.
After a few years it is going to be necessary to rebuild the entire world and I hope at that time we will be able to take advantage of The World Calendar.— A. M. Harding, President, University of Arkansas.
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THE WORLD CALEN
Elisabeth Achelis, President Harriet A. Lillie, Secretary-Treasurer
AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE William H. Barton, Jr.
Henry W. Bearce Dr. Clara B. Burdette Mrs. Frederick H. Clausen Mrs. Vera Beggs Conway Capt. J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. (Ret.) Mrs. Gustav Ketterer Mrs. Rowland H. Latham Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D. Bishop William T. Manning Hon. Dave H. Morris Prof. Wm. Starr Myers
Dr. L. S. Rowe Howard C. Smith Bishop Ernest M. Stires Julius F. Stone Rabbi Martin M. Weitz P. W. Wilson Dr. Mary E. Woolley
DAR ASSOCIATION
Charles S. McVeigh, Vice-President Emerson Brewer, Director
FOREIGN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Admiral Josfi Guisasola (Argentina) Dr. Eugene Delporte (Belgium) Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino (Brazil) Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir (Canada) Prof. Alberto Cumming (Chile) R. P. Eugenio V.' Rosso, S.S. (Chile) Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu (China)
R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, S.J. (Cuba) Dr. Herbert Blume (Danzig) Barney N. Morgan (Dominican Republic) Lord Desborough (England) C. David Stelling (England) Paul-Louis Hervier (France) Abraham Frowein (Germany) Athanase Politis (Greece)
E. Keith Eason (Ireland) Amedeo Giannini (Italy) Dr. Joaquin Gallo (Mexico) Juan Rivera Reyes (Panama) Luis Montero y Tirado (Peru) R. P. Antonio RomanA, S.J. (Spain) Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden) Raymond Mage (Switzerland) Dr. M. I. Dereoglu (Turkey) Edgar J. Anzola (Venezuela)
Membership ts based on active interest in the study of adequate and effective improvement of the calendar. Owing to lack of space, a large number of names have been omitted. They will be printed in future issues.
Albert S. Anderson, Stud., Fairfield, Conn. George W. Anderson, Kingsport, Tenn. George R. Armstrong, Corp. Exec., Boston K. A. Arnold, Jr., Stud., Broad Brook, Conn. Sir James W. Barrett, Phys., Victoria, Australia
Harry Batley, Teach., Thermal, Cal. Frank Berklund, Salesman, Detroit, Mich. Fred Bish, Miner, Forestburg, Canada R. B. Bryden, Ins. Off., Kitchener, Canada William A. Carey, Salesman, Detroit Prof. W. W. Carlson, Manhattan, Kan. J. C. Clarke, Ship. Clk., Flushing, N. Y. Garrett B. Clayton, Engr., New York City Hart Cooper, Atty., Wilmington, Del. W. E. Daverin, Acct., Housatonic, Mass. Brooks Davis, Purch. Agt., Tucson, Ariz. S. M. Dillon, Corp. Exec., Wilmington, Del. Isabel Doll, Librn., W. Caldwell, N. J. D. E. Doman, Dean, Greenville, N. C. John W. Duffle, Clerk, Montreal Peter Dyck, Teach., Winkler, Canada Kathryn Easterly, Teacher, Mosheim, Tenn. Henry M. Elliott, Corp. Exec., Troy, N. Y. Dr. Rolfe H. Ehrmann, Chern., Elmhurst, N. Y; Charles M. Fenn, Estimator, Oakville, Conn. Jimmy Fischer, Stud., Old Hickory, Tenn. Mrs. John E. Fisher, San Francisco Arthur S. Gall, Corp. Off., Montreal Florence Garbush, Teacher, Loyal, Wis. Orrin O. B. Garner, Atty., Chicago J. C. Gibson, Mfgr., Willard, Ohio Dr. J. Edgar Guimont, Montreal Rev. M. C. Haecker, Canova, S. D.
Abdul Hamid, Editor, Lahore, India John B. Happ, Banker, Evanston, Ill. A. M. Hauber, Corp. Exec., Pittsburgh A. H. Henshall, Draftsman, Taunton, Mass. H. M. Heywood, Merchant, Biltmore, N. C. Alfred Higgins, Mfgr., Burbank, Cal. Edgar B. Holden, Engr., Westport, Conn. E. M. Houghton, Corp. Exec., Cleveland F. L. Impey, Mfgr., Birmingham, England Rev. Homer A. Jack, Lawrence, Kan.
Robert D. Jefferson, Corp. Off., Boise, Ida.
James Johnson, Librn., Portales, N. M. Willis E. Johnson, Writer, Hollywood Richard O. Jonas, Educ., Austin, Tex. Rev. H. C. Kelleran, New Berlin, N. Y. L. J. Keys, Civil Serv., Wellington, N. Z. William Kneale, Farmer, Buhl, Idaho John H. Koewler, Exec., Evansville, Ind. Richard W. Mattoon, Physicist, Chicago Nelle McCalla, Librn., Terre Haute, Ind. Ronald A. McEachern, Editor, Toronto Capt. Alden McLillan, Jr., New Orleans R. M. McMillen, Farmer, Marion Center, Pa. J. E. McNeil, Farmer, Lockhart, Fla.
Albert W. Meserve, Arborist, Danbury, Conn. Harry Miller, Reno, Nev.
J. A. Miller, Printer, Asheville, N. C. Paul Mishkin, Student, Brooklyn Mrs. J. T. Montgomery, Librn., Rockford, Ill. Thomas L. Moody, Mfgr., Bradford, Pa. Rene Morin, Student, Montreal Margaret O’Dowd, Student, Brighton, Mass. Ohio Farm Library, Columbus Dr. O. J. Olafsson, Dentist, Riverside, Ill. Tasso Vance Orr, Writer, Niceville, Fla. J. L. Owens, Credit Off., Lincoln, Neb.
F. M. Pantzer, Corp. Exec., Sheboygan, Wis. Dr. Arthur Parry, Dentist, Toronto, Canada E. J. Pease, Insur. Off., Newton, Mass.
J. D. Plekker, Stud., Grosse Pointe, Mich. Plymouth Teachers College, N. H. Leonard Potkewitz, Student, Brooklyn B. G. Prestegard, Acct., Mahnomen," Minn. W. A. Priegnitz, Acct., Milwaukee, Wis. William Ringer, Acct., Gary, Ind.
A. M. Robinsky, Student, New York City H. B. Robinson, Corp. Exec., New York City Earle S. Rodda, Designer, Lake Orion, Mich. R. L. Rofman, Teacher, Philadelphia James F. Rogers, Student, Falmouth, Mass. William C. Rollauer. Banker, Flushing, N. Y. Miss I. Rosenberg, Teacher, Bronx, N. Y. Earl C. Sanford, Forester, Vernal, Utah A. T. Scheurmann, Realtor, Chicago Elliott A. Schick. Brooklyn
H. R. Schmidt, Corp. Off., Houston, Tex.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
David V. Seaman, Stud., Gilbertsville, N. Y. Ogden S. Sells, Mfgr., Riverside, Cal.
Mrs. Ann B. Shimmick, Trenton, N. J. L. S. Shively, Teach., Muncie, Ind. Deo Shulman, Clerk, Kansas City, Mo. Colin Simkin, Adver. Man, Hartford, Conn. D. D. Simmons, Chicago Jack Sklansky, Student, Brooklyn Dominik Sloboda, Ins. Off., Dorain, O. Johan J. Smertenko, Editor, New York City Arthur A. Smith, Engr., Daurinburg, N. C. Arthur W. Smith, Educ., Ann Arbor, Mich. Bertram Smith, Acct., Berkeley, Cal. Ferdinand C. Smith, Labor Off., N. Y. C. Goldwin Smith, Teach., Midfields, Tex. Malcolm S. Stanley, Engr., Sydney, Australia A. E. Staffer, Publisher, Deshler, Neb. H. A. Steckler, Ins. Man, New Orleans W. T. Stevens, Ins., Ithaca, N. Y.
Mel Stover, Scientist, Winnipeg, Canada
Otto Strasser, Writer, Montreal Ivin Tarnove, Student, Brooklyn F. H. Tharp, Detective, San Francisco Margaret Thurnham, Sch. Supt., Sweetsburg, Canada
S. H. Tomlinson, Mgr., High Point, N. C.
James L. Turner, Corp. Off., Welland, Canada C. F. Wacker, Banker, La Salle, Ill.
D. H. Wagner, Corp. Exec., Wheeling, W. Va. Elsie K. Webb, Secy., New York City Robert G. Wheeler, Historian, Albany, N. Y. B. A. Whitney, Researcher, W. Cleveland, O. G. H. Wilson, Ins. Exec., Philadelphia P. H. Wilson, Co. Exec., Worcester, Mass. Marion Winship, Insurance. Buffalo Mulford Winsor, Librn., Phoenix, Ariz.
L. M. Winters, Merchant, Cortland, N. Y. Dora Wise, Teacher, Birmingham, Ala. Helen E. Wold, Frat. Exec., Lyndhurst, N. J. Rev. R. P. Wyche, Charlotte, N. C.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ARGENTINA: Comite Argentino del Calen-dario Mundial, Admiral Jose Guisasola, Chairman, Ministerio de Marina, Buenos
AUSTRALIA: Committee on Calendar Reform of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, C. W. Allen, Secy., Solar Observatory, Canberra.
BELGIUM: Belgian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Professor M. Dehalu, President, 1’Universite de LiSge, Liege.
BOLIVIA: Comite Boliviano del Calendario Mundial, Don Moises Santivanez, Chairman, Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre.
BRAZIL: Comite Brasileiro do Calendario Mundial, Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino, Chairman, Rua Raul Pompeia No. 133, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Rational Calendar Association, Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir, Secy., 82 Jane St., Toronto 5.
CHILE: Comite Chileno del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Cumming, Chairman, Calle Manuel Rodriguez, Santiago.
CHINA: Chinese Association for the Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu, Director, National Institute of Astronomy, Kunming, Yunnan.
COLOMBIA: Comite Colombiano del Calendario Mundial, Bogota.
COSTA RICA: Comite Costarricense del Calendario Mundial (Igualmente de Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador y Nicaragua), Don Teodoro Picado, Chairman, San Jose.
CUBA: Comite Cubano del Calendario Mundial, R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, Chairman, Bel6n Observatory, Havana.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Comite Domini-cano del Calendario Mundial, Barney N. Morgan, Chairman, Box 727, Ciudad Trujillo.
ECUADOR: Comitfi Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde, Chairman, Calle Cienfuegos 158, Santiago, Chile.
ENGLAND: Rational Calendar Association, C. David Stelling, Director, 38, Parliament Street, London.
FRANCE: Comite National pour la Reforme du Calendrier, Senateur Justin Godart, President; Paul-Louis Hervier, Secy., 5, Rue Bernoulli, Paris.
GERMANY: Deutscher Ausschuss fur Kalen-derreform, Dr. Grosse, Geschaftsfiihrer, Neue Wilhelmstr. 9/11, Berlin N. W. 7.— Der Weltbund fur Kalenderreform, Dr.
FOR REFORM OF THE CALENDAR
Rudolph Blochmann, Secy., 24 Lornsen-
GREECE: Greek National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. S. Plakidis, Secy., Observatory of University of Athens.
HUNGARY: Hungarian Committee for Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Paul Vajda, Secy., 9 Eotos Utca, Budapest.
IRELAND: Committee for Calendar Reform, E. K. Eason, Secy., 80, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.
ITALY: Italian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Amedeo Giannini, Secy., Via del Seminario, 113, Rome.
MEXICO: Comite Mejicano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Joaquin Gallo, Honorary President; Dr. Horacio Herrera, Chairman, Sociedad de Estudios Astronomicos y Geoflsicos, Av. Observatorio No. 192, Ta-cubaya, D.F.
PANAMA: Comite Panameno del Calendario Mundial, Juan Rivera Reyes, Chairman, Panama City.
PARAGUAY: Comite Paraguayano del Calendario Mundial, H. E. Senor Ministro Coronel don Luis Irrazabal, Chairman, Calle Moneda 1938, Santiago, Chile.
PERU: Comite Peruano del Calendario Mundial, Don Luis Montero y Tirado, Chairman, Casilla 220, Lima.
POLAND: Polish Committee for Calendar Reform, Albin Jakiel, Chairman, Krasiu-skiego, 21 m. 27, Warsaw.
SPAIN: Spanish Calendar Reform Committee, Rev. Father Antonio Rornand, S.J., Chairman, Observatorio del Ebro, Tortosa.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Committee on Calender Reform, Prof. Emile Marchand, Secy., Mythenstrasse 2, Zurich 2.—Comity International de Cooperation de 1’Association Universelle du Calendrier, M. Raymond Mage, Secretaire General, Palais Wilson, Geneva.
TURKEY: Committee on Calendar Reform, Dr. M. I. Dereoglu, Secy., P. O. Box 1121, Hanhaym Han No. Io, Istanbul.
URUGUAY: Comite Uruguayo del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Reyes Thevenet, Chairman, Liceo de Ensenanza Secundaria Hector Miranda, Calle Sierra 2268, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Comite Venezolano del Calendario Mundial, Don Edgar J. Anzola, Chairman, Apartado de Correos No. 207, Caracas.
YUGOSLAVIA: Yugoslavian Committee on Calendar Reform, Georges Curcin, Chairman, Poenkareova 25—III, Belgrade.
This space is contributed to the American Red Cross by The World Calendar Association and is one of several announcements which will be published m cooperation with the American Red Cross.
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1944
PRESENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR
PROPOSED WORLD CALENDAR
FIRST QUARTER		
JANUARY	FEBRUARY	MARCH
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
S	ECOND QUARTER	
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
THIRD QUARTER		
JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 ,3Q31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1314 15 16 17 18 19 202122 23 24 25 26 2728 29 30 31	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1314 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 3 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1415 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 *
FIRST QUARTER			
JANUARY	FEBRUARY	MARCH	
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
SECOND QUARTER		
APRIL	MAY	JUNE
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T_FS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 **
THIRD QUARTER				
JULY	AUGUST	SEPTEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7, 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
FOURTH QUARTER		
OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S	S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 *
This calendar has 52 weeks and must borrow from another week to complete the year. This causes the calendar to change every year and is responsible for its confusion. Also note varying number of days in each quarter.
* A WORLD HOLIDAY, DECEMBER W, the Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, follows December 30th every year. ** A WORLD HOLIDAY, JUNE W, the Leap-Year Day, another extra Saturday, follows June 30th in leap years.
THE WORLD CALENDAR
THE WORLD CALENDAR of 12 months and equal quarters is a logical rearrangement of our present calendar. Every year is the same and begins on Sunday, January 1.
THE YEAR is divided into equal quarters of 3 months—13 weeks—91 days. The months are arranged in 31-30-30 days: each month has 26 weekdays, plus. Sundays. The various time-units all agree at the end of quarter-years.
* THE 365th DAY at the close of every year is the natural Year-End Day, the extra Saturday, December W (the old December 31). ** In leap years the 366th day, the Leap-Year Day (the old February 29), is placed in the midyear on another extra Saturday, June W. Both are World Holidays.
This year is significant because the last four months are identical in both the old and new calendars. Sunday, the old December 31, becomes the extra Saturday, December W—a World Holiday.
YOU have the opportunity to apply this calendar and observe its benefits YOURSELF in the last four months of this year.
The Last Four Months of 1944 Are Exactly The Same in Both Calendars
A NEW CALENDAR FOR A NEW WORLD
VOL. XIV
SECOND QUARTER, 1944
No. 2
MANKIND would be immeasurably buoyed and strengthened could it depend unhesitantly on reliable, harmonious, well-organized and coordinated systems, such as the solar system. This is composed of nine independent and different planets, each of which moves in its own free orbit, yet all unite in revolving around the center point, the sun. There is thus formed a harmonious, balanced and united group—a shining example for man’s constant guidance.
Another system, closely related to the solar and equally as important to man, is Time. The reckoning of Time is unique in that it is twofold, measured by the clock for recurrent hours of the days and by the calendar for recurring seasonal years. The clock in its smooth, flowing movement of rhythmic seconds, minutes and hours is an ideal prototype of the harmonious solar system. This is not true of the calendar, which is meandering, unreliable, irregular; nothing meshes but everything clashes in unreasonable confusion.
■ \
Successful invasion and war strategy depend upon the complete cooperation and coordination of all the various branches of the fighting forces. Anything less causes a weak link and the stupendous task is endangered. The importance of willing cooperation among the many branches that weld and form the whole cannot be too strongly stressed.
If man wishes to achieve cooperation and coordination for maximum and best results, it is outright common sense that the calendar be given a rhythmic arrangement and harmonious pattern similar to those inherent in the solar system and clock-time.
The World Calendar accomplishes this and belongs inevitably to the progressive changes of a new and better world. Its adoption should not be denied because of any special or self-interest which would deprive mankind of this better time-system. The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters, with its global World Holidays “for the healing of the nations,” belongs to all mankind and to the entire world.
JOURNAL	OF
CALENDAR REFORM
April, May, June
1944
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL	49
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ACCOUNTANTS APPROVES WORLD
CALENDAR	51
STATE GOVERNMENTS NEED WORLD CALENDAR O. K. Armstrong 57
WHY NOT A LOGISTIC CALENDAR?	Elisabeth Achelis 61
THIS YEAR'S CALENDAR ONLY SIX YEARS OLD IN ENGLISH
CHRONOLOGY	Dr. Benjamin F. Yanney 64
CATHOLIC SAVANTS ESTABLISH YEAR OF CHRIST'S DEATH 67 THIS CHANGING WORLD DEMANDS ONE PLAN, A CALENDAR
FOR EVERYBODY	Carleton J. Ketchum 69
DEATH COMES TO ADVOCATE OF PROGRESS	77
WHAT TIME IS IT?	Alma K. Anderson 79
PREDATE MAKES COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE
THEM	Henry Platt 85
WORLD CALENDAR ADVOCATES URGE ADOPTION
Vincent Johnson 91
TOMORROW'S CALENDAR?	Curt B. Beck 94
NEED COMMON DENOMINATOR TO WELD THE PEOPLES OF THE
WORLD	Emerson Brewer 98
IN TIME OF WAR PREPARE FOR PEACE	Ernest Camp, Jr. 102
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS	107
EMERSON BREWER, Editor
Published by THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC.
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING: 6 3 0 FIFTH AVE., N. Y. C. 20
SECOND QUARTER 1944
51
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF
ACCOUNTANTS APPROVES
THE WORLD CALENDAR
The American Institute of Accountants, the national organization of certified public accountants in that field, is the Phi Beta Kappa of the accounting fraternity. For many months this organization has been studying The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters. A committee, made up of Ernest G. Maihack, Chairman, W. E. Pollard and Herbert H. Rapp, submitted the results of their findings to the Council, which accepted the report in toto. The report needs no editorial embellishment and is carried as submitted.
THE greatest objection to the present calendar is its shifting nature.
The present civil calendar has been in use in the English-speaking countries for less than 200 years, and in some other countries for less than 20 years, but man has been using—and improving—his calendar for nearly 9,000 years. A twentieth-century calendar improvement is at hand. Since the present calendar was adopted, the world’s tempo and mood have changed. Our lives, our habits, and our needs have changed. Civilization is ever devoted to the ideal of progress to make life simpler and better for all people.
The new World Calendar of twelve months and equal quarters, as sponsored by The World Calendar Association, Inc., of New York, is a sturdy young successor, easy to adopt, and now ready for adoption. It would be folly to ignore any longer the need for a new and improved civil calendar. There is so much to be gained, with so little effort.
The present Gregorian calendar was the first calendar to be constructed in conformance with complete knowledge of a true length of a solar year—the time it takes the earth to complete the four seasons. It took many thousands of years before mankind attained the scientific knowledge necessary to calculate the correct length of the solar seasonal calendar. During this process many habits, superstitions, and foibles were acquired, which the makers of the Gregorian calendar were unable to discard at the time.
52
JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
The present calendar still labors under the blight of those old customs. As an example, we wonder why February is so ridiculously, disproportionately short—10 per cent shorter than January or March. The reason for this is because it was the last month, the stepchild, in the calendar of the early Romans, who therefore did not scruple to shorten it so as to lengthen other months. The calendar of today is really a conglomeration of fourteen different calendars, because the month’s-date can come on any of the seven days of the week, in both regular and leap years. For instance, March 15th, our familiar federal income-tax due date can come on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, in regular years, and in Leap Year it is pushed back one day because of February 29th. Under the present calendar, holidays jump around the week on various days. In 1939, March 15th fell on a Wednesday, whereas in 1943 it fell on a Monday.
The World Calendar represents an improvement in the Gregorian calendar under which nearly all of the world is operating. The World Calendar, as it stands today is precisely the calendar arrangement that has been decided to be the most practical, the most scientific, the most generally accepted, and the most easily adopted. The plan as to how it works is very simple: The modern calendar is based upon the solar year, is 365 days long, with an extra day inserted—which calendar makers call “intercalated”—every four years. Of course 365 is not divisible into quarters, neither is 366: but 364 is. Consequently what is needed for a new World Calendar is equal quarters—and as nearly equal months at the present number of 365 will permit. So a day is set aside. With 364 as the base, the year is divided into four quarters of 91 days each. The new calendar is then on an easily understood basis of a twelve-month year, which means that each quarter includes three months. Furthermore, since 91 is one quarter of 364, it is simply a division of 91 into three equal months, by making the first month of each quarter contain 31 days; and the other two months consist of 30 days each. Therefore, a pattern for the quarter—31, 30, 30, repeating itself regularly four times a year is the result. This then gives January, April, July, and October 31 days each, the rest of the months having 30 days each.
As a result of this equal division as outlined above, it is next necessary to bring the calendar into line with common sense and plain logic and have every year, and consequently every quarter, begin on the same day—Sunday—the first day of the week. This then means that the same date of the month would come on the same day of the week every year, thereby preventing the hopping around of a day throughout the week. The universal recognized holiday of Christmas, December 25th, would under the new World Calendar, fall on a Monday every year.
SECOND QUARTER 1944
53
As for the 365th day it would be set aside since it would be the odd day of every year. The World Calendar Association, chief sponsor of the cause of calendar improvement, accepts the consensus of authority that the logical place for the 365th day is at the end of December. It is also recommended that it be designated as a World Holiday by all countries adopting the new calendar. On that day, the calendar takes a holiday and so may everyone. The World Holiday is an extra Saturday called Year-End Day, December W (31st). There is another inserted or intercalary day to be reckoned with, and that is Leap-Year Day, existing in the present calendar at February 29th. This day which comes every four years, represents an approximate adjustment to take care of the extra five hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds that astronomical calculation shows to be the excess of the solar year over an exact 365 days. The World Calendar places Leap-Year Day at the end of June, in the middle of the year, thereby balancing the calendar. Again it is an extra Saturday and a World Holiday, June W (31st).
The greatest objection to the present calendar is its shifting nature. Days and dates never agree; weeks roam crazily in and out of the month; months that we must count either with the aid of knuckles on our hands or recite a childish rhyme in order to vacillate between 90 and 92 days; half-years likewise are unequal varying between 181 and 184 days; and the new year always begins on a different day in the week. Nothing stays put. Elisabeth Achelis, president of The World Calendar Association, points out that our calendar is so planless and has so little order and no coordination that it confuses accounting systems, business efficiency, school and college schedules, and our many daily affairs which include clubs, family life, civic and defense duties. Comparability is almost impossible and the holidays break awkwardly into the week, haphazard fashion.
There are fourteen nations that have given their official approval of the new World Calendar plan—Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, China, Esthonia, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Norway, Panama, Peru, Spain, Turkey, and Uruguay. This is an interesting list as it cuts through national, racial, color, and religious barriers, a true indication that time, the civil calendar, belongs to and affects us all alike.
As for the changeover date from the present calendar to The World Calendar, it is suggested that the changeover take place commencing with January 1, 1945, which would fall on a Sunday. To effect the commencement, the present calendar date known as Sunday, December 31, 1944, is eliminated. This process would then commence the running of the new world calendar on a Sunday at the beginning of the year 1945.
As for its adoptability, it is interesting to quote such a personage as the Honorable Dave Hennen Morris, member of the American Advisory
54
JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
Committee, The World Calendar Association, and formerly United States Ambassador to Belgium. “For many years I have been actively interested in the movement for a world language, one that is simple in structure, precise, easy to learn, and free from hidden prejudices and misunderstandings in the meaning of its words. Because of my desire to further greater understanding and unity among all people, I have also been increasingly interested within the past few years in the movement for improving our antiquated and inadequate calendar.”
“Statisticians and Accountants” as mentioned in the Business Digest, Chicago, January, 1938, “who have to struggle with comparisons of months of varying lengths, stylists who must cope with an Easter that may fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th, churchmen who must step warily along the intricate calibrations of an ecclesiastical calendar superimposed on the secular calendar, have been suggesting for years that something be done about our unsymmetrical calendar.”
As for the natural business year, Walter Mitchell, Jr., of the Research and Statistical Division of Dun and Bradstreet, writes from the viewpoint of an accountant, that any general adoption of the fiscal closing dates on a sound business basis would be beneficial to him. Under present conditions, certified public accountants commonly work to the point of complete exhaustion during the first three months of every year and find their time largely idle during the remainder of the year. Some time ago it seemed to members of the accounting profession that the community of interest made evident by these two facts warranted a study of a possibility of arranging for fiscal closing dates which would be more convenient for all concerned.
The result was the organization of the Natural Business Year Council sponsored by the American Institute of Accountants. It included representatives of the Robert Morris Associates, analysts of bank operating figures; American Management Association, which deals with engineering and management problems in industry; the National Association of Cost Accountants; and a credit-report agency. This group held meetings for discussion and assembled a file of all previously published information pertinent to their problem. They found that adequate data were available for relatively few lines of industry and trade. They also found conflicts in recommendations—one authority recommending a closing date for a given industry and another advocating some other time. The Council endeavored to check all this information by questionnaires to trade associations and representatives of the industries concerned. They found the idea of a natural business year so little understood that complete and repeated explanations were needed before interest was evident in any industrial group. Even when interest was aroused in the abstract problem, more
55
SECOND QUARTER 1944 ♦
definite facts about the seasonal cycle of a given industry were necessary if the industry was to be convinced that a radical change was desirable for the traditional closing of books with the calendar year.
In selecting closing dates for recommendations to an industry, the end of a quarter year has been chosen wherever possible, so that concerns adopting the suggestion will be still able to compare their quarterly figures with other concerns or other lines of business operating on a calendar year, or closing their books on a fiscal year at the end of another quarter. From this standpoint the equal quarter-years which would result from adoption of The World Calendar should be an advantage, in that comparability by quarter-years would be more accurate than under the existing calendar. At present, accurate comparisons can only be made by adjustment for the number of working days. This is inaccurate at best, and in any case is seldom used by businessmen, who lack both the method and time for making such calculations. (Journal of Calendar Reform, March, 1938).
As a lawyer sees it, George Gordon Battle in the New York Law Journal points out that proposals to reform the present calendar must necessarily attract the attention of the lawyer in active practice, for there is perhaps no one to whom the calendar is more important. It has been suggested that the lawyer’s diary is as indispensable to him as a schedule and a watch are to the locomotive engineer. The comparison errs on the side of understatement, for the diary of the active lawyer varies so greatly from day to day and touches on so many different aspects of so many different matters that it would be more nearly comparable to a railroad schedule which changed completely every day, if not indeed more often.
Other prominent persons, well known to our professions who endorse The World Calendar, are Dean John T. Madden, of New York University; Dr. Jules Bogen, editor of the New York Journal of Commerce; James Rowland Angell, former president of Yale University; Myron C. Taylor, director of the United States Steel Corporation; church officials; business leaders; educators; statesmen, and such a long list of others that would make it impossible to print herewith.
A resolution passed by the Milwaukee Society of Accountants, at a regular meeting held at the LaSalle Hotel on November 11, 1941, after due consideration “Resolves that after a thorough discussion of the merits of the new World Calendar, it heartily endorses this plan and gives its full moral support to this change in our calendar and earnestly hopes for the complete success of the Association striving for this beneficial change.”
The Chamber of Commerce views, as pointed out by Professor M. H. Deslandres, who was a member of the 1921 Commission on Calendar Reform of the International Chamber of Commerce, indicates that an adoption of a plan similar to The World Calendar has been recommended by
56	JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
several international congresses of Chambers of Commerce.
Seasonal variations are commented upon by Wilbert G. Fritz, Instructor in Financial Research, at the University of Pittsburgh, when he says, “As a research worker, I have encountered endless difficulties from the constant shifting of days and periods in our archaic calendar. Some of the most striking difficulties are found in the monthly indexes, but even more serious ones occur in the weekly indexes.
“Department store sales, for example, rise to great heights before Christmas Day and drop to unusually low levels thereafter. Imagine the difficulties of measuring seasonal variation when, as this year, there are five full shopping days in the week before Christmas Day and none in the same week after Christmas Day, whereas last year there were four shopping days before and one after.
“I am much opposed to the present calendar, which has been devised arbitrarily and handed down to us by custom. The chief advantages of a 12-month revised calendar over a 13-month plan is its divisibility, an end greatly to be desired. It has the merit of symmetry, fixity and divisibility.”
Henry W. Bearce of the United States Bureau of Standards, writing in a publication approved by the Director of the Bureau of Standards of the United States Department of Commerce, points out that “the principal defects of our present calendar may be listed as follows:
(1)	The calendar year is of non-uniform length; ordinary years containing 365 days, and leap years 366 days.
(2)	The calendar year is not evenly divisible into weeks, ordinary years containing 52 weeks and one day, and leap year 52 weeks and 2 days.
(3)	The calendar year is not divisible, by months, into halves and quarters of uniform length.
(4)	The months are of unequal length.
(5)	The months are not evenly divisible into weeks.
(6)	The date of Easter and other ‘movable festivals’ is not fixed.
“The above principal defects are more or less closely interrelated, and out of them flow a wide variety of secondary defects or inconveniences. For example, the first defect comes from the fact that the astronomical or tropical year does not contain an integral number of days. The length of the tropical year being slightly less than 365*4 days (365.2422 days, more exactly), it is apparent that if the calendar year is to contain an integral number of days the best that can be done is to make some years contain 365 and others 366 days.”	Respectfully submitted,
Ernest G. Maihack, Chairman
W. E. Pollard
August 30, 1943.	Herbert H. Rapp
SECOND QUARTER 1944
57
STATE GOVERNMENTS NEED
THE WORLD CALENDAR
By O. K. Armstrong, Member of the Missouri House of Representatives
Mr. Armstrong, as a citizen of Missouri and an author, has long been interested in the subject of calendar reform.
EVERY man or woman in public life today must be conscious of the need for calendar reform. Our Gregorian calendar is as out of date as the ox cart.
Even a state assemblyman gets letters about it, like the following I received from the manager of a Missouri trucking company:
“Dear Sir: While the legislature is trying to improve government, why can’t you do something about the calendar? I need to plan my work, my transportation schedules and my pay rolls, far ahead on the basis of both the months and the quarters of years. There’s too much difference between February with 28 days and the months with 31 days. I was trained as an engineer. Can’t you call in some engineers and let them fix up a uniform calendar ?”
I had to write my friend, as I’ve written merchants, school superintendents, ministers and others, that there’s simply nothing a state legislature can do about it—officially. We can’t adopt a reformed calendar for Missouri while Illinois, Kansas and the rest of our neighbors hobble along with the old one. The matter will have to be tackled not only nationally, but in cooperation with other nations of this globe. But we in positions in state government can express opinions and offer advice. We can put in our word for calendar reform.
My friend in the trucking business has a good idea in calling for the help of engineers. Clearly, the job of calendar reform is to streamline our method of time-accounting, in months, quarters and years, in the same way our technicians improve a highway or a motor vehicle. The needs of our modern complex life demand it.
One matter of great importance in a state assembly is the granting of appropriations. Money for this, money for that. Every public service must be supported by funds from the taxpayers. (Hasn’t everybody found that out?) In allocating appropriations, we constantly meet the problem of unequal months and quarters.
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In Missouri, the governor of our state is empowered to release appropriated funds on a quarterly basis. With unequal quarters, we find more money to spend during one quarter, and less money another. There is definitely a need for uniformity.
Most public pay rolls are drawn up on the basis either of annual salaries or monthly wages. The inequality of the months is so well known as to need no further comment. Annual salaries have to be paid in monthly or bimonthly accounts, and here again the lack of uniform lengths of time is obvious.
Another great problem in governmental life and work is that of holidays. We do not minimize their importance, nor detract from the honor due the person or the occasion giving rise to holidays when we say that they play hob with office routine and other factors of public administration. That’s not because there are so many of them. It’s because there’s no way to stabilize them on the present calendar. It is well known that holidays occurring in midweek present a great handicap to orderly functioning in both government and business. The fact that Christmas and other holidays may fall on Monday, Tuesday, Friday or any other day of the week, year by year, presents an even greater problem. Any calendar which would tie down the holidays would be a boon.
Uniformity and regularity in our time-plans are needed in every department of state government. What’s our single biggest public expenditure? It’s not highways nor crime nor insecticide. An average over all the states shows it’s education. Our universities and colleges have to turn mental handsprings annually to plan schedules for the year ahead. The eccentric fluctuations of our Gregorian calendar cause untold expenses just for planning.
In some states, I am informed, the problem is more acute than in Missouri. Teachers must teach a stated number of days before their schools can participate in certain funds and appropriations. Lack of uniformity in dates from one term to another works a handicap under such arrangements.
I predict that if and when a reformed calendar is adopted, schedules for school purposes, from kindergartens to graduate courses, will become standardized, with openings of universities, colleges and public and private schools, the holidays, and dates for graduations, falling on the same days each year. That, as any school man will tell you, would be something!
Increasingly, governmental units are utilizing part-time employees. Generally, they are specialists who devote some time to public service, or skilled workers needed for particular jobs. Uniformity in months and quarters would be a blessing to our auditors and paymasters who account for such work.
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The collection of taxes is as important to government as the granting of appropriations. With increased burdens for state and national expenditures, taxpayers are being permitted periodic instead of annual payments of taxes, in line with the “pay as you go” policy. Unequal months and quarters prevent a just and equitable division for periodic tax collections.
In our household, we’ve become used to the “24-hour clock” because our son in the Navy uses the new daily time-reckoning in his letters to us. When he says 15:30 o’clock we know that’s 3:30 in the afternoon. All military services use the 24-hour clock, thus eliminating one historic cause for confusion as between hours of the morning and afternoon. It seems logical that if this improvement is desirable for the military, it is desirable also for civil departments of our government, and for general use as well. So greatly needed is the uniform calendar that we wouldn’t have to “get used” to it. We’d wonder how we ever did without it I
As we approach the crisis of this war and the inevitable postwar period, long-time planning is the watchword of the day. Programs of public finance, public works and reconstruction are already being laid out, by state and federal agencies, separately and in cooperation, for long years ahead. The order and stability of a calendar that could be constantly used, with uniformity in its divisions, become almost essential.
The same reasons for calendar reform on behalf of governmental organizations, in cities and counties, in our states and the nation, hold for business, labor, industries and the professions. After all, government is a business—public business, attending to public protection and welfare, establishing order and justice.
I have made some study of proposed reformed calendars. One that received considerable prominence some years ago was the “lunar” calendar, in which each month was equal, with 13 months of 28 days each. That meant a total of 364 days, and, obviously, there would be another day to account for every year and the extra day every leap year.
But 13 months is simply out of the question so far as calendar reform is concerned, for you can have no quarters of years with 13 months. Any advantage you might find from months of equal days would be neutralized by this defect.
Another proposal I have studied is the Edwards Perpetual Calendar, which has been endorsed by the legislature of Hawaii. This calendar has 12 months, with equal quarters of 91 days, except the last quarter, which has 92. However, the New Year would begin on Monday. This makes an entirely unnecessary change. It discards Sunday as the first day of the week, thus running counter to deeply engrained tradition, both religious and secular.
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It seems to me that any new calendar adopted by this country, and by other nations of the world, should have these characteristics:
Constant use. The same calendar, this year, next year, etc. Days and dates should always agree. Twelve months in the year. The first day of the week should be Sunday, The same number of business days each quarter and each year. Stabilized holidays and other days of regular annual observance.
There is one calendar—and the only one I know of—which fulfills all these requirements. It is The World Calendar, sponsored by The World Calendar Association, and endorsed by numerous public, business, civic and educational organizations. Fourteen nations have also given it approval.
The World Calendar divides the year into equal quarters of 13 weeks and 91 days. Thus it hasithe same number of business days in each quarter. The division of each quarter into three months of 31-30-30 days produces months as nearly equal as is possible. But what is of importance is the fact that every month has 26 weekdays exclusive of Sundays. The first day of the week would continue to be Sunday. This makes a calendar of 364 days.
It is true that the 365th day is added as an extra Saturday after December 30 has been reached. It should be designated as a World Holiday, so that government, business, social and educational schedules as well as payrolls would not be disrupted by unequal quarters of working time. The extra “leap year” day should also be a World Holiday, and could well be observed in midyear of every fourth year on another extra Saturday following June 30.
Holidays would be stabilized, falling on the same date and day of the week every year. And of great interest to governmental agencies, most of the holidays would fall on or next to Sunday, thus allowing a long weekend and preventing so many disruptions in midweek. New Year’s and Lincoln’s birthday would fall on Sunday. Easter Sunday would cease to wander over the spring calendar, provided the churches agree on a fixed Easter Sunday—shall we say the second Sunday in April? Labor Day would be Monday, September 4. Christmas would fall on Monday, December 25. Thanksgiving Day might well be made Saturday, November 25. Only the Fourth of July would occur on Wednesday, and this could be placed on Monday, July 2, when the Declaration was introduced in the Congress in 1776.
Since state governments have as great need for a reformed calendar as does the national government, and since our states deal more directly with local agencies and with the people, I feel that we legislators might well lend our influence to securing favorable consideration of The World Calendar in Washington.
A new, universal, constant calendar would be one more strong link in the chain being forged to bind the peoples and nations of the world together in the period following this great war.
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WHY NOT A
LOGISTIC CALENDAR?
By Elisabeth Achelis, President, The World Calendar Association
Asked by Porter Moore, Editor of “The Home Front" edition of Our Army magazine to discuss The World Calendar in its relation to our Armed Forces and pre-postwar and postwar conditions, Miss Elisabeth Achelis immediately associated the logistics of modern warfare with logistics in the civil world. The article, prepared especially for this edition, appears below.
WELL-DIRECTED plans, careful preparation, good timing and all-out cooperation are ever essential for progress and success. Every soldier, sailor, marine and aviator, officer and enlisted man alike, realizes as never before the need for order, planning, preparation and the minute exactness of time. For practical common sense and simple wisdom the Armed Forces under its commanding officers accomplished a master stroke when it adopted the 24-hour clock system for its many branches. Previous errors, confusion and misunderstanding, which too often had resulted from the old A. M. and P. M. method, disappeared as by magic. Thus did the Armed Forces, quietly and efficiently, adapt itself to this new and better system of counting time by the clock. It did not hesitate to discard a completely unsatisfactory system.
Lieutenant General Brehon B. Somervell, to whom is entrusted the coordination of the various divisions of arming, feeding, clothing, fueling, transporting and healing the army, and burying its dead, has said: “Logistics is the science of transportation and supply in war. It is the art of getting the right number of the right men to the right place with the right equipment at the right time . . . Good logistics! alone cannot win a war. Bad logistics alone can lose.” The 24-hour clock system is an example of good logistics for more accurate timing.
Captain J. F. Hellweg, Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington and guardian of our clock time, has for many years advocated a better and more adequate calendar. He realizes, as do many other leaders, that the superannuated calendar of the hoary age of Caesar, in its arrangement, no longer fits our age and era. Captain Hellweg has stated: “The United States Naval Observatory has approved,
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very strongly The World Calendar. Benefits from it are manifold, and the differences from long-established customs are negligible . . . My advice to all advocates of calendar revision is to devote their energies to the only proposal which meets all the requirements of the situation, with a minimum of upheaval and disturbance and a maximum of benefits to mankind —The World Calendar.”
Our present calendar is an outstanding example of bad logistics. It has no plan—every year and month is different from other succeeding years and months. It has no order—months vary in length in a crazy hit-or-miss manner. It has no stability—January one year may have four or five Sundays and in others four or five Mondays or Tuesdays, or any other day of the week. And this is true of all the other months. The year too begins on different days of the week. It has no coordination—days, dates, weeks and months never agree.
This erratic and planless calendar exacts a toll from every one of us, greater than we realize. Valuable time, labor, money and material are daily sabotaged. It is one of the poorest tools with which we work. Particularly as there are so many immediate problems that require help, not hindrance, from the calendar.
As the Armed Forces improved upon the confused A. M. and P. M. clock time, so can civilians improve upon the present Gregorian calendar. This is made easy with The World Calendar ready and available for adoption.
Is this not a neat, simple plan for both the military and the civilians? With this ordered, stable, civil calendar of equal quarters, coordination among the various time-units is possible. The planning of all activities and daily affairs would be facilitated in every way. Contracts for production and distribution would be figured more accurately. Budgets, accounts, and payments of salaries and wages on agreeing days and dates would be more just. Holidays coming on the same day and date, year after year, would add immeasurably to the pleasure and convenience of all. Transportation, vacations and furloughs would be more easily arranged. But above all, adequate planning for the winning of the war and for the making of the peace would be materially aided by this ordered, steady and coordinated calendar. It is an outstanding example of good logistics. The accepted 24-hour clock time has proved a natural forerunner for The World Calendar.
This year 1944 is significant because the last four months in both the present and the proposed calendars are the same in their days and dates. This is possible because Sunday, December 31, and what would be the extra Saturday, December W (World Holiday), are both non-productive,
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non-business days. The new year would then begin on Sunday, January 1, and the transition from the old to the new would be easy. The next available date when both calendars agree, without the loss or addition of days, would be Sunday, January 1, 1950. The World Calendar is actually functioning within 1944 in the last four months, and gives an excellent opportunity to everyone to observe its benefits because the quarter years are alike and equal.
An exceptional opportunity is presented to America. As Egypt of old initiated the solar seasonal year, as Julius Caesar introduced the leapyear day, as Constantine the Great inserted the seven-day week into the European calendar, as Pope Gregory XIII amended the leap-year rule for adjusting the calendar to the seasonal year, so can the United States, either acting alone or with other countries, plan and prepare to initiate The World Calendar for better days to come. With a 1945 adoption improbable, action should be taken in 1947 (a pre-presidential election year) which would give nations and civilians three years to get ready for the 1950 adoption.
Time is the most precious commodity we have; let it serve us well. Progress and success are not achieved by clinging to inadequate systems and patterns, for it is only with foresight and courage that we advance. Thus let us seize the opportunity and bring this new and improved calendar to reality, as did the Armed Forces with the 24-hour clock. (See advertisement on inside back cover.)
CHRISTMAS DATE BELIEVED ERRONEOUS
From the Observer Dispatch, Utica, A. ¥., December 26, 1943
THIS Christmas was probably the year 1947 A. D. And even may have been 1954
A. D., the Astronomy Journal, Sky & Telescope, reminds scientists who try to solve the mystery of the Star of Bethlehem.
The calendar is not likely to be corrected for this uncertainty as to the date of Jesus’ birth, and it also complicates the annual search for explanations of Christ’s natal star.
Actually we now know, the Journal declares, that Jesus was born at least 1,947 years ago this Christmas, and maybe as much as 1,954 years ago. The uncertainty in the dates is ascribed to an error in calendar calculations, credited to an abbot of Rome, Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century.
The Journal points out also that the time of year when Jesus was born is a mystery. Until about the fourth century after his birth the date was January 6. Then the pagan festival of December 25, on the return of the sun, overwhelmed the opposition of church fathers and the nativity celebration was changed.
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THIS YEAR’S CALENDAR
ONLY SIX YEARS OLD
IN ENGLISH CHRONOLOGY
By Dr. Benjamin F. Yanney, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Wooster College
From The Wooster Daily Record, Ohio, December 29, 1943
OF the 14 different patterns of yearly calendar in the Gregorian system, that one will be employed for the year 1944 which is adapted to the leap year beginning with Saturday. This pattern was last used 28 years ago, for the year 1916. It will be the sixth time to be used in America since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by England and the American colonies in 1752. It was employed, however, in that year also from September 14 to the end of the year, the third of September of that year of the Julian calendar having been advanced to the fourteenth day of September in order to be properly geared to the Gregorian calendar, which had already been in general use over Europe since 1582.
This yearly pattern of calendar has the usual 11 varieties of monthly calendar. The only two of the 12 that are the same are those of January and July. Each of these two begins with a mere shred of a week, a Saturday. The first one is a leftover from the year 1943, and the second one a leftover from the first half of the year 1944. The arrangements of the days and weeks of the four so-called quarters are all different. Nobody can tell offhand, except in rare cases, on what day of the week any given day of a month falls. For such information one must consult the calendar of the particular year in question. It would be absurd, of course, for anyone to undertake committing to memory such information covering a whole year, especially in view of the fact that 13 other patterns of yearly calendar would have to be similarly mastered.
An over-all glance at the calendar for 1944, or at any other of the yearly Gregorian patterns, will give one a clear idea of the unbalanced structure of our present calendar system, and also of its utter lack of harmonious arrangement of constituent parts. And as for the quality of perpetuity of the system, one fails to see anything perpetual about it until
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it has run its regular course over a period of 400 years. That is to say, if we were to start with the inauguration of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, then we must wait until 1982 for a new cycle to begin, having precisely the same complete order of recurrence of the 14 varieties of yearly patterns that was followed throughout the first 400 years of its existence. In this sense, and in this sense alone, may the Gregorian calendar be considered a perpetual calendar. Even so, it was an improvement over the Julian calendar, whose periodic cycles covered each a period of 700 years. But such perpetuity has only curiosity and is of no practical importance.
Is it not time for the human race to devise a calendar that is “balanced in structure, perpetual in form, harmonious in arrangement” ? The writer believes that “The World Calendar Association” has the answer to this question. And it may come as a complete surprise to many readers that the very pattern of yearly calendar to be used for 1944 contains a section which may be taken as a facsimile of the irreducible unit structure of the proposed World Calendar. The section referred to is that from October 1 to December 30 inclusive. These three monthly calendars, just as they are, without the 31st day in the last month, are to be used for each of the four quarters of the yearly calendar. The appropriate names for the respective months in each of the quarters are, of course, to be employed: January, February, March for the first quarter, and so on. The leftover day of a common year and the extra day of a leap year are to be tucked in the yearly calendar in such a way as to leave the four quarterly calendars each intact. Such arrangement will make it possible for every yearly calendar as well as every quarterly calendar to begin on a Sunday. Thus every day of the year will have a special designation, as “Year-End Day” for the leftover day of a common year; or “Leap-Year Day,” to follow June 30, for the extra day of a leap year; or for any other day of the year its automatic and unalterable weekday name together with its month-date number, as Thursday, November 23.
It seems to be the purpose of the association to start the new calendar at such time as to cause, at the outset, little or no disruption of the old order, and to make the slight adjustments as needed to bring the old calendar into complete alignment with the new. As an example, the transfer could be made on October 1, 1944, in which case there would not be needed any calendar adjustment until December 31 was reached. Then in the new calendar the last day of 1944 would be labeled Saturday, December W or Year-End Day. The year 1945 would then begin with Sunday and the Gregorian calendar for the year would be replaced by The World Calendar. A simpler example would be afforded by inaugurating the new calendar at the beginning of the year 1950. For in that case, since that year itself begins on Sunday, Gregorian style, the new and the old calendar would
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coincide, day by day, from January 1 to February 28, and again from September 1 to December 30.
Despite the war, The World Calendar Association reports that the proposed calendar is making real progress—definitely, thoroughly, convincingly—with the active and interested support of the people and organizations which are leading nations toward new and better goals.
OBITUARY NOTES
THE REV. DR. SAMUEL J. SKEVINGTON, 72, minister of the Temple Baptist Church in Albany, N. Y., for the last 16 years, died April 25 of pneumonia. He had preached to his congregation the previous Sunday, and it was his intention to resign in June. Dr. Skevington was camp pastor at Camp Logan, Houston, Texas, during World War I. He had been a member of The World Calendar Association since 1937.
DR. CHARLES H. FULTON, 70, professor of metallurgy at the Montana School of Mines, died April 9. He had retired in 1937 as director of the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, but resumed teaching two years ago in response to an appeal for help based on the war-caused shortage of professors. He had taught at Columbia, the University of Wyoming, and had been President of the South Dakota State School of Mines. Dr. Fulton early became interested in calendar reform and had been a member of The World Calendar Association since 1931.
METON SMITH HEISS, who for 19 years was managing editor of the Kiwanis International Magazine, died December 31, 1943, in Hollywood, Florida. Mr. Heiss, interested in The World Calendar and in calendar reform, resigned his position with the Kiwanis publication in October.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AFFLECK, former president of the Universal Atlas Cement
Company and a prominent figure in Chicago’s business life for many years, died February 13 of a heart attack in his home in suburban Winnetka. He was 75 years old. Mr. Affleck began his business career with the Harrison Machine Works. He was able to exert a great amount of influence in favor of The World Calendar especially among those making up the business interest in the Middle West.

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CATHOLIC SAVANTS
ESTABLISH YEAR
OF CHRIST’S DEATH
The following article which appeared as an editorial in the April 24,1943, issue of the Buffalo Courier-Express is of unusual interest, and, while it may be considered controversial, it is printed here because the detailed processes indicate the thoroughness of the study. The Editor of the Journal of Calendar Reform obviously is in no position to establish the authenticity of the study conducted by the Catholic Biblical Association. This story, however, is of such general interest that it is reproduced here as it appeared in the Buffalo paper without comment other than to point out that the diligent study and search, together with the confusion about these interesting dates, is further evidence of the fact that there is but little clear-cut definiteness as to dates in early history.
THE Catholic Biblical Association recently announced that, after 1,900 years of study and research, the exact date of the Crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ has been determined as April 7, 30 A. D.
This, the association asserts, is the ultimate decision of a corps of 29 American Biblical scholars who have given final expression to the findings of hundreds of historians, archeologists and exegetes. The evidence, the decision and the commentary has been published by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine with the title, A Commentary of the New Testament.
The investigation also resulted in the conclusion that the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem took place some time between 6 and 4 B. C. This is based on the records of Roman historians, and this chronology alters the traditional age of Jesus at the time of the Crucifixion from 33 to between 34 and 36. It is pointed out that the Popes have never made any declaration to assign exact dates for the birth or crucifixion of Jesus, but have followed tradition until such time as research might determine them.
The methods used to arrive at the date of the Crucifixion are most interesting. For instance, astronomical calculations show that there were only two years during the term of Pilate in Judea when the Passover might have fallen on the Sabbath (Saturday). These years were 30 and 33
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A. D. In 30 A. D., the date would have been April 4. Thus the crucifixion and death of Christ occurred either on April 7, 30, or on April 3, 33.
The association says that in the light of the evidence presented in the four Gospels the Scripturists unanimously selected the earlier date, April 7, 30 A. D.* Their reason was that to select the later date would be to extend the time of Christ’s public ministry to a period longer than is justified by the details given in the four Gospels.
As a result of the findings, the date of the Resurrection would be established as April 9. The association makes no mention of the proposals which have been made on numerous occasions in behalf of a fixed date for the observance of Easter, but the establishment of a definite date for the first Easter would be helpful should a fixed day ever be decided upon.
• EDITOR’S NOTE: The suggested Easter date in The World Calendar, Sunday, April 8, with its attending Good Friday on April 6, would bring this day nearest to the supposed historical date, April 7.
RABBI CONDUCTS CHRISTIAN SERVICE
DURING the Passover season, en route from one island to another in the South Pacific, we had occasion to experience a most unusual event. On Sunday, April 9, a crew that took me by plane from one island to another for scheduled Passover dinners, asked that I conduct an Easter Service for them. I was, then, a Christian for a morning, and I believe it was the first time in history a Jewish Chaplain or Rabbi conducted an Easter service aboard a plane at full speed. A Negro sang, “Go Down, Moses,” and each recited his own profession of faith as a silent meditation.—Chaplain Martin M. Weitz.
JOINS ECUADOR COMMITTEE
JUAN F. MARCOS, former Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Ecuador to Spain, and President of the “Sociedad General,” a banking organization located in Guayaquil, has accepted a place on the Comite Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, according to Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde of Santiago, Chile, Chairman of the Committee. Senor Marcos is a man of unusual influence and financial significance and is enthusiastic about the rearrangement of the present calendar according to The World Calendar Association’s plan.

SECOND QUARTER. 1944
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THIS CHANGING WORLD
DEMANDS ONE PLAN, A
CALENDAR FOR EVERYBODY
By Carleton J. Ketchum
In a former issue of the Journal, Mr. Ketchum’s article on “Russia’s calendar difficulties'” aroused unusual interest. We asked this former foreign correspondent for the London Express to write more of the calendar difficulties he encountered on his various world-wide assignments for that London syndicate.
THE calendar has long been an institution more or less taken for granted by the man in the street in all nations. Only in the world’s chancelleries and among business institutions concerned with world trade have its paradoxes, its differences as between certain nations, caused acute confusion. Calendar reform has steadily progressed through the ages and from earliest times. Logic for centuries has been the final determining factor in producing the accepted national calendar. Yet before the clear light of irrefutable logic shed its lustrous rays upon the minds of more enlightened nations, there were the darker ages where astronomers and kindred scientists groped with crude instruments in the hope of devising measurements of time which would satisfy all the peoples of this planet.
History records the year B. C. 4241 or 4236—the earliest known date— as providing the origin for the first Egyptian calendar. It was based upon the Sothic style consisting of 12 months. That was the beginning of the Solar calendar.
The Chinese cycle of 60 years began in B. C. 2637 while in B. C. 2357 or 2397 the Emperor Yao, according to tradition, reformed the Chinese calendar.
A seven-day week was observed in Asia Minor in B. C. 1800. Eclipses of the sun and of the moon were identified in China in B. C. 776. The year B. C. 753 saw the foundation of Rome, and B. C. 716 to B. C. 673, with the reign of Numa Pompilius, the creation of the Roman calendar.
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The Ionic philosopher Thales, in the seventh century B. C., told Greece of a solar year of 365 days, and in the sixth century B. C., the Babylonian astronomer Nabu-rimanu calculated the solar year as embracing 365 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes and 41 seconds. His calculations, according to present-day astronomical and scientific knowledge, were incorrect by only 26 minutes and 55 seconds. Babylonia adopted a cycle of eight years in B. C. 528-505 and in B. C. 504-383 a cycle of 27 years.
Darius the Mede attempted unsuccessfully to introduce the Egyptian or Solar calendar into Persia in the sixth century B. C., while in the fifth century B. C. Herodotus, visiting Egypt, revealed himself to be impressed by the Egyptian use of the solar year.
Julius Caesar in B. C. 47 acted upon the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes and reformed the Roman calendar by eliminating the moon and basing the year entirely on the sun. The first Julian calendar began the first of January of the 45th year before Christ.
December 25 was first observed as Christmas in the fourth century, and in the same era, the year 321 A. D., Constantine the Great decreed official introduction of the seven-day week in the calendar. The numbering of years from the birth of Christ was inaugurated by Dionysius Exiguus in 532.
Omar Khayyam, Persia’s poet and astronomer royal, produced the Ja-lalain calendar in 1074-9. The Mexicans reformed their calendar in 1091. A discussion of calendar reform in Rome followed the election of Sixtus IV as Pope in 1471. The Spaniards, under the leadership of Hernando Cortes, conqueror of Mexico, substituted the Julian for the Mexican calendar in the period 1504 to 1547.
Calendar reform from the time of the advent of Pope Gregory XIII and his revision of the Julian calendar seems to have taken the course almost exclusively of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. That revision took place in 1582 and because its author was Pope Gregory the new calendar became known as the Gregorian calendar.
It was adopted in that year in Italy, Spain, Poland, Portugal and France. Its adoption in Switzerland was gradual. It began in 1582 and was complete by 1812. Most German Roman Catholic states, Flanders and the Netherlands, adopted it in the following year, 1583. Hungary accepted it in 1587, Protestant Germany in 1700.
The Gregorian calendar was approved by Britain’s Parliament in 1751 and was adopted by Statute as the legal calendar of the United Kingdom and The British Empire in 1752. In the same year it became the official calendar of the United States which the Union was then destined to become.
The year 1753 saw its adoption in Sweden. Napoleon in 1806 restored it in France in place of the French Revolutionary calendar initiated and
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dated from September 22, 1792. Japan adopted it in 1873, Republican China in 1912, Bulgaria in 1916, Soviet Russia in 1918, Roumania and Greece in 1924, and Turkey in 1927.
I have emphasized the growth internationally in the employment of the Gregorian calendar not to extoll its virtues but rather to indicate the desire, which most if not all nations have long expressed, for the realization of a calendar common to them all.
It was about the year 1900 that nations appeared to have become conscious of the need of a calendar which would be an advance upon that known as the Gregorian. The phrase calendar reform was first heard after a number of years of general, almost world-wide, acceptance of the Gregorian calendar, at an Evangelical Conference at Eisenach whereat a group of non-Roman churches considered formal proposals for such a reform. A calendar Reform Bill was introduced in the Parliament of Great Britain in 1908; and while, until 1930, individual nations continued one by one to adopt the Gregorian as their state calendar, there was, nevertheless, taking definite shape a movement almost universal in its ramifications in favor of a fixed world calendar which would meet the requirements of all peoples everywhere. The manner in which that movement has developed, especially since the formation of The World Calendar Association in New York City in 1930, is known to everyone.
Principal calendars in use throughout the world today in addition to the Gregorian (still almost universal) and the Julian are the Chinese luni-solar calendar serving directly or indirectly 450 millions in Asia; the Mohammedan 12 moons calendar embracing all the seasons, serving about 275 millions in Asia and Africa, and the 17 different calendars which continue to serve about 320 millions in India. The era of the Hejira known as the Mohammedan era is still recognized in Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Egypt and some parts of India. The era is dated from the first day of the month preceding the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. This day was July 16, in the year A. D. 622. Hejira years are purely lunar. They consist of 12 lunar months beginning with the approximate new moon. Having no intercalation to keep them to the same season in respect of the sun these years retrogress through all the seasons every 32^ years. Yet even here one finds a calendar based upon the 12-month principle of reckoning time, each month being divided more or less in the manner of our own Western or Gregorian calendar.
India today employs 14 principal or important calendars in addition to the Gregorian, Mohammedan and Jewish. There are calendars for different regions of the country. Their enumeration may interest the reader
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as giving an example of a nation greatly in need of calendar reform internally if not in relation to the world as a whole. Here are the Indian calendars:
Name	Region of use	Name	Region of use
Assamese	Assam	Marwari	Marwar States and by
Bengali	Bengal Province		merchants throughout
Burmese	Burmah and parts of		India
	Bengal	Oriya	Orissa, part of Madras
Gujrati	Bombay Province		and greater part of Behar
Hindoo	All parts of India	Parsee	Many parts of India
Kanarese	Mysore, West India and	Punjabi	Punjab Province
	parts of Madras	(Bikremi )	
Mahrashtra	South of Bombay, Poona	Tamil	South of India and all
	and elsewhere		Ceylon
Malayi	Malabar	Telegu	North of Madras
Traveling through India as I was privileged to do in 1930 when my interviews with public personalities ranged all the way from Mohandas Gandhi to Viscount Halifax, then Britain’s Viceroy at New Delhi known as Lord Irwin, I discerned this extraordinary calendar tangle. It was apparent in the native newspapers and in other directions throughout the country. British (Indian Government) officials stressed it as a source of embarrassment and cost to the Indian Exchequer. The extent of this embarrassment and cost may be gauged when I explain that the Government has long printed four of these calendars—the Bengali, Hindoo, Malayi and Tamil—in the form of an almanac which includes the Gregorian and Mohammedan styles. This almanac has usually consisted of about 3,000 pages and is required to cover the meridian transits of the sun, moon and important stars for each day in a succession of years. The work of compilation, it was explained to me, requires at least three months and oftentimes a much longer space of time. The ultimate aim of the almanac is to determine and publicize for the edification of all concerned the seasons, festivals and holidays and coordinate all historical dates.
British newspapers have frequently called attention to India’s unparalleled calendar complexities. The Times of London on one occasion pointed out that “Every thirty years for two or three years in succession a Mohammedan period of mourning dependent on a lunar calendar overlaps and clashes with a Hindu period of rejoicing fixed by a solar calendar.” Added that newspaper editorially on that connection: “The case for making the solar calendar universal in every detail is from the point of view of convenience of the human race overwhelming.”
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India’s nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi, lies today in the shadows of political obscurity, as far as the United Nations are concerned. Yet his views past and present still reflect the opinions of countless individuals, high and low alike, among India’s teeming millions. Appropriately, therefore, I think I may quote his sentiments upon calendar reform as expressed in a signed memorandum presented by him to The World Calendar Association upon the occasion of a British Imperial Conference in London held at a time when the League of Nations in Geneva was discussing the possibilities of adoption of a world calendar. Said Gandhi:
“In India there are several calendars in current use. Several racial groups have their own calendars, in which the year begins on a different date and ends on a different date. In these calendars different holidays are observed, which results in much confusion.
“It would be a splendid thing if our 350,000,000 people could have a single national unified calendar. As most of the Indian calendars are arranged on a twelve-month basis, it would obviously be easier to meet on this common ground. I am in favor of such a calendar. I am in favor of a standardized calendar for the whole world, just as I am in favor of a uniform coinage for all countries, and a supplementary artificial language (like Esperanto, for example) for all peoples.
“I have been informed of, and I welcome, the international movement for calendar reform. The efforts made by the Americans in this direction are particularly laudable because they represent a pure philanthropy. But their progress is hampered by national jealousies and national short-sightedness.”
China’s interest in calendar reform has been vigorously expressed. China’s inhabitants, long numbering more than 500,000,000—a quarter of the globe’s population—have known from time immemorial two native calendars—their ancient lunar style and a solar calendar that followed the astronomical months precisely. The official lunar calendar was abolished with the coming of the Republic and replaced by the Gregorian. President Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalistic Government strove hard to implement the use of the Gregorian calendar.
Decrees were issued forbidding the printing and sale of the old Chinese calendar while the Government—or successive governments from 1911 to the present time—have declined legal recognition of documents and contracts dated according to the ancient system. That indicates the attitude of official China toward calendar reform today. It has been made clear in that country that any reform savoring of a 13-month calendar would encounter opposition, but that a 12-month calendar of the general construction of The World Calendar would find ultimate general acceptance.
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The population of the world is estimated at 2,000,000,000. Jews of all persuasions are said to number 15,000,000 to 16,000,000 so that in contemplating a calendar for common use by all peoples, this Jewish minority is sufficiently large to be taken into account.
The only objection which the Jewish race are believed to entertain against the development of a common world calendar is based on some apprehension expressed mostly by their religious leaders that such a calendar might weaken respect for the Sabbath.
Advocates of The World Calendar point out in this connection that the perpetual World Calendar does not seek to interfere with individual national or religious holidays. One has only to glance at a publication issued each year by the Guaranty Trust Company of New York entitled Bank and Public Holidays Throughout the World to appreciate how utterly impossible it would be to devise a common calendar which would affect the feast and other holidays of individual countries. More than two-thirds of a year are devoted to national, bank or religious holidays somewhere and this being so it will never be possible to develop a world calendar that will affect or govern individual national holidays. The last day of the year—Year-End Day—is the only day which The World Calendar supporters would set aside as a common World Holiday, but even that would not be permitted to interfere with national arrangements where the world and the strictly national holiday might conflict.
The Jewish calendar in use today is both solar and lunar. Its years are reckoned by the sun and the months by the moon. The two systems are adjusted by intercalating the month in the 3d, 6th, Sth, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 19th years of a 19-year cycle. For practical purposes such as the beginning of the Sabbath the day begins at sunset but the calendar day of 24 years always begins at 6 p.m.
The Hebrew month varies between 29 and 30 days. The number of days in a year change. The total will be the days in a month, 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 3% seconds, multiplied by 12 in an ordinary year and by 13 in a leap year. The main difference between the Jewish week or month and that of the Christian calendars is that the Jewish Sabbath falls upon Saturday instead of Sunday. That, it is again emphasized, should not interfere with Jewish acceptance of The World Calendar plan since, as I have stated, such a calendar can never hope and never would wish to regulate individual national or religious holidays.
Officials, in conversation, have complained to me of their difficulties due to calendar differences. In Yugoslavia, for example, the state calendar is Gregorian. It is used by all government employees in their official relations with the state. Yet in their private lives, as in the case of the larger proportion of the Yugoslavian population before the war, they made their
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calculations and arranged their appointments on the basis of the Julian calendar. In that country most Moslems, though Slavs by origin, adhere to the Lunar calendar given them by Mohammed the Prophet, while the Jews, mostly of the Sephardic creed, have long observed only their own Jewish calendar.
The main conflict in Europe has been due, of course, to the disparagement of dates as between the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Elsewhere even in Asia, Turkey, the Middle East, throughout the Far East and in most parts of South America, the official calendar more generally than not has been the Gregorian. Natives in many lands, as in India, cling stubbornly to their old customs and therefore to their original calendars. It is significant, however, that among more enlightened elements of the Mohammedan, Chinese and Indian peoples the use of dates for calculations has been based for many years upon the Gregorian calendar, while, in more recent years, The World Calendar appears to have emerged as the practical ultimate ideal in calendar reform in the minds of the majority of these people.
It cannot be reiterated too frequently in the interests of the success of The World Calendar movement that The World Calendar as evolved by The World Calendar Association has met with the approval of 14 governments. These governments are those of:
Afghanistan	Mexico
Brazil	Norway
Chile	Panama
China	Peru
Estonia	Spain
Greece	Turkey
Hungary	Uruguay
The movement is sponsored internationally by the Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire, the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, the World Federation of Education Associations, in the United States by the National Education Association, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as countless other public bodies on this continent. Calendar reform organizations are advocating adoption of The World Calendar in 32 lands.
The purpose of this article has not been to stress the virtues or advantages of The World Calendar but rather to emphasize, as a fairly widely traveled foreign correspondent, the inconveniences which have resulted in almost all spheres of national activity ranging from trade and commerce to religion, in those countries wherein calendar paradoxes have had to be taken into account.
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The approaching dominance of air transport as an every-day mode of travel is advanced by officialdom in most if not all those countries as a sound reason for a rearrangement of the calendar system. World radio networks, operated now by nearly all nations, will definitely require a common calendar and timing system, as they continue to develop.
These are only a few of many practical considerations arising out of the advent of our highly industrialized, aeronautical and radio age which are causing thinking men and women everywhere to offer their support to a movement, which, by virtue of its ultimate success, will, ipso facto, dispose of untold inconveniences and difficulties, endured now so widely under our present calendar system.
PROMINENT SCIENTIST DIES
DR. CHARLES B. DAVENPORT, internationally known geneticist, who retired in 1934 after 30 years as director of the Carnegie Institution’s Station for Experimental Evolution, at Cold Spring Harbor, died February 18 at the Huntington, L. I., Hospital after a brief illness in his 78th year.
In a letter to The World Calendar Association while Dr. Davenport was connected with the Carnegie Institution of Washington Eugenics Record Office, he said:
“As you know, I am heartily in favor of simplification of the calendar, and think the 12-month equal-quarter plan superior to the 13-month plan.
“In regard to supporting the movement for action at the spring meeting of the National Academy, similar to action taken by the American Association, American Philosophical Society and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I am free to say that if the matter came up at a general meeting for action by the members I should vote for a resolution approving the 12-month plan and probably, if it seemed desirable, speak for it.”
DR. HENDERSON DIES AT 70
DR. YANDELL HENDERSON, professor emeritus of physiology of Yale University, died February 18 at the Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, Cal. He was 70 years old. Dr. Henderson had been ill for a year and was visiting his son, Malcolm C. Henderson.
Dr. Henderson was born in Louisville. He studied at Chenault’s School, Louisville, and was graduated from Yale in 1895. He continued his studies of physiological chemistry at Yale for four years and later at the University of Marburg in Germany. He served as an ensign aboard the U. S. S. Yale in the Spanish-American War. He returned to Yale in 1901 as an instructor in physiology at the medical school. He was made an assistant professor in 1903 and a professor in 1911. Upon his retirement in 1938 he became professor emeritus.
In discussing The World Calendar with Miss Elisabeth Achelis, Dr. Henderson said: “Rest assured I will be glad to support calendar reform in the National Academy.”
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DEATH COMES TO
ADVOCATE OF PROGRESS
THE Honorable Dave Hennen Morris, loyal friend and staunch advocate of The World Calendar, and a member of the American Advisory Board of The World Calendar Association since 1937, died May 4 at his home at the age of 72 years.
A prominent lawyer, he had a most varied and interesting life. In early youth he was for a brief time a homeopathic physician. He graduated from Harvard University in 1896, New York Law School in 1901, and received a master’s degree in constitutional law from Columbia University in 1909. Mr. Morris was also an accomplished violinist, and in the field of sports was a yachtsman, tennis player, co-owner of a racing stable, and one of the founders of the Automobile Club of America and one of its first presidents.
In 1933, President Roosevelt appointed Mr. Morris Ambassador to Belgium and Minister to Luxembourg, positions he held until 1937. With all these various interests, he was also active in educational and benevolent associations, a director of the Legal Aid Society and chairman of the Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association’s Retirement Fund.
The broadminded and progressive spirit of Mr. Morris was shown in his ardent advocacy of a simple, common auxiliary language as an aid to humanity. It was this side of his character that also led him to advocate The World Calendar.
In the Journal of Calendar Reform, June 1938 he wrote:
“Let me touch upon a few of the outstanding advantages by which The World Calendar has appealed so forcibly to me. To begin with, it is a mechanism for international use upon which all nations may agree without its being to the special advantage of any one. Time is one of the few things we have which is fundamentally the common property of all. Under this reformed system we shall enjoy a simplicity, and stability in timing our daily affairs such as we have never known before. In this unsettled and disordered world anything that is marked by harmony and balance ought to be welcome indeed. The two intercalary days of The World Calendar plan, as international holidays, appeal to anyone who has the interest of a many-peopled world at heart. . . .
“A new civil calendar is greatly needed now, one which is more appropriate to the modern day and age under which we live. Once the present obsolete system is replaced by the new World Calendar with its inherent harmony, order and stability, who knows what beneficial influence may be
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felt upon our world from these desirable qualities? This calendar reform becomes a duty of intelligence which few of us can ignore or neglect.
“Our todays would then more surely pave the way for better tomorrows, for it is our todays upon which our tomorrows are built.”
In connection with a world language, he said in a radio address:
“Let there be a new, unselfish coordination of effort by all, so that each may contribute of his best to a common solution of this world problem. We need a language worthy to supplement the radio and to bring to it new efficiency, so that man’s thoughts may be universally apprehended even as this instrument sends the words spoken by their voices to the world ... a simply constructed secondary language, one world-language for all, providing the means for direct communication among all mankind.”
To the Honorable Dave Hennen Morris a world language and a world calendar were both essentials toward the building of a better tomorrow and a better world.
LETTER CARRIERS STUDY CALENDAR
CHARLES A. PARKS, a Director of the Pennsylvania Rural Letter Carriers Association, has been designated by M. F. Gallagher, President, to present The World Calendar time-plan at the annual meeting of the State organization to be held at the Hotel Penn Alto in Altoona, Pennsylvania, July 17 and 18.
Mr. Parks is Chairman of the Convention’s Arrangements Committee and he has asked that a representative of The World Calendar Association be present at the State Convention to assist him in presenting The World Calendar story to their Association. The National President and the National President of the Rural Letter Carriers Auxiliary both plan to attend this State meeting.

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WHAT TIME IS IT?
By Alma K. Anderson
Mrs. Alma K. Anderson, President of the Red Head Brand Company, manufacturers of hunting, fishing and camping equipment, occupies a unique position among American industrialists. Taking charge, after the death of her husband, of an organization manufacturing products used mainly by men, Mrs. Anderson in 15 years has more than doubled the business volume of the company. A graduate of Northwestern University and the Chicago College of Music, she still finds time to lend her influence to music and social work. She is a member of many leading clubs and organizations which include the Chicago Woman’s Club. Recently she assumed the added responsibility as President of the Illinois Federation of Music Clubs. These various activities have given her a broad picture of the benefits of a calendar which “stays put.”
THE answer to that every-day recurring question, “What time is it?” is everywhere. One need only glance at the watch on his wrist or the clock on the wall to find the right answer. In Iceland, or Siam, the same watch or clock would still be telling the right time.
Your first watch may not have been quite as good as the one you have today, but it had the same two hands and the same hours on its dial. In other words, last year’s watch is this year’s watch as well. In fact, you and I have looked at the same watch so long we little realize what a wonderfully universal thing it is, and all because each day has the same number of hours, minutes and seconds, no matter on what part of this earth you happen to be.
And this universal convenience of telling time by the watch was further improved when it became standardized throughout the world in 1884, whereby clock time became more closely synchronized with the sun’s position in the varying parts of the globe. Today we know that for every 15 degrees of longitude to the east it is one hour later, and to the west one hour earlier. This seems so simple, yet it took years of scientific and patient research and calculation to accomplish.
One can imagine what it would be like to have to change to a new watch every year or every month. To have street-car, train and bus schedules revised monthly, to say nothing of your working hours. How long would we put up with it?
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Yet you and I actually tolerate a calendar which changes every month and every year; a calendar so irregular that only two consecutive months in each year have the same number of days—July and August. There are only two successive months, February and March, which start on the same day of the week, but they end on different days. In every fourth year, which is a leap year, these months do not have even that in common. So we must constantly consult a calendar to determine how today’s date (a Friday) differs from the same date (a Thursday) last year. It should really not be different at all, and it need not be, if we could just act upon plain common sense.
Business and professional men, scientists and educators, engineers and legislators, men notable in their field, acknowledge that there is too much confusion in the calendar we use today. Planning of schedules is difficult because supposedly corresponding dates do not correspond with weekdays from one year or one month to the next. They never can as long as our roving calendar remains as it is. For example, Christmas fell on Saturday in 1943, and this year it will be Monday. Any merchant’s Christmas plans for 1944 must be entirely different from those of 1943. His plans for advertising and sales are paramount as “Christmas comes but once a year,” yet he must almost entirely disregard his past records (established at no small cost), and resort to much guesswork. And what is not sufficiently understood is the fact that it is the ultimate consumer who pays for all this through what is called “overhead expense”; a portion of which must be added to the original cost of every article the merchant stocks in determining the setting price. So, this confused, irregular calendar affects everyone directly, in the pocketbook.
There is a, new calendar as “stable as your watch,” the revised 12-month calendar of equal quarters known as The World Calendar. Every year begins on Sunday and so does every quarter of the year. The first month of each of these quarters has 31 days and the other two 30 days each. And each month has exactly 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. So, the year is divided into four quarters of equal length—91 days or 13 weeks or 3 months. This completes the 364-day year, and with the 365th day placed on an extra Saturday, following Saturday, December 30, as a World Holiday every year, the calendar becomes fixed and regular; a similar method is employed for leap years, when the Leap-Year Day falls in the middle of the year, after June 30.
Once put into use, The World Calendar will be as permanent, as universal, as your watch. Were your birthday to occur on Wednesday one year, it would fall on Wednesday continuously, and the day and date would be jointly registered.
Our particular manufacturing business is dependent for the most part
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upon two fine outdoor sports—hunting and fishing. The hunting seasons are short, so every day must be made to count. The law appoints the time when the open season begins and ends. The State regulates this law for upland or local species, while Federal authorities take control over migratory species.
In the Chicago area, for example, there are exactly ten days—November 10th to 19th—on which hunters are permitted to take pheasants.* Generally the opening date is the most favorable, so every hunter wants to be out bright and early on that particular day. Since open seasons are measured by the date of the month, the opening can fall on any day of the week. Quite obviously when this day happens to fall on Sunday the need to go to the office or shop is not a factor. This makes it ideal for business, for the Saturday afternoon and evening preceding bring brisk purchasing of equipment at the sport stores. This many times results in complete “sellouts,” that naturally reflect themselves in our sales volume, for we have to replenish these depleted stocks so that we “sell out,” too.
In contrast, let us consider a season which opens on Wednesday. A certain percentage of the sportsmen cannot neglect their work. Another group that could be spared do not wish to sacrifice their pay. Considering these, and also unfavorable weather, the ranks of sportsmen who enjoy this pleasure are reduced still further. Saturday being the last good day for him, the retailer fervently hopes that those who anticipated hunting on Sunday will not forgo hunting, as many will if reports indicate there is scarcity of game, or if unfavorable weather is forecast. All this cuts deeply into sales volume. The loss to the retailer can never be quite recovered for, until another season some 12 months later, this stock and money invested in inventory cannot be turned over but must remain idle.
The tricky calendar shows that next year the season opens on the same date but, of course, a different weekday—a Thursday. This is no more favorable than was Wednesday. The worst years are those when the season opens from Tuesday to Friday and these run consecutively for three years, even granting that there will be one leap year out of the four omitting one of these days.
With The World Calendar in operation, with every year the same, fish and game seasons could be arranged to open ideally on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday every year with immeasurable benefit to the sportsman as well as to the nation-wide business of equipping him for recreation and sport. To have days and dates agree, year after year, for the opening and closing of the hunting and fishing seasons is obviously of great advantage. Small wonder, then, that we are strong for The World Calendar.
Hunting and fishing are the only sports wherein the law prescribes the seasons, but the customs of each of the various groups of other sports
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usually control the opening and closing dates. Under The World Calendar seasons would become uniformly standardized as to their days as well as their dates.
Many summer sports, including swimming and yachting, open simultaneously with resorts on Memorial Day. And special sporting events are always featured for this occasion. Obviously a three-day holiday would stimulate interest and pleasure, and reflect itself in increased business each year.
Memorial Day, however, comes on a Thursday, May 30, in this new calendar. It should be a comparatively easy matter with this steady timeplan in use to observe holidays on Mondays, whereby Memorial Day would always come on May 27. This date has another deep significance for, were the churches to decide to fix Easter on the second Sunday in April (the 8th in The World Calendar), Whitmonday—a great European, English and South American holiday—would then fall simultaneously on Monday, May 27. Certainly there is something deeply satisfactory in associating our Memorial Day with Whitmonday that follows Whitsunday (Pentecost).
You can easily imagine the beneficial effect this perpetual calendar has on all sports events—big days in the life of many schools and communities. These traditional affairs could be arranged to recur on the same day and date, the one most favorable for the occasion, every year. In such sports as baseball, football, basketball or hockey, involved schedules are called for each year and arranged at great expense and trouble under our present time system. With The World Calendar in operation such schedules, once set, could be used year after year with no more change than the names of contestants. In this connection it is highly significant to note that the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, which has supervision of all types of amateur athletic contests and American participation in the Olympic Games, unanimously approved this new perpetual calendar of 12 months and equal quarters.
Let us return for a moment to the short hunting season to point out that similar conditions exist for almost all other kinds of merchandise pertinent to many other important occasions, such as Christmas, Independence and Memorial Days. Although these are of short duration, they are the subject of months of anticipation by the public and of preparation and promotion by those who make and distribute merchandise for these occasions. They are observed on the same date of the month but not on the same day of the week. Would it not be a great advantage to everyone were these arranged always to come on Monday so that, tied in with Saturday and Sunday, they would afford us a three-day long recess, a welcome respite in our intensive and competitive lives?
Then there is another group of nationally observed holidays, including
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Labor Day and Thanksgiving Day. In reverse fashion these days come on a certain day of the week regardless of the date of the month. Labor seems to have shown rare good judgment, for it selected the first Monday in September. Definite as to the day but indefinite as to date, thus confining it to the first seven dates of the month. We commend the foresight of the responsible labor leaders who coupled it with Sunday to make certain of at least one three-day recess every year. We might say they were World Calendar conscious.
By proclamation of our first President, Thanksgiving happened to have received its official start on a Thursday, the last one in November, which, it is recorded, was the 26th day. Subsequent celebrations have followed the pattern of the last Thursday, which is usually the fourth in the month, except for certain years when there is a fifth Thursday in November. This irregularity caused great inconvenience to manufacturers, retailers, schools and universities.
Congress, realizing the difficulty that a roving Thanksgiving caused the people, passed an Act which was duly signed by the President December 26,1941, whereby Thanksgiving has been set on the fourth Thursday every November. Even this stabilization, the nearest we can come to in our still wandering calendar, is of real advantage. Its benefits would be enhanced still more were it to come always on its regular date as well as day, possible only with a perpetual time-system like that of The World Calendar.
In the same manner, to have Christmas always come on Monday, December 25, and were the churches to agree on a fixed Easter, the second Sunday in April, religious life as well as civil life would receive untold advantages. The public weal resulting from fixed holidays would be increased and stimulated as toil is punctuated by holidays. We have the will and the power to replace the present idiosyncrasies with an assurance of certainty whereby the calendar difficulties that today confront business, school and social activities would be eliminated. Thus let us take the first step toward order, stability and unity now. We regard the change in the calendar a subject worthy of inclusion in every code for international peace and postwar planning under consideration.
This is the year in which the last four months of our present calendar are identical with those of the proposed World Calendar, an opportune period for us to begin the operation of this new and better calendar and continue right on with it in 1945 and forever.
Such action would be highly desirable, but because of the war nations and peoples do not seem to see it that way. Thus in all probability the unusual occasion of the coincidental fourth quarter of 1944 in both calendars will be applied only for studies and research—comparing the same period of 1943 in the Gregorian with that of the proposed World Calendar
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in 1944. And in this manufacturers and retailers have an important role. The resultant facts and figures would be a practical demonstration of the many advantages The World Calendar would exert in our personal, business, national and world affairs. By utilizing the next few years to study and toward obtaining endorsements from prominent organizations and influential leaders, national and international action should be obtained in 1947 (a pre-presidential election year). The two or three years then following would enable everyone to get his house in order for the actual operation of The World Calendar on Sunday, January 1, 1950—when again the two calendars meet.
What time is it? It is time for The World Calendar to get its hearing. A calendar, that is as steady, as ordered and as reliable in measuring the days of the year uniformly as is the clock in measuring the hours of the day, demands attention. Thus The World Calendar becomes the fitting companion piece to the clock, and the two time-systems are worthy instruments to guide our days and years.
————————
UNIFORMITY WINS OVER VARIETY
By Professor E. R. Gross
College of Agriculture, Rutgers University
THE regular arrival of the Journal of Calendar Reform is an event inasmuch as I enjoy very much reading some of the articles. I also consider it an honor to be enlisted in the good cause of changing the calendar to something regular, orderly and evenly proportioned. Especially does it seem to me to be of great value to have the days of each month find their place in the week and stay there, so that February 2, for instance, would always be Thursday.
I have on my desk a small booklet entitled A 200 Year Calendar. Why should such a thing need to exist? The answer is obvious because of the irregularities and vagaries of the present calendar causing the days of the week and the days of the month to slide by each other in kaleidoscopic fashion. In order to have a complete reference calendar for every year it is necessary to have 14 calendars, one beginning on each day of the week from Sunday to Saturday, seven calendars, and another series of seven for leap years. One of these will fit any year since the last calendar change. But the small volume on my desk is necessary if I wish to correlate the date with the day of the week. For instance, in a few years someone, in thinking of the momentous struggle now going on, will say, “Remember Pearl Harbor” and in an instant he will say, “That was December 7, 1941,” but the fact that it happened on Sunday morning, while significant, can only be determined from memory, from recorded history or from a calendar selected from the 14 varieties we now employ. “Variety is the spice of life,” so they say, but in the use of the calendar I think uniformity has its advantages.
Along with many others I sincerely hope that a change in the calendar to a more balanced form may be made to become effective in 1950.
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PREDATE MAKES COMING
EVENTS CAST THEIR
SHADOWS BEFORE THEM
By Henry Platt, Editor, United Press Predate
Mr. Platt is not only a newspaper man but a patient researcher as well. With a follow-up file system, a “tickler” plan, definitely of his own creation, he sits in the United Press Predate office and tips off newspaper men all over North America about events weeks and months before they are scheduled to take place. Newspapers, radio, news services, advertising agencies and sales organizations are among those whose plans for the future can be more definitely scheduled because Mr. Platt not only reminds them of what happened last year but, what is more important, when that same event —and many others—will take place this year.
TAKE any newspaper, daily or weekly, or any news or picture magazine, and you will find news and features of two sorts: One is the kind of news that “just happens,” known to the journalistic profession as spot news; the other is scheduled news. Press and radio have devised their own methods of preparedness for both'kinds of news. Spot news will “break” any time. But preparation of scheduled news coverage is a matter of calendar work, and much depends on which calendar you work with.
Newsmen have to keep track of many kinds of scheduled events. They do so by means of what they call their “Futures Book”—which in many cases is just a desk calendar, and in others the syndicated futures book published by United Press under the name of Predate. This was established six years ago to keep newsmen posted on the more important scheduled events of news interest.
Such events form a considerable part of the news. A survey of one week’s issues of The New York Times some time before Pearl Harbor showed that news stories on events scheduled ahead filled enough columns to make up the equivalent of a complete weekday issue. Many of these events were “annuals,” occurring more or less at the same time each year.
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There are thousands of annual events in the United States each year, ranging all the way from baby parades to important national observances. One—though by no means the only—reason for the existence of United Press Predate is the necessity to “precover” these events for the benefit of editors and other newsmen.
News coverage being a competitive business, a head start is often essential, sometimes decisive, for press associations, newspapers, news and picture magazines, radio networks and stations, news, feature and photo syndicates, advertising agencies, marketing services, public relations counselors and publicists. Knowing ahead of time where and when an event of interest to their readers or other customers will take place, they are able, for example, to check their day-by-day news coverage; assign feature stories to their writers; prepare commercials for sponsored radio programs which “tie in” with an event of the day; catch oddities on the news front; order or offer action shots of known events and plan for their delivery to meet a magazine deadline; make the so-called predated publications timely; allocate features so they will fall on timely dates; tie promotion campaigns into areas where specific groups congregate, and plan sales, advertising and publicity tie-ups.
So much for the importance of scheduled news to those handling it. More often than not, scheduled news has good “feature angles,” pictorial and sometimes editorial possibilities. Incidentally, newsmen are not the only ones who have to take time by the forelock in order to gain and hold the attention of the public.
Why is the “precoverage” of all this scheduled news such a complicated task ? The answer is simple: Most of them are bouncing around the calendar with the annual cycle of shifting days, weeks and months, forced by its vagaries into a merry-go-round of confusion. As far as the scheduling, coverage and exploitation of annual events is concerned, the present calendar causes no end of waste in their promotion and in fact deprives them of much of their punch.
Six years of editing United Press Predate have left no doubt in my mind that a perpetual calendar would not only relieve newsmen of many headaches but would open up entirely new possibilities of promotion in the fields of travel, commercial, ideological and charitable campaigns, conventions, sports, etc.
For most of the annual events I have in mind, calculation of next year’s date—if there is a “formula” for the date and if this formula is known— requires the type of mind our current income tax forms demand. On the other hand, much of the advance information now painfully compiled in Predate from week to week and from month to month could be brought together in one annual handbook if our calendar were what it is supposed
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to be—a clearly marked path into the future instead of an obstacle race, an open book to anybody instead of a crystal ball.
A few examples of one week’s typical annual events listed—in addition to the frequently more important one-time events—in Predate last January may serve to illustrate the point. The week of January 9—meaning Sunday, January 9, 1944—starts off with the 85th birthday of the grand old lady of the fight for women’s rights, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt—a red-letter day for the National League of Women Voters which she founded. Like everybody else’s birthday, hers has been roving through all the days of the week for 85 years, confronting those anxious to give the day national importance with a different problem from year to year. Monday, January 10, was to mark the opening of the Second Session of the 78th Congress, convening after a three weeks’ holiday for the lawmakers. Under the Constitution, Article XX, “Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the third day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day” . . . which they have done frequently in the past and will no doubt do again and again until The World Calendar will permit a final solution.
Another scheduled news event for January 10 was the official release, at a specified time of the day, of the Agriculture Department’s periodic general crop report. Every year around Christmas, the Department has to publish a new schedule of its regular crop and livestock reports, designed chiefly to take care of the slight variations in dates made necessary by the changing calendar. Needless to say, the mimeographed eight-page schedule, sent to editors “for filing and reference” use, is rarely filed and hardly ever available when the reference is needed.
Also on January 10 came the openings of the important annual conventions of the National Retail Dry Goods Association and the Society of Automotive Engineers, one in New York, the other in Detroit, both productive of considerable news. Obviously, both associations have good reasons to make their meetings start on a Monday, one of them presumably being the possibility for their members to travel on Sunday. Under The World Calendar, Monday, January 9, could become their standard meeting date, facilitating many phases of preparation for the association itself and its members. The same holds true for such trade events as the semi-annual Furniture Market of the New York Furniture Exchange which opened the same day for a six-day run of weekdays.
Leaving the big cities, we find, for example, that also on January 10, the big Roy J. Turner ranch in Oklahoma—one of the state’s show places— holds its annual Hereford auction, known to the experts as a bovine society event for which the purebred beauties are bathed with castile soap and even the hair on their white faces is encouraged to wave. This one is not
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just a cattle auction but a modern barn show drawing some thousand “first nighters,” including big names in the Midwestern financial world and even a couple of governors. But if you want to know beforehand when the auction comes off this year, you will have to have at least a good “string correspondent” on the spot because the calendar ... you know what I mean.
Next day, January 11, being the second Tuesday in January, the legislatures of New Jersey and South Carolina were to convene. All states in the Union have such formulas, or more complicated ones like the Wednesday after the second Monday. There is nothing wrong with them except that their meaning, in terms of actual dates, changes from year to year, and that the key to the problem, in the form of next year’s calendar, is never around when you need it, and the formula itself available only to research experts who know where to ask for it. (The Council of State Governments, if you ask me.) Similar confusion appears two days later, January 13, which was an important date for newsmen to watch because it was Mr. Willkie’s first opportunity to file his formal entry as candidate in a Presidential primary this year. To figure out that January 13 was his first and February 12 his last chance to file for the New Hampshire contest, one had to refer to the latest edition of an erudite booklet “printed for the use of the Office of the Secretary of the Senate” and making it entirely clear that in New Hampshire the candidate may file 60 to 30 days before the primary, and that the date of the primary election itself was the second Tuesday in March.
Even frivolity now has to work with such formulas. January 13, 1944, being the second Thursday in January this year, the Union Society for the Detection of Horse Thieves and the Recovery of Stolen Property scheduled its annual chase and mock hanging of a prominent “horse thief” for that day. The affair, which has a tradition of 132 years, and in fact was a serious undertaking at a time when horse stealing ranked next to murder in seriousness of crime, was finally called off this year but has in the past been an excellent “feature possibility” for writers and photographers— unless they missed it because of the lack of a fixed date or failure to consult Predate.
On the welfare front, the next day marked the official start of the annual fund-raising appeal of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis which annually reaches its climax on the President’s birthday, January 30—another date which, floating around the calendar, causes considerable difficulties in scheduling and promoting the annual birthday balls in different localities. The same is true for such promotions as the “Junior Chamber of Commerce Week” and the annual “Large-Size Promotion” in chain drugstores, both beginning January 14 this year but not in 1945.
This one week’s examples, selected at random, suffice to throw light
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on the current scene of scheduled news. The picture is one of confusion and waste. One special promotion week has ten days, another five. Conventions are forever shifting their dates within a usually narrow range to make their schedule fit the vacation or other plans of the members which in turn are fluctuating eternally with the calendar. The important problem of how to avoid scheduling of conflicting dates has to be done all over from year to year. Annual sports events, for which the schedule is all-important, hop on and off the bandwagon of the latest calendar human ingenuity was able to devise and agree upon. The famous Laredo, New Mexico, celebration of Washington’s birthday—a three-day week-end affair which under The World Calendar could always begin on Sunday, February 19—is typical of hundreds of similar events now engaged in a hopeless pursuit of the “nearest Sunday.”
What would this picture look like if we had The World Calendar? In the first place, the schedule maker’s job could be done once and for all. Undreamed-of possibilities would open up for the promoter of annual events. Almanacs could finally shake off the dust of a largely retrospective attitude; they might include any number of annual events. Desk and wall calendars could be similarly brought to life. Promotional calendars for various fields could for the first time be safely prepared a year ahead of time, and their users would no longer be surprised by annual events popping up at the last moment, too late for adequate preparation. Predate itself could at last eliminate the deadweight of such information, limiting its current issues to spot news and new angles on standard events, for the rest referring to a basic handbook covering the whole year.
Symmetry, one might object, leads to uniformity which causes boredom. The answer is that annual events are not based on the surprise factor. The fact of their occurrence does not now become more interesting because identification involves a “guess when” game. An annual convention as such is news only in the relatively few cases where it has established a reputation for newsworthiness, such as the annual meetings of the National Association of Manufacturers or the American Medical Association. Generally, the spot news developed through the proverbial “headline speaker” or the subjects covered and new developments disclosed are the core of the resulting publicity. The annual football bowl classics do not lose in interest because everybody knows where and when they are played. In other words, standard events that fail to develop spontaneous news will drop by the wayside, as far as their actual coverage by press, radio and newsreel is concerned, regardless of how difficult or easy it may be to make their happening known.
Streamlined presentation of the basic date material would help not only those anxious to promote their events. Largely as a result of the
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unpredictability of our calendar, there is now going on a hide-and-seek game between editors and promoters, the former seeking newspegs and the latter outlets. The World Calendar would arrange the standard newspegs for the first time so that they cease to be a field of booby traps and become solid hitching posts. Predate, incidentally, has often served as a mediator between these two groups, causing hundreds of feature articles, editorials, and radio program features on which, without this bridge across the gap of the future, the twain would never have met.
In this respect, editorial and advertising deadlines are extremely important. And the problem is complicated by the fact that too many publicists still think of their work in terms of dailies only, missing important chances with weekly and monthly magazines whose deadlines range as far as four months ahead of time, and in turn depriving these magazines of sometimes valuable newspegs. Finally, at the “spending end,” advertisers and their agencies, as well as those selling space or time, would benefit tremendously from definite advance knowledge of the annual events in certain fields.
Today, private, individual “presearch” has to take the place of an orderly calendar. Such presearch is complicated and expensive—needlessly so as far as annual events are concerned. For the newsman, it is a permanent headache which United Press Predate can relieve but not cure since inclusion of the innumerable annual events of purely local significance would defeat the purpose of this national advance news service.
The basic remedy is The World Calendar.
DR. HERBERT L. WILLETT DIES AT 79
DR. HERBERT L. WILLETT, one of the nation’s outstanding figures in the fields of religion and education, died at Winter Park, Florida, March 28, 1944. He was 79 years of age.
Dr. Willett was a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago for many years, and from 1916 to 1920 was president of the Chicago Church Federation. From 1920 to 1925 Dr. Willett was the Chicago representative of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America and later served as chairman of its Midwest committee.
His scholarship was recognized beyond the bounds of Protestantism. Jewish scholars sought his counsel as a noted Talmudist. At a dinner given in his honor a decade ago at the Covenant Club, he was affectionately introduced as “an honorary rabbi, whose knowledge of our people, their language and traditions matches our ablest teachers.” Like the late Dr. William Adams Brown, he was an ardent advocate of a fixed Easter on the second Sunday in April.
Until only a few months prior to his death, Dr. Willett had been the pastor of the Union Church in Kenilworth, Illinois. Both in his capacity as a minister and as an educator, and as an associate editor of The Christian Century he contributed greatly to the work of The World Calendar Association.
He was the author of innumerable books—among them Life and Teachings of Jesus, Basic Truths of the Christian Faith, Prophets of Israel, The Call of the Christ, The Bible Through the Centuries and The Jew Through the Centuries.
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WORLD CALENDAR
ADVOCATES URGE
ADOPTION
By Vincent Johnson
From Pittsburgh, Pa., Post-Gazette, September 25, 1943
“Thirty days hath September” . . ,
Still it does, but this remember:
Eight months have them, in perfect order,
But thirty-one days start every quarter,
December gets an extra Saturday—
While “JF” ends the year that way.
Leap Years have an added boon,
An extra “W” that comes in June.
THE old verse relating the lengths of the months—familiar alike to vacation-minded schoolboys and to inventory-minded business men— will have to be revised into couplets like the above if The World Calendar Association gets it way.
The Association favors adoption of The World Calendar as an improvement over the Gregorian, which most of the world has been using ever since 1582 and which reformers have been abusing ever since the new calendar was devised.
Retaining all the progressive features of the Gregorian calendar, the new system at the same time would eliminate existing absurdities, inconveniences and unbalance, its advocates maintain.
Lengths of the familiar 12 months are rearranged in The World Calendar so as to equalize the quarters of the year into 91-day periods. Instead of 365 days there are 364 and a Year-End Day designated as December W (December 31).
Since 91 days cannot be divided among three months equally, the first month of each quarter is given 31 days. This gives January, April, July and October 31 days each and the rest 30.
Every year and every quarter begins on the same day, Sunday, the
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first day of the week. Consequently the same day of the month comes on the same day of the week every year. This will be a source of infinite relief to the traditional witness in the crime melodrama who is asked by the prosecutor where he was 11 years ago on the night of January 19.
The last day of the year—December W—is designated as a World Holiday by all countries adopting the new calendar. The theory is that on that day the calendar takes a holiday, so the people who reckon by it might just as well take one, too.
Leap year is provided for by adding an extra day after June 30, to be known as June W.
Christmas, universally recognized as a holiday December 25, always comes on Monday in The World Calendar.
Religious and secular holidays are to be fixed by their respective groups. There would be a special meeting of all churches to agree upon a fixed Easter, the date now suggested being Sunday, April 8.
Like Federal Union and other movements, The World Calendar depends on international cooperation to achieve its purpose. Fourteen governments already have officially approved the calendar. They include: Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, China, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Norway, Panama, Peru, Spain, Turkey and Uruguay.
Several global organizations, like the Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire and the Universal Christian Council, are sponsoring it internationally. In the United States it has won the approval of the National Education Association and Chambers of Commerce, including that of Pittsburgh which earlier this month sent a report on its advocacy to the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Two large industries, motion pictures and radio, already have adopted a quarter-year of exactly 13 weeks in a 12-month calendar as a basis for contracts, reports and calculations. If other firms were to do this, beginning their quarterly divisions on the first Sunday of January, April, July and October and regarding the 365th day separately, the transition to a new calendar would be accomplished without friction, World Calendarites claim.
The World Calendar is expected to lend harmony, order, stability and balance to the computation of production, pay rolls, deliveries, purchases and to relieve that annual headache, the inventory.
Labor would benefit by the elimination of pay-roll inconveniences and irregularities occasioned by the present calendar.
The farmer—whether his crop is milk, livestock or grain—will find his work easier and his profits greater when and if The World Calendar is adopted, according to Professor E. R. Gross, of the department of agri-
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cultural engineering at Rutgers University. Professor Gross has this to say:
“Whether it is the planting of a crop, its cultivation or its harvesting; whether it is the purchase, the feeding or the sale of livestock; and even though the day’s routine may be as methodical and constant as that of the average dairy farmer, the days, dates and periods of the year must be readily comparable with the periods of previous years.
“With one month having five Sundays and four Saturdays last year and with the situation reversed this year, and with days and dates constantly changing, comparison is difficult if not impossible. Planning takes extra time and time on the farm today is more than money.”
The rule of thumb in retail merchandising is the provocative phrase, “Beat last year’s figures.” To a large extent, the success or failure of every season, every regularly scheduled sale and every single day is measured by a comparison with the corresponding figures of the previous year.
Trend in “figures” is just as important to the retailer as the trend in the fashions that clothe them.
The World Calendar, with every year, quarter, month, week and holiday the same, enables the retailer to set up a standard for planning the week’s merchandising.
Educators favor some form of world calendar which will balance and stabilize school schedules.
Final appeal of The World Calendar is to the housewife, who is scrimping these days not only to save money but ration points as well. Well-ordered calendars, advocates of the system believe, make for well-ordered meals.
Children may have some difficulty changing over from their old nursery rhyme—
“Thirty days hath September, April, June and November ...”
That verse neatly covers the idiosyncracies of the old calendar. But there’s always the chance that some day it will be replaced—by a verse explaining the advantages of the new.

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TOMORROW’S
CALENDAR?
By Curt B. Beck, Editor-in-Chief, The Tech Engineering News, Professional Journal of the Undergraduates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 1943 (Abridged)
THIS is the day and time that everyone is thinking about far-reaching improvements of our living conditions. Postwar planning worked out to the most minute detail, in fact, a complete social and economic revolution is staring us in the face—the proposal and adoption of highly idealistic governmental policies confronts us on all sides and we are assured again and again that, comes the peace, we will never again see the world we were used to back in the twenties and thirties. Along with all of the postwar panaceas comes a suggestion which has struck the editors of Tech Engineering News as being worthy of much more credit than it has yet received. This is The World Calendar reform plan, also known as the 12-month equal-quarter plan, which, if adopted, we think will contribute as much to human comfort and orderly living as any other single postwar proposal. But this is not an editorial, so let us investigate the facts of the matter, for this sensational idea has as its basis good common sense backed by a long-needed reform in our method of counting the days.
It was primitive man who made the first contribution towards regimenting our daily actions when he divided the day into 24 hours. The Babylonians divided the hour into 60 minutes and the minutes into 60 seconds. The 12 moon cycles of 29^2 days each soon gave rise to the concept of integrating the four seasons into a year, and Julius Caesar was the first one to do anything concrete in this respect. He found the mean solar year to be 364*4 days and thus originated the first of the modern calendars, the Julian calendar. Leap year was of course necessary every fourth year to keep the balance. The Julian year was inaccurate itself and missed being a true year by 11 minutes and 14 seconds, or one day in 128 years, an error which amounted to 10 days by the time of Pope Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century. After five years’ investigation of the problem, Pope Gregory established the modern or Gregorian calendar, skipping 10 days and eliminating leap year in all centenary years except those divisible by 400 to correct the mistake. Modern astronomy has found that the solar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46.15 seconds, and it has been proposed
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that the year 4000 and all its multiples not be leap year to make the final correction.
An interesting fact about the English adoption of the Gregorian calendar (some years after the Catholic countries had adopted it by papal edict) was the fact that the 11 days between September 2 and September 14, 1752, were skipped. Even then labor unions were active, and the guild leaders were greatly set back when their demand for pay for the missing 11 days was refused. Among other changes brought about by this step-up of time, Washington’s birthday was moved from February 11 (the actual date) to February 22 (the date by the Gregorian calendar).
The faults of the Gregorian calendar are obvious and numerous. The main|objection to it is its complete lack of organization and its incongruity. One can never tell the number of days in a month, the date a certain day will fall on, or the day a holiday will fall on without a complicated recital of Elizabethan rhymes, counting on the fingers, or consultation of a calendar. Every year is different from every other year, and holidays hop from day to day in different years like a grasshopper. In this day of precise measurements, planned time, and the eternal struggle for maximum efficiency, this old calendar appears to have no place.
Of the two feasible plans which have yet been offered to reform the calendar, The World Calendar is by far the most satisfactory. (George Eastman’s 13-month 52-week year idea has recently been dropped as impractical.) The World Calendar is simplicity itself. Contrary to the Eastman calendar, The World Calendar has only 12 months with the same names as they had before. The year is divided into four quarters, each containing three months of 31, 30, and 30 days respectively. Each of these quarters is of equal length, 91 days, and begins on a Sunday and ends on Saturday. An extra Saturday is thrown in after December 30 to make 365 days. Another extra Saturday is included in leap year, occurring after June 30. Both days are holidays. Every year is the same as every other year in all respects, since every date always occurs on the same day of the month any year.
The high point of The World Calendar is, of course, that it offers a solution to nearly all of the bad points of the Gregorian. Its main virtue is its simplicity, but it also offers ease of adoption combined with only a modicum of changes of the position of the days in our old system.
The group profiting the most by this arrangement will be the business men. These men suffer the most of any occupation from the vagaries of our method of indicating our position in the solar orbit. With every day of every month the same over a period of years, it would greatly simplify planning for future sales, something which merchants have to leave to judgment and chance at present. No longer would the business man have
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to compare a five-Saturday September (as in 1944) with a four-Saturday September (as in 1943) and be required to judge sales by such a comparison. Moreover, with holidays stabilized as proposed in the plan, unevenness of demand will be largely done away with, as in the case of Easter. Easter, which can vary anywhere from March 22 to April 25 (thanks to a decree of the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.) could be fixed as April 8, historians’ most recent approximation to the exact anniversary of the Resurrection. Thus the post-Easter postponement of purchasing would always come after the eighth of April and not anywhere between the twenty-second of March and the twenty-fifth of April. For the necessary stocks of merchandise, for example perishable foods, could be more easily estimated if the merchant could compare any date with a date corresponding exactly in previous years.
The small business man is by far not the only one who would benefit by calendar reform. With all days the same, holidays can be put either on a Monday or a Friday, thus incorporating them into the week-end, and avoiding costly midweek shutdowns. Another important improvement is the four quarters into which the year would be divided, which will greatly simplify the methods of accounting.
The government and the law profession will also benefit by the new plan. The data upon which all the wartime (and after war, peacetime) agencies base their policies would be easily comparable to former years’ figures, thus rendering the formulation of future decisions much simpler. The obvious benefit to those concerned with laws, contracts, legal dates, etc., scarcely need be mentioned. The division of the year into unequal quarters has long been a thorn in the side of all those engaged in any legislative or legal activities. Summing up, the legal profession is one of which the very nature depends upon accuracy, conciseness, and an absolute maximum of coordination and efficiency, all of which the well-ordered World Calendar would provide.
In the world of finance the same benefits apply as do to law. The equalquarter modification is especially attractive, since it will equalize the period of loans, usually computed upon a quarterly basis. As in the case of statisticians, the use of graphs would be greatly simplified and the graphs themselves would be much more significant, since every month is comparable with the corresponding month of any other year.
One of the most delicate issues of calendar reform concerns religion. A few changes in the exact relation of religious dates to dates in the Gregorian system would have to be tolerated, but these should be inconsequential. The World Calendar changes only six days or dates in the present calendar year of 365 days. They fall between February 28 and September 1. The six months from September 1 to February 28 continue as today. The thirty-
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first of December, regarded as the double or extra Saturday, becomes the permanent World Holiday (Year-End Day). Notwithstanding, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church, and independent rabbis and priests of the Jewish and Catholic Churches have given their approval.
Of most interest to readers of T.E.N., the 12-month equal-quarter plan has the unanimous approval of scientists. For, as a result of actual consideration by international commissions and scientific bodies, science has shown overwhelming favor for this plan. Professor Harlan T. Stetson, in charge of the Cosmic Terrestrial Research Laboratory here at M.I.T., is one of the many scientists who have endorsed the plan and who believe actively in it. Professor Stetson was Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science when this body passed unanimously a resolution for the adoption of the 12-month equal-quarter calendar (The World Calendar). President Compton of the Institute was also President of the A.A.A.S. at the time. Beside the approval of the A.A.A.S., this plan has been approved by a committee of international scientists and several American scientific and technical societies.
The only hindrances at present to the adoption of the 12-month equalquarter plan is the general feeling of apathy to such a change which world powers like Great Britain and the United States bear. Fourteen other countries, including China, Norway, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, and Brazil, have signified their endorsement of The World Calendar idea. But it is still up to one of the larger world powers to start the ball rolling. Calendar reform has many disciples in high places (such as Mohandas Gandhi, who said that anything that might help to unify the Indians would have his support) and The World Calendar plan has so far been the most acceptable one yet drawn up. Once the apathy to change and the conservatism so prevalent before the war are broken down this plan may be accepted. It is a certainty that such a change is a necessity, for our old calendar has proven itself unsatisfactory for many centuries. The Editors of Tech Engineering News would like to go on record officially for The World Calendar plan as put forth in this article, for we believe it to be a necessity for the better world towards which mankind is eternally striving.

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NEED COMMON DENOMINATOR
TO WELD THE PEOPLES
OF THE WORLD
By Emerson Brewer, Director of The World Calendar Association
SURGES of selfishness are evident throughout the whole world. Detroit
। had its race riots. Harlem had its day of vandalism. In a quiet resort in the Quebec foothills, Canada’s red-coated police guarded highways, hotels and homes against anti-Semitic mobs. Jews and Arabs, Moslems and Hindus bicker and plot. Faction is pitted against faction in the camps of the enemies. Allied leaders ponder the after-war policies of their collaborators.
In a world where millions of men, billions of dollars and the entire natural resources of nations have been pledged to thwart bigotry, intolerance and ignorance, there still burns an underlying passion of ill will and suspicion—kept alive, nurtured and given impetus by selfish purposes. Before the dust of battle has settled, nations squabble and statesmen worry about territorial domination, about after-the-war divisions and about the immediate problems of who will be fitted for the toga of command and who will wear the crown of thorns.
It is tragically ironical in the greatest, the most savage and the most ruthless war the world has ever seen—fought for the avowed purpose of ridding civilization of the cankers which would eventually bring it to decay—that matters like these should be permitted to sidetrack the real objectives of this gigantic struggle.
The foremost objectives are the winning of the war; the eradication of those things which have brought the world to this state of selfishness, greed and lust for power; and the culture of a new civilization based on good will and cooperation with one’s fellow man. There is also an urgent need for an appreciation of national and personal problems, and a clearer realization of the economic problems that face each of the world’s various peoples. Only by the godly adherence to the teachings of Christ and ethical laws, and by the practical application of honest common sense, can this be achieved. It is by these precepts that the world can live again, and by plans based on these principles that free people can once more be free.
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The Four Freedoms, interpreted as they may be by various schools of thought, can only become the way of life for millions and millions of people if leaders of the victors and leaders of the vanquished dip into memory’s bitter reservoir and begin to plan for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, irrespective of national or racial prejudices; a plan based solely on the common fellowship of man. The changes in war machines, the changes and innovations in this global war presage changes and adjustments in all international and national relationships. Gone are the days when men and rulers rise to power and wealth using the bodies or the minds or the misfortunes of less fortunate people as their ladder to dominance.
There are people who fail to recognize this change. There are others who have seen its light on the horizon for more than a decade, yet who nevertheless continue to combat its coming, willfully hiding their heads in the sand and refusing to acknowledge the imminent transition. Then there are those, more farsighted than their brothers, who have long seen the approaching change, yet seek only to temporize.
It is the consensus of opinion that this change rides toward us like a tidal wave—direct, steady, powerful, inevitable. Economists, statesmen, educators, sociologists, rich and poor, all agree that change is inevitable. It appears that the purposeful and victorious route to follow would be the acceptance of this theory. Then, having accepted this as a fact, to plan for the long haul; not for the moment, but for the civil, social and political world as it should be tomorrow and for years to come.
This will mean reorganizing our diplomatic thinking and our personal and political planning on a new basis, on a basis of the common good and selflessness. If the citizens of this nation or of other nations may wish to regard this new global objective in terms and conception less Biblical, they can think of such a long-range plan in the terms of good, old-fashioned common sense. Either precept will lead to the same conclusion and pay the same powerful, valuable and necessary dividend. This dividend or international bonus will be freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from greed, and freedom from selfish, exploiting neighbors, nations and governments.
This principle is world shaking in its contemplation. It is almost like asking the leopard to change its spots; because too many nations in the past world history have risen to power and wealth by the application of the rule of force. The result has usually been eventual national, political and economic bankruptcy; and in their achieving momentary success and power millions of people have had to suffer. Millions of people have died in ignorance, squalor and want.
From these dead, sacrificed on the altar of political, national and mili
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tary ambitions, has arisen an antagonism that eventually reacts on the perpetrators of these inhuman practices. But in its doing and in its accomplishment, people have suffered and died while others have lived in despair and hopeless disillusionment.
But what is the answer to this problem? Upon the solution of this depends the future happiness and welfare of millions of people now smarting under the whip of dictators, poverty, ignorance and starvation. The solution, if it is to be a real solution and not a mere palliative, should be based on justice and equity.
We can defeat the dictators as1 they rise. We are strong enough in guns and planes and tanks. But, if we do not understand what made them and are not prepared to remove the causes that made them, then by merely destroying these individuals—these dictators—we have failed. On every side we hear: “Destroy the Fascists and the Nazis and the problem is solved.” To follow this, and follow this alone, would lead to inevitable failure and defeat in principle if not in fact, even though the battlefields of Europe will have raised many decades of crops.
We do not know all the complex causes that bring these men to power. But we do know this. In a military way this war is being won by factories and production and manpower; but production and factories and manpower alone cannot win the peace. It is not enough to cure the epidermal rash: we must seek deeper, destroy or cure the malignancy which brought about this eruption throughout the surface of the world. In seeking the fundamental causes, in our various experimentation it is primary that we should first establish those things which are common to all.
It is a problem involving many millions. The basis of the solution depends largely on the uncovering of a common denominator. Facts, products, thoughts and hopes, all must be discovered, which will affect us all in practically the same way, and thus bring about greater mutual understanding.
As we study history, as we look through tables of statistics, as we search libraries and interview statesmen, martial leaders, and administrative executives, business men, homemakers and welfare workers, there is found one thing that is common to all peoples and conditions. That one thing is Time.
Time, as regulated by the clock, is world wide in its general acceptance and in its ordered, equitable and steadfast arrangement has won worldwide application. Time as regulated by the calendar differs throughout the world. There are peoples, primarily living in Asia, who still reckon by a moon-sun calendar and this differs in detail whether used in India, China, or Malaysia, while, of course, religious calendars with their different feast-days are most variable. Adoption then of a civil calendar for the
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world, a calendar that is universal in its adaptation and in its cultural and utilitarian use, is an acceptable common denominator for which the world is searching.
The Gregorian civil calendar, upon which we depend so definitely and which is in practical use among the governments of the world and all international affairs, is one of the most outmoded and unsatisfactory of systems. The new civil calendar, The World Calendar, is a common and world denominator of counting days, weeks, months and years. These give us the one time-language, the one peg upon which can be hung international understanding, international thought and international cooperation. The brown man of the Indies, the black man of Africa, the yellow man of China, the Polynesian, the Javanese, and the white man of Europe and the Americas, have in The World Calendar a common system of time. Here is established, too, universal days upon which all can meet. Here can well be the start to a general understanding of problems facing men of all colors and creeds, men faced with problems peculiarly their own, or those of their immediate neighbors. It would be a real first step toward uniting all nations for all time, in the realm of time.
In this new common denominator, the civil World Calendar, in its arrangement of equal-quarter divisions, there is unfolded to us a real understanding of equity and justice. In the comparable 91 days or 13 weeks or 3 months within the quarter-year divisions, there is found perfect order and agreement; and with the new Year-End Day and the new Leap-Year Day, there are secured not only the scientific accuracy and the stability of the calendar, but these World Holidays, universally observed, also offer a time indicator that unites all men and nations and races as one.
The world is in a dire emergency. Political and diplomatic problems are so vast that they seem almost unsolvable to our finite minds, and it will take many years to find the solutions. But the new civil World Calendar is knocking at the door. Close the door and years must pass before another opportunity offers itself.
The adoption of this common denominator of time is the sesame that may well open the door toward solving other problems confronting the nations of the world. A beginning will have been made and a possibility offered which should not be taken lightly, ignored, or thrown aside as not worth our consideration now—today.

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IN TIME OF WAR
PREPARE FOR PEACE
By Ernest Camp, Jr.
Mr. Camp is a graduate of the University of Georgia. Being the son of a country newspaper publisher, he went to work, at graduation, for the Associated Press in Atlanta. But the cadence wasn’t fast enough and he came to New York where, since that time, he has made his home. Advertising agencies and manufacturing organizations had been his background until he landed as assistant advertising director at Seagram Distillers. In between, Mr. Camp has found time for a great amount of writing on subjects ranging from a syndicated newspaper “column” to serious studies in social psychology, philosophy and politics. In recent years his leisure time has been devoted chiefly to reading and writing on the problems of the peace.
TO the multitudes of individuals and agencies now engaged in postwar planning it daily becomes more apparent that, while waging this global war is difficult, waging the peace may be more so.
Some hint of the magnitude of the task is conveyed in the following words of Bernard M. Baruch, who, with John M. Hancock, heads the Advisory Unit for War and Postwar Adjustment Policies:
“Victory is our first and only duty, but just as we prepare for war in time of peace, so we should prepare for peace ins time of war. Through preparation we visualize prosperity that is sound and lasting. We see not merely civilian needs crying to be filled but a world requiring the things we can supply. The frame of our operation shows the gigantic nature of the change-over. It affects every part of our economic life. Nothing comparable ever has been known before. ... It is an easier task to convert from peace to war than from war to peace.”
Clearly, the years ahead constitute an era that cries out for—and belongs to—daring, open and imaginative minds. Minds with something of the quality of pioneer enterprise that sent Columbus questing westward for new and unimagined worlds; the same spirit of high-hearted and resourceful experiment which, in a later age, conquered a wilderness and founded the democratic dream on the North American continent.
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In the postwar planning now going on around us, there is abundant evidence that here in America we do have such minds—many of them— already busy grappling with the manifold complexities of the world to come. To judge from the progress made to date, we have by now left far behind that mood of cynical defeatism which was a natural by-product of our isolationist infancy as a great world power.
A careful examination of the plans already published reveals a surprising amount of agreement as to basic objectives. Despite superficial differences as to detail, there is a degree of open-mindedness and candor which shows how far we have come in the years since Pearl Harbor. It shows itself in a willingness to re-examine the entire structure of an obsolete world order, including grave errors at home and abroad, with considerable honest humility. Heaven knows, it’s about time I
Someone has said that the true “fifth columnist” today is the defeatist, the person who sells the future short. We of the living generation must believe in the future. Believing in it, we can do no less than go to work building it with all the strength that is in us. The duty falls with all the more force upon those of us who, for reasons beyond our control, remain at home while sons and brothers carry the torch of humanity on the fighting fronts.
If there is any single point on which almost all of our planners are agreed, it is the total nature of the present war and the necessity for total participation by the masses of the people everywhere in the shaping of the principles on which we shall build the peace. A people’s war, it is agreed, must issue in a people’s peace. And it is generally agreed that the time to think out its principles—if we are to heed the lesson of World War I—is not after the cessation of fighting, but now.
As Mr. Willkie well said in 1942: “After the last war the peace failed because no joint objectives upon which it could be based had been arrived at in the minds of the people. The League of Nations had been created full-blown; and men and women, having developed no joint purpose except to defeat a common enemy, fell into capricious and irrelevant arguments about its structural form. . . . Agreement in detail is not necessary, or even desirable. But unless we are to repeat the unhappy history of the first World War, agreement in principle must be won. Moreover, it must exist not just among the leaders of the Allies. The basic agreement I am thinking of must be established among the Allied people themselves. We must make sure that these peoples are fighting for essentially the same thing.”
With this thinking I am heartily in accord. As a writer and advertising man who has made a career of influencing public opinion, I could
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“think no other.” I have a healthy respect for the magnitude of the task involved in changing the opinion of a single state. A large city, even. It needs little imagination to visualize how broad must be the base of public acceptance if this people’s war really is to issue in a people’s peace freely accepted by ordinary people everywhere.
If that foundation is to be well laid, what we shall need is a rebirth of popular self-government—local, state, national and world—such as this planet has never seen. On the local plane, we need to revert, literally, to the stage of politics represented by the “town meeting” of New England’s early days. I am happy, by the way, to see this fine old custom taking root again in various parts of the country.
The trend deserves encouragement. Properly nurtured, it can give rise, I believe, to a new and healthy growth of democracy—a new growth of genuine cooperative accomplishment, a fertile new identity of interests and ideals. Obviously, this would be the most productive field possible for purposeful social planning.
At every stage of our planning, any proposal or device, however homely it may seem beside the high-sounding phrases of global strategy and geopolitics, if it holds any hope of substantial contribution to this democracy of ideas, should be brought forth and discussed.
In fact, it is my profound belief that the only sure foundation for agreement on great principles is the experience of cooperation gained through the joint solution of common, everyday problems that intimately touch the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen; problems that they can understand.
Surely, a logical starting point in any design for a more unified world order might well be some widespread popular need on which there is well-nigh universal agreement, and the benefits of which would be universal, extending to every one of the two billions of individuals inhabiting the troubled earth. It seems to me that the stable World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters holds unique possibilities here, as a sturdy and enduring foundation stone in that edifice built by many hands—a people’s peace.
In the kind of postwar world now shaping up, The World Calendar could have a logical, indeed a central, place. If there is any one idea which dominates our planning, it is that conveyed in the single word, production. Not just production for production’s sake, but production for a new world of plenty. Everywhere today there is growing recognition of a fact which looms gigantic over the modern world:
For the first time in history, there is now enough potential wealth to provide an improved average level of well-being for the common man the
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world over; now, for the first time, it is possible to achieve a dynamic, expanding world economy—a true economy of abundance—with a constantly growing production and improved distribution of better goods.
As a hard-headed business man, however, I insist that the attainment of this eminently realistic and reasonable ideal will call for a degree of efficiency in the utilization of the earth’s resources such as few of us, outside the cloisters of pure science, have ever dreamed. Waste of any kind will be recognized for what it always has been—not a badge of distinction but a social crime.
We who have grown up amid the most prodigal excesses of waste will need to acquire a sharp and vigilant new emphasis upon the adaptation of social means to social ends. It is only within the comparatively recent past, for example, that we have become conscious of the necessity for conserving our natural resources—our timber, water power and arable land. Of more recent years we have begun to recognize the even more acute need for conserving the greatest asset of all—our human resources.
Now what has all this to do with The World Calendar? Just this: basic in any attempt to achieve a more efficient and better use of our human and material resources should be a due regard for the conservation of time, the very stuff of life. Here we collide head-on with one of the most wasteful customs of an otherwise relatively efficient machine age, the archaic and antiquated calendar wherewith we reckon time in irregular months and wandering weeks and changeable days.
The present Gregorian calendar represents a daily, egregious and remediable form of waste, one whose effects are all too often overlooked precisely because they are so all-pervasive, ubiquitous as air. But it is not as inevitable as air, and a new-world mentality impatient of ancient wastes, ancient divisions, ancient wrongs and follies would do well to deal summarily with it, grateful that such a seemingly durable relic of an outmoded past could be dispatched so easily.
When a scientist enters his laboratory to conduct an experiment in chemistry or physics, practically the first thing he does is to set in order the yardsticks which measure the natural phenomena with which he deals: clocks, thermometers, barometers, scales, galvanometers, calipers.
I submit that the architects of tomorrow’s Better Way might well begin likewise, by calling for the discard of our outmoded calendar and for the adoption of The World Calendar instead, which sets to order the months, weeks and days, correlating these in uniform quarter-year divisions.
How truly it has been remarked: time-marking is time-making!
Such a change would improve the daily lot of mankind the world over.
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But in another, equally real if less tangible sphere, it would exert an even more far-reaching influence.
I refer to the symbolic effect which its general adoption would exert over diverse peoples everywhere, tending toward a fundamentally changed world outlook. To millions it would be the dramatic herald of a new and better world. It would underscore the break with an unhappy past—a past which in one generation produced the two most devastating wars and the greatest depression in history. The slogan, “A New Calendar for a New World,” would realize the full potential of its tremendous promise.
Even more potent symbolically would be the practical object lesson in international cooperation. Arguing from the nursery principle that we crawl before we walk, it would be an admirable vantage point from which to survey other and more urgent grounds of mutual interest.
I believe that Elisabeth Achelis, President of The World Calendar Association, is correct in her often-stated belief that one unique feature of this calendar alone—its one, and occasionally two, World Holidays— would be bound to exert a unifying influence on all nations.
Viewed in either its practical or its symbolic aspect, I cannot see how such concerted action in answer to a common need could fail to be an incalculable force for world amity and order.
Standard time (to which The World Calendar seems the natural complement required only six years for its adoption, from the date it was first proposed to the time it became international in use.
The sensible modern innovation of Daylight Saving Time was first proposed in England in 1907 and adopted nine years later—a product of the exigencies of war.
In contrast with this practical promptitude, note our long-suffering loyalty to the Gregorian calendar: 362 years.
Again the exigencies of war urge a reform already long overdue in time of peace. The need was never greater, the opportunity for a smooth change-over never better. Here is one plank that belongs in every postwar plan.

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CURRENT PRESS COMMENT
One Free Day
London Sunday Tinies
March 19, 1944
THE eighteenth century was the classical century of the highwaymen, but its most romantic theft was perpetrated by Parliament in 1752, when, as every schoolboy knows, unhappy people marched angrily about shouting, “Give us back our 11 days.” For 11 days, no mean space of mortal life, were kangarooed to bring us into step with the Europe of the Gregorian calendar.
Governments move slowly and Treasuries refund reluctantly, but there does now seem to be a chance of repayment by instalments. We shall get our days back, one at a time and one a year, if the calendar reform proposals Rear-Admiral Beamish has aired in Parliament go through. The particular beauty of his plan is that every year there will be an extra free day which will not be a regimented day with a number and a unit, not attached to any particular week or month, but a really free day, outside the legal and any other calendar. As the burden of the fixed obligations and duties of life in a modern community are elaborated, the need for a breather becomes ever more marked; and the new health centres will teach men and women to make the most of the glorious freedom of the day outside the calendar. No questions must be asked in Courts of Law how the free day is spent.
Praises New
Calendar Plan
Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Union and Republican
April 2, 1944
ELISABETH ACHELIS is a New York woman who has for many years devoted all her energies to promoting a universal calendar. In The Calendar for Everybody (Putnam’s; $1.50) she pleads
the usefulness of the new civil calendar to men and women in all walks of life. Her arguments are presented in a thoroughly logical and persuasive manner which deserves a considered reading on the part of the public.
Improved Calendar
Mason City (la.) Globe-Gazette
June 2, 1943
I HAVE always felt that just about the most potent argument for calendar reform is the confusion which occurs annually in connection with our holidays. The Memorial Day just past is a case in point.
Some communities observed it on Saturday, others on Sunday and still others —probably the largest number—on Monday. Nobody seemed to be quite clear on just when the observance should be.
Under The World Calendar plan—with 12 month of 26 weekdays each month and equal quarters—Memorial Day, May 30, would always fall on Thursday. Christmas would always fall on Monday.
This proposal has won the approval of many business, educational and scientific groups. They see in this orderly rearrangement of the present calendar many advantages, not the least of which would be complete comparability, with each day, week and month remaining the same year after year.
“The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters is the best answer I have seen to our business comparison problem,” observes F. R. Atcheson, comptroller of one of Chicago’s largest retail stores.
With a calendar that “stays put,” a merchant could plan with certainty and buy merchandise without need for “taking long chances,” he added.
The time is at hand, it seems to me, when another improvement should be made. I’ve never heard a good reason suggested for not doing so.
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EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS
The Clubhouse
By CHIP ROYAL
Syndicated Feature of the Sports Department of the Associated Press, May, 1944
DAN FERRIS, the Amateur Athletic Union’s rotund secretary, has added a lot of lines to his cherubic face in the 37 years he has been with the sports organization.
There have been so many worries that Dan can’t remember them all. But he hopes to get rid of one of the biggest—the dates for scheduling games—as soon as Emerson Brewer can get The World Calendar approved by the powers that be. Brewer is Director of The World Calendar Association, an educational group which proposes to divide the year into four equal quarters each, made up of three months of 31 days, 30 days and 30 days. That adds up to 364 days a year. The extra day would be known as December W, a yearend holiday.
Dan’s hope for eliminating one of his many troubles came about recently when Gustavus T. Kirby, an Amateur Athletic Union director, headed a committee proposing that the directors go on record as favoring The World Calendar.
The new calendar would benefit all sports. There wouldn’t be any of that irregular scheduling we have now. Every year would be the same. January 1 would be on a Sunday. Saturday football dates would always be the same. So would the Thanksgiving Day ones.
It is easy to see how such an arrangement would facilitate the scheduling of athletic events, the planning of traveling time, and make for lower expense accounts.
Once set up, all sports dates would become perennial and, to a man like Dan Ferris, who has witnessed more than a million athletes in competition in more than 66,000 events at 3,250 meets, the consistency of dates would mean a lot.
It is doubtful that the people who witness the athletic events year in and year out appreciate the terrific amount of detail and red tape which must be cleared
and cut before the sports boys can do their stuff.
The same task also holds true for any and all groups having anything to do with dates. Probably that is why the ordered calendar plan has also been endorsed by the National Education Association, many college presidents, hundreds of chambers of commerce and business organizations.
This year is especially significant because the last four months are identical in both the 1944 Gregorian calendar and the new World Calendar. All one has to do is compare the last four months of this year with those of 1943 to get an actual picture of the savings.
Don’t get the idea though that fellows like Dan Ferris will have an easy job with the streamlining of the calendar. There will still be thousands of letters to be written, hundreds of cups to be awarded, and hundreds of disputes to be settled.
But the good natured Irishman, who has so long occupied the corner office in the Amateur Athletic Union’s Woolworth Tower headquarters, could go along with one less headache. And The World Calendar should help.
World Calendar Meets
All Objections
From Postwar Digest, New York, N. Y., April 8, 1944
TODAY when planning is one of essentials toward obtaining highest peak of efficiency in PW production, inadequacies of present calendar are forceful arguments for improvement. Year contains approximately 365.25 days that cannot be divided by 2, 3, 4, or 6—halves, thirds, quarters without off days remaining. First quarter is 2 days shorter than either of last 2 quarters, and 2nd quarter matches none of others. Comparative reports have to be adjusted and difficulties are encountered in comparing business done on analogous days, as well as preparing statements of dividends, bond interest, taxes, operating costs, statistics, budgets, etc. To overcome these faults of present calendar in PW
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period a perpetual and ordered World Calendar is proposed by The World Calendar Association, as announced currently in large ads in N. Y. Herald-Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Chicago News, Chicago Sun and Washington Post.
World Calendar of revised 12 months divides year into equal quarters of 13 weeks or 3 months of 31-30-30 days, each month having 26 weekdays plus Sundays. This 364-day year gives comparability and coordination to various calendar units. Essential 365th day, December W, World Holiday, extra Saturday, keeps calendar in step with seasons. Every 4 years—leap year—another extra Saturday, 366th day, is added, June W, World Holiday. Every quarter is identical, and every unit within every quarter same. Stabilizing World Holidays, one intercalated at end of every year and another middle of leap years, bring about agreeing days and dates, holidays always on same day and date every year, accurate comparability for contracts, reports and calculations from year to year, saving of time, money, effort. Postwar planning and making of peace will be greatly aided when based on steady, harmonious, well-coordinated World Calendar. Good foundations beget good results. Acts of today foundations of tomorrow.
This year is important because last four months of 1944 in both present Gregorian calendar and proposed World Calendar are same. This is possible because Sunday, December 31, and what would be extra Saturday, December W (World Holiday), are both non-productive, non-business days. Thus an excellent opportunity is offered to test and study merits of World Calendar by using last 4 months of 1944 as basis of comparison for same period in Gregorian calendar 1943 and 1945. It is recommended, however, that long range objective should be to prepare for national and general approval in 1947—pre-presidential election year. Following 2-3 years would give adequate time for everyone to get their affairs in order for inaugurating World Calendar in 1950 when both calendars again agree—Sunday, January 1.
Accepted 24-hour clock adopted by Armed Services has proved natural forerunner for World Calendar. These two new and modern time-pieces are based on duodecimal number 12 divided into equal
quarters, thirds and halves—must in all time-reckoning. Captain J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. Supt. U. S. Naval Observatory, Washington, and guardian of our clock time has stated: “U. S. Naval Observatory has approved very strongly World Calendar. Benefits from it are manifold, and differences from long-established customs are negligible. . . . My advice to all advocates of calendar revision is to devote their energies to only proposal which meets all requirements of situation, with minimum of upheaval and disturbance and maximum of benefits to mankind—World Calendar.”
Among American and World leaders who have endorsed World Calendar are Gerard Swope, M. Albert Linton, Myron C. Taylor, Gano Dunn, Julius F. Stone, Ira Hirschmann; Lord Desborough, Sir H. Spencer-Jones (England); Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden); and Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu (China).
Seeks Global
Community
By RICHARD W. WESTWOOD
From Nature Magazine, Washington, D. C., April, 19H
WE never receive a copy of the Journal of Calendar Reform that we do not wonder why something is not done about our obsolete Gregorian system. We fail to see any logical objection to the proposed World Calendar with its 12 months and its four quarters of 91 days each, plus its one extra “Year-End Day,” and its “Leap-Year Day” sandwiched in between June and July every four years. We will confess we never were excited about the 13-month calendar idea, but we are unable to see that the “World Calendar” seriously upsets anything. If man can successfully tinker with the time of day, he certainly can equally successfully adopt a sensible and simple realignment of the days of the month. Perhaps in the plans for this postwar world the calendar will come in for consideration. In fact it would appear to be a good place to start in achieving that global community that seems to hold the most promise of accomplishing permanent peace.
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FROM THE MAIL BAG
I sincerely believe that The New World Calendar is a genuinely fundamental reform and one that will be of vast benefit to mankind. I hope that your efforts in support of it will soon be crowned with success.—H. S. Southam, Publisher, The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The world needs the new World Calendar. The new World Calendar with a minimum of change accomplishes results of great value to the world, for it eliminates many confusions of dates due to the irregularity of the existing calendar. I see no sufficient reason why this important reform would not be welcomed by the world when they understand it, except perhaps the apathy due to custom. It might add to the calendar that the World Holiday following December annually and following June quadrennially could be dedicated to prayers for world unity, cooperation and mutual good will.—Robert L. Owen, Counsellor at Law, Washington, D. C.
Your plan is excellent. We have operated too long on a hit-or-miss calendar because no one dared to be different.—Hart Cooper, Attorney, Wilmington, Del.
This method of dividing the year has been one of considerable interest to me and one with which I heartily concur. Years ago I was an engineer with the Eastman Kodak Company, at the time they adopted the 13-month period basis. Since I studied that and other calendars thoroughly at that time, I became interested in the general manner of yearly calendar arrangement. The World Calendar is, however, a considerable improvement over that, from various standpoints, all of which you know; and I trust that it may have an early adoption, in order that the conveniences, advantages and economies in all phases of life, which it promises, may be soon realized.—Donald F. Othmer, Prof, of Chern. Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
I find myself a convert to the idea.—The Rev. Willsie Martin, Los Angeles, Cal.
The World Calendar will effect a saving of millions of dollars every year in the cost of printing alone. In fact, the features of the new calendar will soon be memorized by everyone; so that the day of the week for any date is known without the aid of a calendar.—D. L. Reaburn, U. S. Engineering Office, Santa Maria, Cal.
I have been familiar with the proposed World Calendar for some years and, while I never have had occasion to make a thorough study of calendar problems, it has seemed to offer the most simple, practicable solution for many existing difficulties.— Carl N. Schmalz, Treas., R. H. Sterns Co., Boston, Mass.
To spread the movement of calendar reform is today necessary more than ever.— J. Brunet, Regent Knitting Mills, Montreal, Canada.
For some time I have been interested in your World Calendar and am strongly in favor of its adoption—just as strongly as I was against the adoption of the 13-month plan, for reasons unnecessary to point out to you. Best wishes for the success of your project.—D. W. Hardy, Englewood, N. J.
I have long been in favor of The World Calendar—or at least of some adjustment in the calendar that would simplify life for all of us.—J. Frederic Dewhurst, New York, N. Y.
I am heartily in favor of the reform you are proposing. Now that we are thinking in terms of global strategy, this is an opportune time to consider the proposed change in our calendar.—F. A. Conrad, Univ, of Ariz., Tucson.
Needless to say I am very much in sympathy with The World Calendar and hope that it may be adopted internationally in the near future.—E. T. Towne, Dean, The Univ, of North Dakota, Grand Forks.
I consider adoption of The World Calendar imperative from every point of view.— Julius F. Stone, Industrialist, Columbus, Ohio.
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TH WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION
Elisabeth Achelis, President Harriet A. Lillie, Secretary-Treasurer
Charles S. McVeigh, Vice-President Emerson Brewer, Director
AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
William H. Barton, Jr. Henry W. Bearce Dr. Clara B. Burdette Mrs. Frederick H. Clausen Mrs. Vera Beggs Conway Capt. J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. (Ret.) Mrs. Gustav Ketterer Mrs. Rowland H. Latham Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D. Bishop William T. Manning Prof. Wm. Starr Myers
Dr. L. S. Rowe Howard C. Smith Bishop Ernest M. Stires Julius F. Stone
Rabbi Martin M. Weitz P. W. Wilson
Dr. Mary E. Woolley
FOREIGN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Admiral Jos£: Guisasola (Argentina) Dr. Eugene Delporte (Belgium) Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino (Brazil) J. Royden Gilley (Canada)
A. J. Hills (Canada)
Prof. Alberto Cumming (Chile)
R. P. Eugenio V. Rosso, S.S. (Chile) Dr. Ch’ing-Sung YtJ (China) Dr. Herbert Blume (Danzig) Barney N. Morgan (Dominican Republic) Lord Desborough (England) • C. David Stelling (England) Paul-Louis Hervier (France)
Abraham J'rowein (Germany) Athanase Politis (Greece) E. Keith Eason (Ireland) Amedeo Giannini (Italy) Dr. Joaquin Gallo (Mexico) Juan Rivera Reyes (Panama) Luis Montero y Tirado (Peru) R. P. Antonio Romana, S.J. (Spain) Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden)
Raymond Mage (Switzland) Dr. M. I. Dereoglu (Turkey) Edgar J. Anzola (Venezuela)
Membershiv is based on active interest in the study of adequate and effective improvement of the calendar. Owing to lack of space, a large number of names have been omitted. They will be printed in future issues.
S. R. Alger, Editor, Ottawa, Canada Jean P. Allaine, Clerk, St. Jerome, Can. Paul G. Argenti, Businessman, Chicago H. A. Bathrick, Cleveland, Ohio John C. Batte, Merchant, Jackson, Miss. Curt Beck, Student, Boston William Berghahn, Draftsman, Chicago J. A. Birkenstock, Stud., Somerset W., South
Robert J. Black, Corp. Off., Buffalo
Jesse L. Brememan, Educ., Manhattan, Kan. L. Brosseau, Bookkeeper, St. Jerome, Can. C. J. Brunsar, Purch. Agt., Philadelphia A. H. Butler, Ins. Broker, Toronto, Can. William S. Cady, Editor, Pocatello, Utah D. C. Cameron, Meteorolqgist, Washington J. W. Chambers, Waterloo, Canada Frank J. Clifford, Mfgr., Baltimore, Md. Gerald Cloutier, Machinist, Detroit Angel Contreras R., Stud., Santiago, Chile J. B. Cote, Publisher, Rimouski, Canada J. M. Cowan, Editor, Niagara Falls, Can. H. C. Davis, Supt., Cut Bank, Mont.
Richard Downing, Chemist, Syracuse, N. Y. Kenneth Drury, Editor, Victoria, Canada Mrs. Ethel G. Durkin, Santa Monica, Cal. John A. English, Engr., Goshen, Conn. James Everatt, Corp. Off., Toronto Kenneth S. Fagg, Artist, Chappaqua, N. Y. Muriel Falick, Bronx, New York Mrs. M. C. Fath, Teacher, Washington, D. C. Mrs. E. A. Fish, Columnist, Williamsburg, Ky. Fred C. Geiger, Atty., Washington, D. C. Joseph R Griggs, Educ., Austin, Tex.
Robert R. Guthrie, New York City George D. Hall, Rockford, Ill. Dr. L. K. Hallock, Phys., Jacksonville, Ill George G. Henderson, Teach., Ginksburg, Cal. Joseph Hoffman, Stud., Bronx, N. Y. C. E. Hoskin, Gov. Clk., Kensington, Md. W. Harold Iles, Salesman, Urbana, Ill. Ervin Jackson, Jr., Stud., Birmingham, Ala. Adolph R. Klein, Ins., Man., Chicago
John H. Koewler, Jr., Stud., Evansville, Ill. William P. Korsland, Auditor, Chicago J. Larkin, Sales Exec., Forest Hills, N. Y. Glen B. Lerch, Corp. Exec., Hibbing, Minn. Sigfred Lindholm, Wood Worker, Chicago L. M. Lipa, Exec., Clinton, N. Y. Louis Lowinson, Broker, New York City R. D. Mancinelli, Gov. Off., McLean, Va. Mase Marisbone, Arcadia, Pretoria, S. Africa Lenader Marx, Qo. Off., New Orleans, La. D. A. McConnell, Sch. Supt., Junction City, Kan.
Daniel R. McMaster, Atty., Lake Bluff, Ill. Prof. Mark C. Mills, Bloomington, Ind. Henry W. Mueller, Clk., Wallaston, Mass. Paul E. Newshea, Corp. Exec., New York City Wm. M. Newton, Postman, Bethesda, Md. Herman E. Ollander, Businessman, N. Y. C. Geo. R. Onody, Controller, Salem, Mass. June Otteman, Stud., Canandaigua, N. Y. Katherine Pangborne, Teacher, New York City A. V. Parcninter, Teach., New Westminster, Can.
James A. Pollock, Teacher, Toledo, O.
Mrs. Bessie Price, Teach., Terra Atta, W. Va. Charles S. Raizen, Mfgr., New York City Elwood Randolph, Corp. Exec., New York City" Leonard J. Raymond, Corp. Exec., Boston F. C. Reick, Teach., Flushing, N. Y.
Milton Riesner, Contractor, New York City Mrs. Anna D. Robinson, Monmouth, Ill.
Riki Saito, Clerk, Aiea, Hawaii
Frank T. Scott, Stud., Fair Haven, N. J. Murray J. Shainis, Bronx, N. Y.
J. J. Sherman, New York City
Harry Shriber, Businessman, Pittsburgh
Chas. R. Siegert, Transportation Off., Buffalo Dr. Andrew Sinamark, Phys., Hibbing, Minn. Earl C. Smith, Co. Off., Frankford, Ind. Eunice L. Smith, Teach., Kenosha, Wis. Frank C. Smith, Teacher, Buffalo Harry L. Snyder, Stud., Sunnyside, N. Y.
J. F. Sommers, Tax Consult., Corsicana, Tex.
112
JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
H. S. Southam, Publisher, Ottawa, Canada
W. Spracklin, Rr. Off., N. Sydney, Nova Scotia
Robert L. Stailing, Ins. Off., Toronto
Ralph L. Southard, Educ., Woodmere, N. Y.
Fred W. Spalding, Educ., Akron, O.
Ruth A. Sparrow, Librn., Buffalo
H. K. Spector, Librn., Rikers Is., N. Y.
Chas. Spencer, Secy., Ch. of Com., Independence, Kan.
Rev. Jos. A. Stanton, Buffalo
A. Stein, Corp. Off., Chicago
Ernest J. Stevens, Set, San Francisco
Rev. Irvin Stewart, Rickreall, Ore.
Rev. Stanley Stoga, Chicago
P. M. Stone, Real Estate, Waltham, Mass.
Rev. Wm. D. Str eng, Rock Falls, Ill.
R. G. Sumner, Ins. Off., Chicago
Frances L. Swain, Teacher, Chicago
Col. Harrison Tilghman. Easton, Md.
Wm. Tornheim, Accountant, Pittsburg, Cal.
J. F. P. Trosch, Gov. Off., Washington, D. C.
Ralph E. Tschappat, Mechanic, Denver Col.
Frank E. Walsh, War Worker. Chicago Sophie P. White, Lbrn., Hutchinson, Minn. Edward Widawski, Stud., Hamtramck, Mich Clara C. Williamson, Teach., Van Hornesville, N. Y.
Wm. M. Willits, Teach., Reading, Pa.
Mrs. Anne C. Wilson, Teach., Troy, Ala.
G. H. Wilson, Ins. Exec., Philadelphia
Jas. H. Wilson, Educ., Rocky Ford, Colo.
J. H. Wilson, Co. Exec., Worcester, Mass. Mayo Winsberg, Merch, Whiting, Ind. Marion Winship, Insurance, Buffalo E. J. Winslow, Brattleboro, Vt.
Mulford Winsor, Librn., Phoenix, Ariz.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ARGENTINA: Comit6 Argentine del Calen-dario Mundial, Admiral Jos6 Guisasola, Chairman, Ministerio de Marina, Buenos Aires.
AUSTRALIA: Committee on Calendar Reform of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, C. W. Allen, Secy., Solar Observatory, Canberra.
BELGIUM: Belgian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Professor M. Dehalu, President, 1’Universite de Ltege, LiSge.
BOLIVIA: Comite Boliviano del Calendario Mundial, Don Moises Santivanez, Chairman, Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre.
BRAZIL: Comite Brasileiro do Calendario Mundial, Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino, Chairman, Rua Raul Pompeia No. 133, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Rational Calendar Association, J. Royden Gilley, Hart House, University of Toronto ; A. J. Hills, National Joint Conference Board of the Construction Indus-dry, Confederation Bldg., Ottawa.
CHILE: Comite Chileno del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Cumming, Chairman, Calle Manuel Rodriguez, Santiago.
CHINA: Chinese Association for the Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu, Director, National Institute of Astronomy, Kunming, Yunnan.
COLOMBIA: Comite Colombiano del Calendario Mundial, Bogota.
COSTA RICA: Comite Costarricense del Calendario Mundial (Igualmente de Guatemala, Honduras,. El Salvador y Nicaragua), Don Teodoro Picado, Chairman, San Jose.
CUBA: Comite Cubano del Calendario Mundial, Beten Observatory, Havana.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Comite Domini-cano del Calendario Mundial, Barney N. Morgan, Chairman, Box 727, Ciudad Trujillo.
ECUADOR: Comite Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde, Chairman, Calle Cienfuegos 158, Santiago, Chile.
ENGLAND: Rational Calendar Association, C. David Stelling, Director, 38, Parliament Street, London.
FRANCE: Comite National pour la Reforme du Calendrier, Senateur Justin Godart, President; Paul-Louis Hervier, Secy., 5, Rue Bernoulli, Paris.
GERMANY: Deutscher Ausschuss fiir Kalen-derreform, Dr. Grosse, Geschaftsfiihrer, Neue Wilhelmstr. 9/11, Berlin N. W. 7.—
FOR REFORM OF THE CALENDAR
Der Weltbund fiir Kalenderreform, Dr. Rudolph Blochmann, Secy., 24 Lornsen-strasse, Kiel.
GREECE: Greek National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. S. Plakidis, Secy., Observatory of University of Athens.
HUNGARY: Hungarian Committee for Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Paul Vajda, Secy., 9 Eotos Utca, Budapest.
IRELAND: Committee for Calendar Reform, E. K. Eason, Secy., 80, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.
ITALY: Italian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Amedeo Giannini, Secy., Via del Seminario, 113, Rome.
MEXICO: Comite Mejicano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Joaquin Gallo, Honorary President; Dr. Horacio Herrera, Chairman, Socjedad de Estudios Astronomicos y Geoflsicos, Av. Observatorio No. 192, Tacubaya, D.F.
PANAMA : Comite Panameno del Calendario Mundial, Juan Rivera Reyes, Chairman, Panama City.
PARAGUAY: Comite Paraguayano del Calendario Mundial, H. E. Senor Ministro Coronel don Luis Irrazabal, Chairman, Calle Moneda 1938, Santiago, Chile.
PERU: Comite Peruano del Calendario Mundial, Don Luis Montero y Tirado, Chairman, Casilla 220, Lima.
POLAND: Polish Committee for Calendar Reform, Albin Jakiel, Chairman, Krasiu-skiego, 21 m. 27, Warsaw.
SPAIN: Spanish Calendar Reform Committee, Rev. Father Antonio Romani, S.J., Chairman, Observatorio del Ebro, Tortosa.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Committee on Calender Reform, Prof. Emile Marchand, Secy., Mythenstrasse 2, Zurich 2.—Comite International de Cooperation de 1’Association Universelle du Calendrier, M. Raymond Mage, Secretaire General, Palais Wilson, Geneva.
TURKEY: Committee on Calendar Reform, Dr. M. I. Dereoglu, Secy., P. O. Box 1121, Hanhaym Han. No. Io, Istanbul.
URUGUAY: Comite Uruguayo del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Reyes Thevenet, Chairman, Liceo de Ensenanza Secundaria Hector Miranda, Calle Sierra 2268, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Comite Venezolano del Calendario Mundial, Don Edgar J. Anzola, Chairman, Apartado de Correos No. 207,
YUGOSLAVIA: Yugoslavian Committee on Calendar Reform, Georges Curcin, Chairman, Poenkareova 25—III, Belgrade.
TWO UP-TO-DATE TIME PIECES
/
THIS we have NOW!
WE SHOULD have THIS!
THE TWENTY-FOUR HOUR CLOCK
EVERY SECOND, MINUTE, HOUR THE SAME
EVERY DAY, DATE, YEAR THE SAME
THE ARMED FORCES performed a master stroke when they replaced the A.M. and P.M. clock time with the 24-hour clock. This new clock time is now in practical use among the allied forces.
The remarkable duodecimal number 12, in this instance the twice-told twelve, has been definitely established for our men in service. The hours are counted in hundreds to take care of the minutes, for example, the old 3.30 p.m. becomes 1530.
With the greatest simplicity and ease, confusion was changed to order, misunderstanding to clarity.
THE UNITED NATIONS and PEOPLES would do well to use the 24-hour clock in their daily lives and affairs, and acquire the same simplicity.
THE NEW 12-month year is divided into equal quarters of 3 months or 13 weeks or 91 days; the months are arranged in 31-30-30 days; each month has 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. All the time units agree at the end of every quarter-year. The old December 31 becomes the new December W*, an extra Saturday, and the new year begins on Sunday, January 1. The old February 29 in lean years becomes the new June W**, another extra Saturday. Both December W and June W are World Holidays.
With a similar simplicity and ease, confusion gives way to order, changeability to stability.
THE UNITED NATIONS and PEOPLES would do well to consider the practical benefits of The World Calendar as it affects their affairs, preliminary to general world adoption.
THESE TWO NEW AND MODERN TIME-PIECES are based on the duodecimal number 12 divided into equal quarters, thirds and halves, a MUST in all time-reckoning.
for further information:
630 fifth avenue THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC. new york 20, n. y.
See Article on Page 61
YOUR Country needs YOUR MONEY
For
VICTORY
Buy more and more WAR BONDS and STAMPS for an early PEACE!
Journal o/ CALENDAR REFORM
THE WORLD CALENDAR is in step with TODAY and TOMORROW
FOURTH QUARTER
PRESENT GREGORIAN CALENDAR
PROPOSED WORLD CALENDAR
	FIRST QUARTER			THIRD QUARTER		
		S M T W T F 5	1 9 4 3		$ M T W T F S	
	JAN FEB MAR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31		JUL AUG SEP	1 2 3 4 5 6 7-8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	
	Wdoy. SECOND QUARTER			92 dayi FOURTH QUARTER		
		S M T W T F 5			S M T W T F S	
	APR MAY JUN	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4.5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		OCT NOV DEC	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 12 3 4 5678 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	
	Vldoy.	nioyf This calendar has 52 weeks and must borrow from another week to complete the year. This causes the calendar to change every year and Is responsible for Its confusion. Also note varying number of days in each quarter.					
FIRST QUARTER	THIRD QUARTER
	S M T W T F S
JAN FEB MAR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
	S M T W I F S
JUL AUG SEP	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23:24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 12 3 4 5 67 8 9 10 11 .12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27:28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 IT 112 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25i26 27 28 29 30
91 days	91 days
SECOND QUARTER	FOURTH QUARTER
	S M T W T F s			। S MT W T F $
APR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31		OCT	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
MAY	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		NOV	12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
JUN	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30		DEC	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
91 days	91 days
★ A WORLD HOLIDAY, DECEMBER W. the Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, follows December 30th every year. ★* A WORLD HOLIDAY, JUNE W, the Leap-Year Day, another extra Saturday, follows June 30th in leap years.
EACH YEAR DIFFERENT
This calendar is always different from year to year.
The quarters .arej unequal in length. In leap years the first half-year has 182 days; the second, 184 days. .	!
Each quarter begins and ends bn a different day of the week.
Each month begins and ends on a different weekday.
The months have a varying number of weekdays.
Each year begins on a different weekday.
Its irregularity precludes comparison of periods and necessitates continued and never ceasing changes in matters routine in character.
This calendar is unbalanced in structure, unstable in form, and irregular in arrangement.
SOON YOU WILL BE DISCARDING THIS OBSOLETE CALENDAR.
EACH YEAR THE SAME
This 12-month equal-quarter calendar is the same for every year.
The quarters are equal in length.
Each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, contains 3 months— 13 weeks—91 days.
Month-dates always fall on the same weekdays. Each month has 26 week-days—plus Sundays.
Each year begins on Sunday, January 1, and the business year begins with Monday, January 2. Because the World Holidays precede Sunday, the usual custom of celebrating a Sunday holiday on Monday is voided.
Year-End Day and Leap-Year Day, the extra Saturdays, December W and June W. are World Holidays.
This revised calendar is balanced in structure, perpetual in form, harmonious in arrangement.
SOON YOU WILL BE USING THIS UP-TO-DATE CALENDAR.
£ > TTENDED BY ALL THE POMP AND J t circumstance of its ancient rites and rituals, a midnight ceremonial, recently conducted by the Russian Orthodox Church in the Moscow Cathedral, formally and publicly installed a new Patriarch for all the Russias.
Hailed throughout the world as a great triumph for Christendom and for religion in general, this news came as a complete surprise to those not conversant with political developments in the Soviet Union. To many millions and to the majority of churchmen, Moscow, since the revolution, has been regarded as a world citadel of communism and atheism.
In the early post-revolutionary days the higher councils of the Communist Party had banished not alone the Russian Orthodox Church but all religious institutions. With the public installation of a new Patriarch of the Russias, religion has come to the Soviet Union.
A Midnight Ceremony in the Moscow Cathedral, Formally and Publicly Installed a New Patriarch for all the Russias. (See Russia's Changing Tide, Page 147.)
VOL. XIII
FOURTH QUARTER, 1943
No. 4
A NEW CALENDAR FOR A NEW WORLD
SINCE last Christmas, many world-shaking changes have taken place.
Among these is one so significant and outstanding that it calls for particular emphasis. The recognition of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Soviet Union, after approximately twenty years of atheism and religious intolerance, stands as a great religious resurrection. Once more the Russian people can openly worship and offer praise and prayer in the church of their forefathers without fear and oppression. A free Russian Orthodox Church has been established with government approval.
Here again the entire world is offered striking proof that man is inherently religious. Governments may try to suppress and ignore but they cannot kill religion. The two great Christian religious festival days, Christmas and Easter, shine in this national religious resurrection as bright beacon lights. Elisabeth Achelis, in her book just published, writes about religious holidays: “I like to think of religious feast days as radiant stars in the rhythmic succession of our calendar days, annual reminders of the intimate relationship that exists between God and man. Religion knows no frontier, and like the Creator is limitless in its wide horizon.”
And yet there exist two glaring flaws in the universal observance of these two religious days of Christendom. They are observed on varying days and dates by different church groups, thus separating rather than uniting all Christians. Many Eastern Orthodox Churches in their observances lag 13 days behind other Christian churches because they still observe the ancient Julian calendar. Other churches follow the Gregorian calendar.
To bring these calendars into one fabric without retreat from a previous position is obviously the better course to follow. The World Calendar, free from past prejudice, becomes the welcome catalysis to heal the present lack of Christian unity in the observances of religious feast days. Under its banner all churches, all governments, all people could unite in following this harmonious, ordered and stable calendar and thus achieve unity and tranquillity heretofore impossible without a common denominator of time.
JOURNAL	OF
CALENDAR REFORM
October, November, December
1943
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL	145
RUSSIA'S CHANGING TIDE	Carleton J. Ketchum 147
STUDENT OF POSTWAR PLANNING ADVOCATES NEW
CALENDAR NOW	E. C. Rayner 156
U. S. DEPARTMENT HEAD GIVES ALTERNATE DATES FOR CALENDAR CHANGE	H. W. Bearce 164
EDITORIAL JACK OF ALL TRADES SEES HOPE IN NEW WORLD
CALENDAR	Richard Stephenson 166
"CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS"	Arthur Hale 170
THE COUNT AND THE CALENDAR	George Kent 172
THE THIRD MILLION WAS THE EASIEST	Joe Roberts 175
TEXAS PROFESSOR SUGGESTS PLAN TO GET STUDENT HELP
J. W. Baldwin 179
CALENDAR REFORM ACROSS EIGHTEEN CENTURIES
Bertha M. Frick 181
LET'S CHANGE THE CALENDAR	Sam Bate 186
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS	189
EMERSON BREWER, Editor
Published by THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION, INC.
INTERNATIONAL BUILDING: 6 3 0 FIFTH AVE., N. Y. C. 20
FOURTH QUARTER 1943
147
RUSSIA'S CHANGING IIDE
By Carleton J. Ketchum
Resigning his commission in the Canadian Field Artillery after the first World War, having been awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty on the Western Front, Mr. Ketchum joined the editorial staff of Southam9s Ottawa Citizen. In 1921 he became associated with the London Daily Express, owned by Lord Beaverbrook. Assigned to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, he arrived in Moscow during the period in which Lenin lay dying, and subsequently spent five winters in Russia. In 1934 he toured the whole of European Russia, and visited, among others, the Caucasian, Georgian, Crimean and Ukrainian Republics. Mr. Ketchum visited almost every country in the world for the London Daily Express as a Foreign Correspondent. He speaks with authority on Soviet Russia, having been an eye witness of events during the time of many of the momentous changes which that nation underwent.
THE Russian Orthodox Church has been resurrected in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Attended by all the pomp and circumstance of its ancient rites and rituals, a midnight ceremonial, recently conducted by the church in the Moscow Cathedral, formally and publicly installed a new Patriarch for all the Russias.
The news has been hailed throughout the world as a great triumph for Christendom and for the institution, in general, of religion. To those not conversant with political developments in the Soviet Union in recent years, it came as a complete surprise. For, to many millions and to the majority of churchmen in Christian and, indeed, in other lands, Moscow, since the revolution, had been regarded as a sort of world citadel of communism and, therefore, of outright atheism. The world could not forget that in the early post-revolutionary days the higher councils of the then ruling Communist Party, which completely dominated the Supreme Soviet or Parliament of Russia, had to all intents and purposes banished not alone the Russian Orthodox Church but all religious institutions from their scheme of things to come.
It was my privilege as the Special Correspondent of the Beaverbrook London Daily Express to undertake the first of many subsequent assignments to Moscow, in the winter of 1922-23. Lenin, leader of the revolution, lay dying behind the then red but now white walls of the historic
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Kremlin located in the heart of the new capital. The country was just beginning to emerge from the ravages of one of the most widespread famines in history; that, of course, which followed in the wake of Russia’s last war against the Germans and her subsequent revolution. The revolution had taken place but forces were still at work, mostly in clandestine fashion, in a last determined if not desperate attempt to restore the old order. In the vanguard of that movement were the two most powerful of Russia’s pre-revolutionary churches, the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic. Their leaders and followers alike had fought openly in the revolutionary period itself. But the Red Army had become firmly established and with its advent, supported by an equally powerful Checka or secret political police, those, including churchmen, still hopeful of a counter-revolution were driven underground.
The churches took a proper stand at the time. They had become part and parcel of the Czarist regime. The Russian Orthodox was the official state church and as such was heavily subsidized by the state. The Roman Catholic Church functioned independently, as always it must do, but it owed its development and prosperity in Russia largely to the freedom which it enjoyed under Czarist rule. Both churches had accumulated vast property holdings. They commanded the support between them of millions upon millions of religiously-minded Russian citizens. It was to preserve that heritage that they fought and upon many occasions fought with a grim ferocity.
It was that attitude and that stand which provoked the conflict between church and state with the coming of the power of the Soviet. Flamboyant banners strung across street intersections throughout the length and breadth of the new Union proclaimed religion to be the opiate of the people. Church leaders including scores if not hundreds of bishops and priests, Russian Orthodox and Catholic alike, were arrested and imprisoned while the edifices which formerly they controlled were confiscated and in countless instances converted into anti-religious museums, into workers’ clubs and to sundry other uses.
There developed at about that time an organization whose influence spread like wildfire. It became known as the Militant Atheist Society. The Kremlin’s communist hierarchy took pains to emphasize, mostly for the edification of the outside world, that this was not in any sense an official body. It was officially described as purely a voluntary group of free citizens which had chosen to stamp out religion in the interests of a truly “democratic” state.
I recall a memorable occasion upon which I visited the offices of the Organizing Secretary of the Militant Atheist Society in the Red capital. His first disclosure was a claimed membership of 5,000,000 men and
FOURTH QUARTER 1943
149
women. He then pointed to a large-scale map which covered one of the high walls of his main office. That map was densely pin-pointed to indicate how the new Godless League had taken hold in cities, towns and villages, in offices, factories and upon farmlands, in every quarter of the Union. Plans for the future, as outlined to me, gave little ground for a belief or hope that religious institutions as such could survive in the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As I concluded my hour’s interview, I was handed several copies of the society’s official organ. It was a magazine of about the dimensions of the Saturday Evening Post. It bore the title The Be^bojnik which, translated into English, means The Atheist. \ The first copy I perused carried as its cover-page illustration a caricature of Christ presiding over a whisky-still. Bishops and priests were similarly pilloried on page after page as racketeers and exploiters of the people. Artists, described as among the most talented in the Union, contributed these drawings in the interests of the cause. Men and women, claimed to be among Russia’s most gifted writers, were represented in the fantastically blasphemous literature which comprised the publication’s reading matter. The Secretary of the Militant Atheist Society told me on that occasion that the magazine had attained a circulation of at least 5,000,000 and would probably exceed 10,000,000 in another year or so.
Russia’s Supreme Soviet or Parliament by this time had abolished the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The days of the week as we in the English-speaking world know them—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and so on—had vanished into the limbo of forgotten institutions. All the age-old days of rejoicing accepted by the Christian world, including Christmas and Easter, were no more. These Christian feast or holidays were replaced first by four and later by five national public holidays associated with the revolution.
Incorporating these national holidays only, Russia established her own calendar which for some time provided for a 73-week year. This was formally developed into the Soviet’s “Eternal Calendar” when on October 6, 1923, (Revolution Day) the Council of People’s Commissars solemnly proclaimed an arrangement which gave five days to a week, six weeks to a month, plus five holidays with national instead of weekday names. These holidays were: January 9, Peasants’ Massacre, 1905; January 21, Lenin’s Death-day; May 1, International Labor Day; October 26, Revolution Day; November 7, Kerensky Flight. Leap-Year Day became a quadrennial holiday known and recognized as Industrialization Day.
The chief purpose of this calendar was to increase production insofar as it would ensure that machines in the factories would never cease to operate. Workers were issued yellow, pink, red, purple and green cards. Each became entitled to one free or rest day in the five-day week, each
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color representing the particular day upon which the holder was to be free. By this arrangement rest days were staggered. There was no common weekly holiday such as Sunday.
The system wrought one great hardship upon the family. For no consideration was given in the distribution of the free-day cards to workers with family ties. Thus Alexei Alexeieovitch, father of say a family of four grown children, all working, downed tools on the Russian equivalent of our Monday. For he held a yellow card. But his son, Alexei Alexeieovitch the second (junior), carried a green card. Thus his free day would fall on the equivalent of our Wednesday. The wife and mother of the family, Natasha Alexandrovna, had been issued by her factory chieftain a pink card so that her rest or free day probably fell upon the equivalent of our Friday or Saturday. And so forth, as far as that and the average Russian family at that time was concerned.
This hardship would not have been felt so acutely were it not for the fact that in these early post-revolutionary days the family home had been replaced by the workers’ communal club. Rarely under the then prevailing housing system was it possible for a family to live together as a single unit under a single roof. The law provided that each individual, man and woman, was entitled to so many arshins of floor space in a dwelling. The dimensions of that space gave the average Russian individual living space the size of a small bedroom in the average worker’s home in America. No provision for the family was made under this plan. The members of the family were expected to come together when they so desired in their neighborhood communal clubs. When wives were due to have children their problem was solved by having child-birth take place in the nearest communal day nursery. As time passed concessions were made to the desires of families to be together, but for many years families remained hopelessly and unhappily segregated, one member from another. Thus when the state introduced the idea of the staggering free day, a father seldom saw his wife or son or daughter. For all but one worked when one was free and vice versa. This hardship applied likewise to friends and sweethearts. It created widespread discontent in every section of that far-flung Union.
The “Eternal Calendar” remained the law of the land in Russia until December 1, 1931, when it was replaced by another. Its successor, still strictly a Russian calendar, provided for a 12-month year with the same holidays as before and the same extra day for leap year. Months were given 30 days and the weeks of six days were arranged to end on the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th, and 30th of the months. The staggering free or rest day was abolished. The dates mentioned became common national
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rest days, save in some industries; rest days for workers and machines alike. The colored card system was discontinued and once more families rested and relaxed together.
Significant was the fact that in these two Russian calendars the name days of the week as we know them were eliminated. That elimination included Sunday in such a carefully calculated sense that the dates enumerated as free days could not fall on the Sunday of the Gregorian or Julian calendar. Yet the 1931 calendar was a marked advance in their calendar reform. It restored to the family some semblance of family unity and convenience. It gave friends an opportunity to meet upon a common day of the week. It brought a new spirit of contentment, if not of happiness, to millions of Russian citizens and, with an extension of concessions in the matter of housing accommodation, led to a development of what we describe as home or family life. Workers still spend evenings in their communal clubs and communal theaters, but they have turned more and more to the privacy and comfort of their little apartment homes. That is to say urban workers.
Russia’s government throughout its period of experiment in calendar arrangements has encountered its most formidable difficulty in imposing calendar changes upon those millions working on their state collective farms. Russia’s farmer-peasants through the ages have worked with calendars based in a general sense on the four seasons—spring, summer, autumn and winter. Millions stuck to the old monthly and weekly divisions of the Julian calendar, stubbornly declining decreed changes, long after the revolution. They planned their work according to the seasons and to the months and weeks prescribed by a calendar to which they and their fathers before them had been accustomed. Many hundreds of thousands even marked Sunday conspicuously on their improvised calendars and, when no longer possible to attend church on that day, conducted clandestine services of their own, using a hidden but carefully preserved ikon as the symbol of their worship and beliefs.
I toured the whole of European Russia in the summer of 1934. I travelled down the Volga River to the Crimea, through the Caucasus, the Georgian Autonomous Soviet Republic, and through the rich black earth farming region of the Ukraine. I visited many state-controlled collective farmlands, and, arriving at some of these on the day equivalent to our Sunday, was able to observe how many of these sturdy peasant farm workers still clung to their ikons and religious relics including wall decorations of the past.
It was that apparent non-interference with their religious feelings which convinced me as far back as 1934 that Russia was veering away
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from her earlier anti-religious policies. I noticed this metamorphosis in the same year in Moscow and also in Leningrad. For, after an absence from the Union of two or three years, I was to find that the Militant Atheist Society had long since ceased to exist. The Bejbojnik or Atheist magazine was no longer in circulation. Churches were being renovated and reconstructed and people even in Moscow were openly going again to services conducted by Russian Orthodox priests on the equivalent of our Sundays.
It was true that the aged Patriarch Tikhon, Russian Orthodox Patriarch of all the Russias in 1922-23 (when first I visited the new Red capital), had been tried for alleged counter-revolutionary activities. I had visited him at his datcha or summer bungalow on the outskirts of Moscow several times in his period of exile, pending his trial. Later I attended his brief trial which ended with an acquittal after he signed a declaration assuring the government that he would not further counsel opposition among his followers to the newly-established Soviet power.
I attended, too, the trial of Polish-born Monsignor Tsepliak, Roman Catholic Primate of Russia in the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, and early post-revolutionary days. His trial, with that of about 25 or 26 Catholic prelates, took place in the old Hall of Nobles in the heart of the business section of Moscow, a stone’s throw from the Great Ballet Theater. It was a dramatic affair which might have ended in the deaths of many of the arraigned priests were it not for the publicity given the trial by the correspondents, including myself, and the consequent outcry raised by the world at large, expressed in strongly-worded telegraphic protests which poured into Moscow from most if not all nations. The aged Catholic primate received a two years’ prison sentence but some months later was freed and permitted to return to Rome when Italy concluded her first Trade Agreement with the Kremlin.
These events it should be stressed occurred before the advent of Joseph Stalin to the leadership of Russia’s Supreme Soviet or Parliament. Leon Trotsky, since exiled from Russia and murdered in Mexico, seemed at that time destined to inherit the mantle of his close friend Lenin. He was Minister of Defense for many years and as such leader of the Red Army. It was not until he and Stalin differed over the necessity of a world revolution as a preliminary step toward success in Russia that Trotsky’s power and popularity began to wane. With his exit went Zinovieff, one-time head of the Third World Communist International, his brother-in-law Kameneff and others who had formed a pro-Trotsky bloc against Stalin and his friends, in a plot to assume supreme power.
It was then that Joseph Stalin with a policy of socialism in one country in our time began his ascent to a position which since has made of him
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one of the world’s most powerful, and, among United Nations, a most influential national leader.
Stalin, as many know, was born in Gori, a little town eight miles from Tiflis, capital of Georgia. His parents were members of the Russian Orthodox Church and being persons of deep religious conviction, contrived to send Joe to the Georgian Theological (Russian Orthodox) Seminary in Tiflis. Their wish was fulfilled for their son finally found himself a theological student in that seminary. What happened to end his career there has never been clearly established but the historic fact remains that he did work and study in that seminary for one or more years before applying his energies to politics.
Now the world awakes one morning to read that after conversations with Joseph Stalin there has been recreated, with the full sanction of the Soviet Government, the Russian Orthodox Church with a duly elected patriarchate holding dominion over all of Russia’s 8,000,000 square miles of territory.
The bare announcement is important political news in itself; perhaps the most important political development in Russia since Stalin’s rise to power as the Union’s first statesman. More important and deeply more significant have been the photographs which have been coming out of Russia in the last year, relating to the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church. A recent batch of these photographs, perused by this writer, portray high dignitaries of the Russian Church—many of them—presiding in their rich ceremonial robes at Easter services all over the Russian Union. The pictures have been labelled by the official Soviet Photographic Trust “scenes at Russian Easter services.” Details of the rituals recited by the Russian Orthodox prelates have been recounted and emphasis placed upon the fact that the services were in recognition of Easter Day and everywhere were widely attended.
Does it not seem possible, therefore, if indeed not probable, that Russia, perhaps only by virtue of the sufferings of her people in common with those of the United Nations in this war, plans to return holus-bolus to the principles and practices of Christianity as they prevail in so many other lands? Easter has not been the only Christian holiday which the Russian people have been encouraged to celebrate since the war began. Moscow correspondents last Christmas gave considerable space to colorful descriptions of Christmas services and festivities and doubtless will be called upon so to do again this year. These Christmas services and festivals observed in the Julian calendar still used by the Russian Church are celebrated on January 7, thirteen days after the Christmas of the Western Gregorian calendar. The Archbishop of York, who recently visited the new Metropolitan-Patriarch in Moscow, stated publicly upon his return to England
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that the new Russian Church is entirely free: “Stalin,” the Archbishop said, “being a great statesman, has recognized the power of religion.”
That being so, a return of Sunday, throughout the Soviet Union, appears inevitable. With the return to Sunday of the week, there must come Monday, Tuesday and the remaining days of the old pre-revolutionary week.
It is not surprising in these circumstances that Russia has given considerable attention to America’s World Calendar Movement. Outstanding Russians, time and again in recent years, have advocated calendar reform for the Union. Maxim Litvinoff, one-time Commissar of Foreign Affairs and later Russian Ambassador to the United States, acted as Rapporteur for the Transit Commission of the League of Nations at Geneva in January of 1937. The occasion was the League Council’s 96th session. M. Lit-vinoff’s report was an endorsement of calendar reform. It represented the result of more than a decade of study and research undertaken by the League’s globe-embracing organization. M. Litvinoff in presenting that report declared it to be a matter of the greatest possible pleasure to be able to advance the cause of calendar reform as one subject which he recognized as commanding a wide measure of support among his listeners. Newspaper correspondents in Moscow later reported that the Soviet Government strongly supported that calendar reform resolution.
It should be emphasized that M. Litvinoff at Geneva simply fulfilled his function as Rapporteur in presenting the report on calendar reform. He was not empowered so to do nor did he seek for a fleeting moment to commit his government either to the principle of calendar reform or approval of The World Calendar. Yet he revealed himself to be, as unquestionably he is, interested in, if not greatly impressed by, The World Calendar plan. Others similarly highly placed have expressed views on the proposal indicating Russia’s disposition at least to consider adoption of this calendar.
Russia probably more than any other nation today must feel the need for a calendar which will conform with those of other nations. She has become allied to the United Nations. Emerging from this war as one of our victorious allies, as now she cannot fail to do, she will continue to be a partner or ally of these nations in the peace years that lie ahead.
Today, officialdom in the land of the Soviet must make use of four different calendars. Reference to the old Russian Julian calendar must be made to compute events up to 1923. The five-day Russian calendar must be consulted in relation to events from 1923 to 1931. The former six-day Russian calendar must be used to cover the period from 1931 to 1940, when Russia returned to the seven-day week. Then, in her relations with the outside world, official Russia must turn to the existing Western Gregorian calendar.
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Five winters and several summer periods spent in the land of the Soviets since the early post-revolutionary days which I have described have convinced me that the Russians are a reasonable, logical, and, nowadays, progressively-inclined people. They have demonstrated upon many occasions during this war that they intend and hope to be permitted to cooperate to the fullest possible extent with the United Nations, which have stood beside them in their hour of peril, when peace comes. They have abolished world communism. They have restored complete freedom of religion. Is it not reasonable to suppose that they will go still further and revert not only to the normal seven-day week with its name days and months as we observe them, but agree to a common calendar as well; a calendar which 14 nations have now approved and which seems destined sooner or later to become a calendar for world-wide use? I believe that this will be Russia’s disposition; that, if for no other reason, she will adopt this new World Calendar as a gesture of her determination to work in harmony and in the closest association with the American, British and Chinese peoples when the war drums throb no longer and the battle flags are furled.
WESTWARD JOURNEY TAKES LESS FOOD
By Dr. C. H. Cleminshaw
From The Griffith Observer, Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, February, 1942
OTEAMSHIP companies would save money by running all their world tours to the west, because an eastward journey around the world consumes six more meals than a westward one. As one goes eastward, he sets his watch ahead and eats each meal a little sooner than a person who stays at home. When he gets back he finds that he has eaten three more meals than the rest of us. A traveler to the west sets his watch back and eats each meal a little later than a stay-at-home. He misses out on three meals. The difference between the two journeys is six meals. Those who wish to reduce their weight should take a world cruise to the west.

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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
STUDENT OF POSTWAR
PLANNING ADVOCATES
NEW CALENDAR NOW
By E. C. Rayner
E. C. Rayner, Editor and Publisher of the newly established Postwar Digest, which he terms “The Weekly Digest of Postwar Thinking,” is a writer, magazine creator and publication owner of note. He established the magazines Radio Digest, Advertising Agency, American Culture, and compiled and edited the Book of 500 Successful Advertising Plans and Ideas. No student and critic of postwar projects and plans, upon which the coming peacetime world order and prosperity must be rebuilt, is better qualified to write upon the subject currently.
WHAT is postwar planning?
It is hard to define, I would say, but surely it encompasses decisions and accomplishments which must be made and be recorded today, so that they may work out and reflect advantageously for all of us in the happy days to come when victory and world peace have been won.
Certainly postwar planning must be done today, without delay.
A comparative newcomer into the limelight of newspaper headlines and news pictures, the powerful Henry J. Kaiser, of ships, and dams, and planes, and steel, recently said:
“There is no need to belittle the conscientious planning which has been undertaken, but we are in grave danger of talking the postwar program to death. The time for doing has come. The specifications for postwar production should be under way. There should be a great inventory of projects on the shelves of American enterprise, ready for postwar delivery.”
Unquestionably the blueprints for postwar planning should be drafted and printed today, to be read and approved and projected.
Another voice has been raised, that of the editor of Steel Magazine, an important trade publication which speaks for the important steel industry. E. L. Shaner, who vzrites currently in that monthly paper, editorializes as follows:
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“You hear many arguments pro and con on the subject of postwar planning now. Some say we must forget it—that it detracts from winning the war. Others say, without planning, victory may only usher in defeat— defeat of everything for which we are fighting.
“It seems reasonable that to meet new problems successfully you must know what problems to expect. That requires study and analysis. To be prepared to do something about it when the right moment arrives calls for planning beforehand. It is the function of the military to make plans for war. It is the function of business to make the plans for peace.
“Such preparation and planning does not imply any sacrifice of maximum productive output nor any limitations of -ingenuity on behalf of winning the war. For certainly no one can accuse American business of having a one-track mind. It has always proved itself as capable of tremendous doing and farsighted thinking at one and the same time. To bring the boys home at the earliest possible date is the purpose which motivates all industry.
“But, we have another responsibility to these boys. It is, to be ready to go when they do come home—ready to launch plans that will give them what they most want, an opportunity to work and attain things and advan-ages they’ve been dreaming about over there. Let’s not be responsible for an Industrial Pearl Harbor.”
A confidential survey made by the Office of War Information among American soldiers at the war fronts reveals that one of their chief worries has to do with whether they can get their old jobs—or any jobs, for that matter—when they do get back home. When, and if, OWI decides to release these figures, American business men will have something startling to think about. It is not known just how far this soldier survey extended.
However, in one large combat unit, men were given blank paper and asked to write down just what was on their minds. There were no promptings of any kind, it is understood, and papers were turned in unsigned so no check of individuals could be made. Tabulated results showed that the postwar job outlook was the dominant topic in the soldiers’ thinking today. This should be a powerful stimulant in the project of postwar planning.
That “Puck” comic strip character, Snuffy Smith, whose frequent and famous expression, “time’s a-wastin’,” has the right idea about getting into action, though he frequently leaps before he looks, creating humorous difficulties and disasters over which his followers laugh no end.
We must not waste time, but should now definitely plan and project both in industry and agriculture for the assured employment of millions when the war is over for these United States or we will be courting disaster, and it is no laughing matter. Our national security is at stake, and the peace and continued security of the world can be seriously affected if we do not plan well, and “time’s a-wastin’.”
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For private enterprise and the American way of life in postwar days, Eric Johnston, President of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, warned in a recent address:
“Unless private enterprise can assure the worker of full employment after the war, the American people may decide to trade their freedom for some other form of government. Management will meet the challenge but industry must have some assurance with respect to their own security.
“This warning should be framed in large letters over every executive desk in Washington. But manufacturers should remember no public relations campaign conceivable can sell free enterprise to the American people, or any other people, unless free enterprise can show accomplishment.
“The people of Germany and Italy put security before freedom, and England, seeking security, is now leaning to the left. But we do not have to look beyond our own doorstep to Europe for proof. It was provided for us here in the United States during the thirties. And what was a prewar trend could become a postwar actuality.”
For the American worker on the farm, the United States Department of Agriculture predicts ample employment in postwar days. Government economists and farm officials are of the opinion that American farmers will have a market far greater than their ability to produce for at least five years after the war. The predictions are based on the prospect that the United States will have to send abroad for relief and rehabilitation even more food than it is now sending for lend-lease and military purposes.
Domestically the United States has never supplied its own population with enough of the right kinds of food to sustain good health as a whole. If our American people are permitted to buy all the food they want at present prices and conditions of a high level of employment, they will take all that farmers will be producing. Farm officials, on the basis of hopes that industrial production will be maintained at high levels in the postwar days, are planning to improve agricultural production and economic and social conditions of our farmers.
Officials estimate that at least 300,000 new farms would be needed to supply all food requirements from the United States. To make additional land available for settlement would require irrigation, drainage and clearing. It is estimated that there are something like 30 to 40 million acres of such land. Of this total 10 to 20 million acres could be reclaimed in Western states through irrigation, and another five million acres of fertile land in the Mississippi River delta through drainage.
About 15 million acres requiring drainage and clearing are located at various points over the country. Part of 20 million acres acquired by the Army and Navy could be returned to cultivation, to provide farms for at least 25,000 families. It has been suggested that this land, as well as reclaimed land, should be held for veterans. The reclamation program would
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be an important part of public works to provide employment during the reconversion and demobilization period at the war’s end.
One of America’s best known industrial designers, Raymond Loewy, warns of the danger of what he calls “postwar dream propaganda.” He recently wrote for The New York Times on this subject, and I quote in part:
“There is not a field that has not at some time been exposed to postwar dream treatment. Manufactured items that will afford shelter, clothing, food, health, travel, recreation, would seem to be trembling upon new thresholds of improvement. But the man who expects to turn his war bonds into a packaged home may have to wait longer than he now supposes. That nasty little element of time is the sticking-point in all this.
“The tendency of the average reader to skip happily over references to two years or more after the war may be the undoing of many reliable manufacturers of normal goods. Impression, consciously or unconsciously, is being made upon the consuming public which it may be difficult to temper. Product engineers see dangers of such propaganda.
“Two consequences of this public miseducation threaten—lag in buying and loss of confidence in industry’s potentialities. At the very time when mass employment is imperative, lag could have serious economic consequences.
“Unless the resumption model is accepted, successive advanced design will be delayed indefinitely. There is no reason this model should not be accepted. It is a good, tried and tested product.”
An equally prominent and forward-looking industrial designer and engineer, Walter Darwin Teague, is more optimistic as to the speed with which many new and improved products will be placed upon the postwar market, but states that in planning these products today for peacetime sale no designer or manufacturer is lessening his war production efforts.
“No one has diverted to postwar planning manpower hours which could be occupied in war work. But time has been found for thought and design to an extent that many postwar products are already well crystallized. Where it seems that major retooling will not be possible before the coming of peace, plans have been made to incorporate in prewar products all improvements that are feasible without major retooling; and plans for completely new and advanced products have been carried forward in time for these major changes.
“Competition after the war will be intense, unexpected, unprecedented. Shipbuilders will be making popular airplanes, airplane manufacturers will be making household appliances. Thousands of manufacturers who have got out of well-worn grooves in their war work will stay out and start making goods they never made before.
“It is my firm conviction, based on direct knowledge, that as soon as
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production can be resumed after victory, the public will be offered new and greatly improved models in most, if not all, lines of consumer goods. And, as soon as retooling and testing can be accomplished, new products will appear which will make the fanciful predictions that decorate our advertising pages today seem commonplace . . . [The public] does expect, with every right and justification, that major improvements will follow war just as fast as manufacturers can get them ready.”
The National Association of Manufacturers has reported, following its recent Postwar Industrial Research Survey, that, while “some armchair dreamers” paint fantastic pictures of a Utopian postwar world in which houses, automobiles, refrigerators and even human behavior will be revolutionized, this is idle fancy.
“More significant is the faith of scientists and engineers of American industry in the postwar future. Men of industry now are dealing with actual products and processes which Americans will enjoy within the next few years. Their testimony carries weight. It can be relied upon.
“It should be recognized that development contributing to faster, better and more efficient industrial production within industry is reflected in benefits to the consumer by way of lower prices and higher quality. Selling more goods at lower prices is America’s manufacturers’ road to profits, maximum employment and maximum benefit to consumers.”
The Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Wendell Berge, predicts that all of the postwar world will be our market and heralds an era of national prosperity and ample employment opportunities as soon as peace is won.
“A new industrial era is before us,” Mr. Berge believes. For example, he states: “Plastics and light metals will open up undreamed of horizons. Benefits from chemical developments are barely touched. Improved methods of transportation will amaze even the most farsighted.
“The American public and civilization as a whole will benefit from these technological improvements in direct relation to the extent of competition in these industries.
“All the world will be our market.
“We can pit the miracle of our mass production against the lethargizing effect of cheap labor in other countries—and we can bring competition to an even level. Disadvantage results only when we limit production and foster high prices. By so doing we surrender the advantages of our industrial perfection and reduce ourselves to competing solely on the basis of low wages.
“Rather than enter an era of controlled production and fixed prices, we should set our eyes toward the goal of unlimited production and the level of price advantage which flows from an economy of competitive enterprise. Such are the inherent rights of future Americans.”
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If we do go after and cooperate for this global market immediately following World War II, a vast majority of our postwar problems will have been solved, and certainly it would dissolve our greatest of all fears for coming peace days—that of unemployment. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce’s Committee on Economic Policy estimates that if postwar prosperity is to be achieved some 50 million Americans will have to have jobs, 11 million more or less who will return from service.
It would appear that the required high levels of employment for the postwar period can be achieved, for employers should have the incentives to put men to work with the greatly enhanced buying power of this nation’s public and the needs of the world to be met by America, or so the postwar picture looks today.
Emerson D. Schmidt, reporting for the CEP, says:
“In 1930 we had a shortage of employment offers because there was not sufficient incentive to induce employers to invest and expand. Utilization of all our manpower falls into two problems: (1) Using existing plant and equipment and (2) Creating new investment in providing jobs. Not only must the businessman have incentives to utilize what equipment he has, but in our type of society there must be constant expansion in employment facilities if we are to have prosperity. This is true for two reasons: (1) Our net labor supply increases annually at a rate of 700,000 people because of excess of births over deaths. (2) If saved portion of people’s income remains uninvested in real capital, this constitutes idle purchasing power and must bring stagnation.
“Prosperity is impossible without new investment. If safety of existing investments in factories, mines, forestry and service enterprises is impaired because of low earnings, incentives to make new investments in additional job-creating facilities will lag.
“Investment takes place only after careful prediction of the future. Every investment is an exercise in forecasting. Once dollars are converted into brick and mortar, into machines and equipment, these dollars become a sunk cost and as a rule they can be recovered only by making facilities profitable.”
Therefore the cry is for blueprints for the postwar world, so as to build wisely and well.
In this Chamber of Commerce report quoted above the economist, Emerson D. Schmidt, dismisses the short work-week for labor as no solution to labor problems. As he states, a “solution to unemployment is sought by reducing the length of the work-week, thus spreading employment. This is no real solution to the problem if we wish to hold our standard of living or increase it, because it divides up unemployment and does not materially increase output.”
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But in this blueprint for the postwar plans there is another “timing” and “saving” element which should be included now, before the war ends, to create a better and more orderly and efficient postwar world. I refer to r The World Calendar, of which I am an advocate.
There is no gainsaying the fact that The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters definitely simplifies office operation, manufacturing routine, industrial records, educational institutions and in fact all types of endeavor.
The fact that periods can be compared, that all days and dates remain constant year in and year out, that records and activities which must be planned anew each year become matters of mere routine, has convinced thousands of business men, educators, industrialists and retailers that this calendar should be adopted.
In view of the fact that this is the case, and that such organizations as the National Education Association, National Retail Dry Goods Association, New York State, Pittsburgh, Galveston and St. Louis Chambers of Commerce among others have either endorsed the calendar or have appointed study committees to investigate it, there can be no justifiable reason why the efforts toward adopting this calendar should be delayed until after the war.
The adoption of this calendar would assist war production, ease the burden of government accounting, and speed work all the way down the line. However, in spite of the support The World Calendar Association is receiving from innumerable organizations, should the adoption of the calendar be delayed until after the war, there is every reason why all the groundwork should now be laid in order that this should become a definite “must” at the peace table.
For the smooth adoption of The World Calendar, it is best to adopt it on the day, date and month when both the new World and the old Gregorian Calendars meet.
There are but few such dates: Saturday, December 30, 1944, when the following Sunday, December 31 in the Gregorian calendar, becomes the new World Holiday, extra Saturday, December W, in The World Calendar. Thus Sunday, January 1,1945, would see the new calendar in actual operation. The next date for adoption is Sunday, July 1, 1945, when both calendars meet.
In 1946 there are two dates: Friday, March 1, and Wednesday, May 1. Both these dates occur within the week, which is not as advantageous as the dates of 1944 and 1945. Action should be taken by the end of 1944 or the middle of 1945.
This becomes especially pertinent in view of the fact that 14 nations have already officially approved this orderly rearrangement of our present calendar. Unity and cooperation are without doubt one of the primary ob
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jectives of the Allied forces and the United Nations. It appears that this hoped-for unity could well be enhanced should the entire world establish a definite common denominator of time without delay.
Although the majority of nations now use the Gregorian calendar for their official correspondence, there are more people who do not use our Gregorian calendar in their personal life than those who do.
Therefore I advocate inclusion in the immediate drawing up of blueprints for pre-postwar planning of The World Calendar for adoption before World War II is over and the postwar period arrives. Make it a part of pre-postwar accomplishment for the better ordering of the new world we anticipate.
IT’S EASY—IF YOU HAVE THE TIME
INDICATIVE of the time wasted and the energy consumed in trying to find the day of the week of any date, we are indebted to Adam Rosenthal, a member of the St. Louis Advertising Club and manager of a life insurance agency in that city. Mr. Rosenthal has as a business card a formula by which the day of the week of any date can be ascertained, but the mental problems involved are, to say the least, complicated.
With his permission we are reproducing it below.
Add—(a) Century key
(b)	Year of century
(c)	One-fourth of that year (drop all fractions)
(d)	Month key
(e)	Date of month
Divide total by 7 and ignore quotient.
Remainder equals code for day of week.
Century Key	Month Key
1600	to 1699 is 4	*Jan. is	3	Jul.	is 2
1700	to 1799 is 2	*Feb. is	6	Aug.	is 5
1800	to 1899 is 0	Mar. is	6	Sept.	is 1
1900	to 1999 is 5	Apr. is	2	Oct.	is 3
2000	to 2099 is 4	May is	4	Nov.	is 6
		June is	0	Dec.	is 1
♦ In leap years Jan. is 2 and Feb. is 5
	Answer	Example:
1	Sunday	Date—Dec. 7, 1941
2	Monday	Add— (a) 5
3	Tuesday	(b) 41
4	Wednesday	(c) 10
5	Thursday	(d) 1
6	Friday	(e) 7
0	Saturday	
		7 | 64
(Memorize the form-		9 and 1 over
ula and baffle your friends.)		1 = Sunday
COPYRIGHT 1943. ADAM ROSENTHAL.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
U. S. DEPARTMENT HEAD GIVES ALTERNATE DATES FOR CALENDAR CHANGE
H. W. Bearce, Chief of the Division of Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards, Department of Commerce, long interested in calendar change, has written many articles for the Journal of Calendar Reform. His department has been a constant source of information relative to past and future days and dates.
MUCH has been written regarding the earliest date on which The World Calendar can be put into operation. This date is Saturday, December 30, 1944, when both the Gregorian and The World Calendar coincide. The following day, December 31 in the old calendar, would then be the Year-End Day on the extra Saturday, the World Holiday, December W, in the new. Thus the day, Sunday, and the date, January 1, will be initiated as the beginning of the year for all future years.
However, The World Calendar could be put into effect without any perceptible jar to our social or economic structure at a time when the first day of a quarter, i.e., January 1, April 1, July 1, or October 1, falls on Sunday. It could, in fact, with no interruption or discontinuity of dates or days of the week, be put into use when the first day of the first month of any quarter falls on Sunday, the first day of the second month of any quarter falls on Wednesday, or the first day of the third month of any quarter falls on Friday.
There would, in fact, be certain advantages gained by adopting it at some time other than Sunday, January 1, 1945. The date that would serve admirably as a starting time would be July 1, 1945, when Saturday, June 30, 1945, is followed by Sunday, July 1, 1945. There is, therefore, no necessity for waiting until January 1, 1950, 1956, or 1961, when January 1 falls on Sunday, before putting The World Calendar into use.
For the sake of comparison it is worth while to place side by side the two calendars for Sunday, July 1, 1945, to Saturday, December 30, 1945. From July 1 to August 30, the calendars are identical, then they change by only one or two days. In The World Calendar, the old date, December 31, is
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changed to the new World Holiday, December W, and, as we have seen, the beginning of the year is Sunday, January 1, 1946.
[The chart for the third and fourth quarters follows, this according to Mr. Bearce’s design.]
Gregorian Caler.d.ar
Vorid, Calendar
The differences are seen to be slight; and yet by these changes the calendar becomes perpetual, dates and days of the week become stabilized, the quarters become equal, school schedules and holidays become fixed, and statistics for corresponding calendar periods become comparable.
Unnecessary delay would be avoided; the fiscal year of the Federal Government and many private businesses begins on July 1; time would be afforded to become familiar with the new calendar before anything at all unusual would be required. The transition from the old to the new would be so simple and easy that the change would scarcely be felt.
Are not these slight changes justified, in view of the advantages to be gained?
Two other dates on which the change can be made are on the first day of the third month in the first quarter, Friday, March 1, 1946, and on the first day of the second month in the second quarter, Wednesday, May 1, 1946. These other possibilities are not as good because they break into the quarter-year divisions and also into the week itself. Concentration should therefore be directed to either the Saturday, December 30th date, end of 1944, or Sunday, July 1, 1945. Between the years 1946 and 1950 no such date is available. It is wise, therefore, for the change to be made before 1947 if civilization is not to wait until Sunday, January 1, 1950.
In view of the many benefits to be gained with The World Calendar there is no logical reason for postponing its adoption to the second half of this century.
*The extra Saturday, December W, the Year-End Day or World Holiday, follows December SO.
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JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
EDITORIAL JACK OF ALL
TRADES SEES HOPE
IN NEW WORLD CALENDAR
By Richard Stephenson
Probably Mr. Stephenson’s greatest bid for fame is as Editor of an authoritative primer on police work. This book, Police Methods for Today and Tomorrow, is widely read and is in the library of practically every police chief in America. Magazine editor, newspaper reporter, Mr. Stephenson has a wide experience in the publishing field. He was public relations counsel for the Brewery Industry Foundation, and served as a senior information officer with the United States Treasury Department for several years.
WHEN you’re a reporter, writer, author and public relations counsel, the calendar doesn’t mean too much to you. Life seems to roll around in a succession of days, some dull, some exciting and— of course—every one filled with back-breaking or skull-breaking work.
Pay days, if there were any that came with any regularity, always seemed to be fixed on a Friday. There was an exception to this rule, and it was when I was a publicity man for the Treasury Department. Then, pay days rolled around on the 1st and the 15th.
This was the first time that I realized the calendar could play tricks on a fellow. Some of the' older employees, veterans in the service of Uncle Sam, would occasionally bemoan the fact that they had to wait or to work two or three days longer between certain pay periods. And their songs of woe were seconded, in a much sweeter tone, by my good wife, who would point logically to the fact that it was necessary to tread lightly for a few days if we didn’t want the wolf to have pups on our doorstep.
The wolf, I might point out, and I are friends of old. He’s never been very far from my doorstep—or from me.
Of course, during the days when I was a reporter, covering the court house of a big industrial county, I’d curse the legal phraseology of the courts and the books of law from time to time. Elections are usually held on the Tuesday following the first (or is it the second?) Monday in Novem
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ber. Or, the Supreme Court would convene, by some neat legal masterminding, so I thought, on such and such a Tuesday after such and such a Monday in such and such a month. I’d have to tell the eager public all about that, after resorting to the calendar for a few minutes.
Then, I’d be able to write a paragraph or two, saying that the court would be in session on Tuesday, September 18, or 19, or whatever it happened to be.
I didn’t take the time to figure out that those ponderous announcements were dictated by the tricks the calendar we’re living by could and does play on courts of law, and our entire economic and social system.
The Federal Income Tax being a popular subject at the moment, brings to mind an occurrence during my Treasury days. The 15th, that fatal 15th, fell on a Sunday. What made it a particularly obnoxious and terrifying 15th was that the quarterly income tax payments fell due. The Internal Revenue Bureau, from Commissioner Guy Helvering (now a Federal Judge) on down to the 64 Collectors throughout the country and its possessions, announced with great clarity and frequency that payments received as of midnight Monday, the 16th, would be credited without penalty.
Despite these announcements, some of which I had an active hand in, hundreds and thousands of queries came in to swamp the beleaguered and overworked staff of deputies. A city editor with an inquisitive twist to his mind posed a question that I’ll confess I couldn’t and wouldn’t try to answer. It was: How much did the Government lose in interest on the two-day lapse in income deposits necessitated by the day’s grace?
If your income tax isn’t giving you enough trouble you might try to figure that one out on your next sleepless night. It might be better than counting sheep.
The fact that a great many business men, and the number is growing by leaps and bounds, are giving some serious thinking to this question of the calendar, was driven home to me.
A friend of mine who publishes a daily paper met me shortly after New Year’s Day. He was mad, mad clear through. He has a reputation, I might point out, for his business acumen and frugality. In other words, he makes money out of running a newspaper and likes it.
His tale of woe ran thusly: Christmas fell on a Friday last year. He and his staff tried to decide how many papers to publish on the Saturday following Christmas. It seems that about half the store owners decided to lock their doors on that Saturday, while the other half were going to stay open.
By the Wednesday before Christmas he was in a quandary. His astute circulation manager confessed, with a fallen face, that he couldn’t figure out how many papers would be sold on the corners and in the stores, while
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the advertising manager admitted that he didn’t know how many columns of advertising the Saturday issue would carry.
The result was bad—very bad. My friend the publisher still refuses to tell how many thousands of papers he was stuck with on the Saturday following the Christmas that fell on Friday. And the loss wasn’t confined to the paper stock alone. Think of the labor costs that were added to the debit side of that day’s books I
It didn’t make my friend feel any better to console him with the thought that thousands of other publishers throughout the country were in the same boat. But it did give us some new inkling of the confusion that arises from a calendar that won’t stay put.
It might be human nature, but these men, who shrug their shoulders if they guess wrong at the track or on the Yanks, Dodgers or some prize fighter, fly into a towering rage if proved wrong at their given trade or profession. And so it goes with a calendar that refuses to remain the same year after year. These shifting dates and wavering holidays are as dangerous to the publishing business, and any other commerce for that matter, as the shifting quicksands on some beach area. To paraphrase the night club M.C.: “it ain’t good.”
Of course, there are times when the variations in the present calendar aren’t funny. One of the most striking examples of these is the fund drives that the welfare associations put on annually.
I had some first-hand experience with these welfare agencies when I wrote publicity for the Newark Welfare Federation. This agency was the central fund-raising vehicle for 55 private relief agencies that devoted their every effort toward alleviating the distressing conditions among the poor of Newark. One month was devoted to the fund raising. It took these agencies about one million dollars a year to operate. They needed this money badly—needed it because their patients or clients needed the services these monies provided them with.
Thus, every day was important, extremely important, during campaign time. Every day during the drive so much money had to be pledged by the residents and workers of Newark. Time was of the essence. Campaigns are seldom extended beyond the date publicly announced for their closing. Thus, money had to flow into the coffers of the Federation day and night during the month picked for the drive. And if there were more than four Sundays during the campaign month, it meant a falling off in revenue.
The reason for this is obvious: Volunteer workers devoting as much of their day as possible and all of their nights during a busy campaign week are plum played out at the end of the week. By the time Sunday rolls around they need rest. They have to have it in order to carry on during the next week at their own jobs and the work of fund-raising.
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Given The World Calendar, there would be none of these problems. There would be none of the monetary losses that some campaigns for such worthy causes as welfare work suffer because of the extra Sunday or Saturday that turned out to be the first of the month. This calendar offers gratuitously a perfect plan with every quarter a perfect unit of an even 91 days, or 13 weeks or 3 months, approximating one season. And, in addition, every day and date agrees year in, year out.
The present tricky calendar of ours assumed greater significance during the time I worked as an editor for one of the larger publishing groups. Magazines are planned months in advance. Closing dates, the day when the last “t” is crossed and the last “i” dotted, are inexorable. You observe them or else.
But in order to turn out a magazine that will stand up against the competitors’, a great deal of elasticity must prevail in the editorial and mechanical departments. You live with that changing calendar in front of you. Sometimes a quarter will have 92 days, sometimes 90 days. Whichever way you figured it, there was always overtime.
Little things contribute to the success or failure of any venture. And the circulation of any magazine or paper depends on little things. If for some reason or other—an extra holiday or a month with more Sundays than Saturdays—a magazine fails to reach the stands when it should, there can be trouble.
The minor delay of a day or two gives the hard-riding and zealous competition a head start. The entire national sale is affected, the advertising proposals must be changed to meet the loss in circulation. Then, there is the disgruntled dealer who loses a sale and the regular reader who takes another “book” and perhaps likes it better than yours.
All this woe because of the calendar, that is so hopelessly without plan, wherein nothing fits.
Among other things, I’ve written a police textbook. And I’ve spent a lot of time in civil and criminal courts. Dates play a major part in any court action. So important a part, that if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a lawyer level his finger at some hapless person in the witness box and thunder, “Where were you on such and such a date?” I’d retire to the sunny South for life.
And, as I look back at the countless thousands of people I’ve met, I realize how important The World Calendar is to every man jack of them. Lawyers, judges, court officers, editors, publishers, business men, advertisers, government workers and ad infinitum.
What with war, taxes and just everyday living, life is complicated enough without the annoyance, the unnecessary annoyance, of a shifting, tricky calendar.
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“CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS”
BY WAY OF ARTHUR HALE
A nation-wide audience, according to Mutual Broadcasting System consisting of more than 15 million people, tunes in on Arthur Hale’s “Confidentially Yours” six days a week. Through the efforts of Transradio News, this commentator gives to his listening audience facts and figures not usually a part of the news stories you read each day in your newspapers. They are behind-the-scene word pictures about people and events, so interestingly presented that Arthur Hale’s “Confidentially Yours” is considered one of the top radio features. Below we give a portion of his broadcast for October 1, 1943.
WE have stories for you tonight about one of New York’s most interesting women, and about one of this city’s most unusual organizations.
One of New York’s most interesting individuals is Miss Elisabeth Achelis, who is devoting most of her time—and a great deal of money—to a campaign for adoption of a new World Calendar—a calendar which would become common to all nations.
Unlike many workers for many causes, Miss Achelis is not seeking profit. In fact, she is independently wealthy, and personally pays a portion of the expenses of The World Calendar movement which now has many thousands of members in the United States and 31 affiliated calendar committees in other nations.
The World Calendar, simply explained, calls for a calendar dividing the year into four quarters of three months each. Each quarter would have 91 days, the first month having 31 days and the remaining two months, 30 days each. The 365th day of the year would become a World Holiday, and the extra day in leap year would be taken care of by another holiday. Under this plan, the days of the month would always fall on the same day of the week, and holidays would be on the same day every year.
Fourteen nations have formally endorsed the idea of the common calendar and agreed to adopt it when other nations do. Now, Miss Achelis hopes that The World Calendar may become a reality even before the nations sit down at the postwar peace table.
The World Calendar Association sees a possible entering wedge in
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Russia’s calendar difficulties. After the revolution Russia abolished the Gregorian calendar, used in most of the English speaking world.
The name-days of the week such as Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., vanished from the minds of the Russian people. In place of it there was established a purely Russian calendar which called for five days of work known as first, second, third, fourth and fifth day. The five days were followed by a sixth identified on the Russian calendar simply as Free or Rest Day. When Russia returned to the six-day work-week another calendar was introduced which provided for the seventh day as Free or Rest Day. Rest days were staggered in the interests of non-stop production. In order to minimize confusion, workers were given cards of different colors, the color denoting which was to be the worker’s particular weekly rest day.
Foreign office officials in Moscow and those charged with the responsibility of dealing with foreign nations in the matter of trade were faced with the confusion of having to bear in mind the days of the week and dates as they applied to other nations including those using the Gregorian calendar. Time and again Russian officialdom has publicly admitted the difficulties under which the country labored owing to its calendar problems.
Recent correspondence indicates that there is a possibility that Russia may adopt The World Calendar—although Moscow hesitates to confuse her situation still further and will not take the action unless she is convinced that the other major powers will follow suit.
1944 CALENDAR CONTRAST CARDS READY
AS has been the practice for the past several years, The World Calendar Association has again printed calendar contrast cards.
Printed on cream color stock with the legend in blue, these calendars for 1944 briefly and concisely, and, one might say, at a single glance tell the convincing story of The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters.
It has become the habit for many people interested in calendar reform to write the Association for a supply of these small but useful calendars. An adequate supply is on hand so that those who want the calendar contrast cards for 1944 for personal use or for distribution among friends can be assured that they will not be disappointed.

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THE COUNT AND
THE CALENDAR
(A satirical fable)
By George Kent, Former Director of Public Information, League of Nations Association of the U. S. A.
MY friend, Count d’Idio, is a refreshing contrast to most people I know. The others think only of getting things done quickly, efficiently; they think only of their comfort. They crowd their kitchens with labor-saving devices, ride in the latest model cars—when they can get them—sleep and lounge on soft, springy beds and couches.
Not so the Count. He adores the difficult and roundabout. When offered an innerspring mattress he sighs aloud for the days when he slept on the ground with a rock for a pillow. Turning on a chromium faucet, he remarks, “Comfortable, yes—but it’s better to take a pail and walk a half-mile to a spring for your water. Then you appreciate it.”
To all the comforts and short-cuts of modern life, he has the same retort: “Effete, debilitating I” I have known the Count for a long time and I cannot help observing that between the words and actions of the Count there is a wide divergence. I have observed that he sprawls an inordinately long time on the mattresses he disdains, that far from walking great distances for his water, he will not walk the steps necessary to have his breakfast in the dining room but insists on having it served in bed.
To everybody his inconsistencies, say I.
But it is the Count’s outspoken opinions on problems of the day that interest me most. He is as set against all change and progress as he is (verbally) against plumbing and good beds. On the subject of the calendar he is particularly forthright.
“I love the old calendar,” he says. “It’s crude and difficult, of course— but so is nature. The old calendar makes a man think when he wants to discover a date. And that’s a splendid thing. What is the mind for if not to think? Besides, it cultivates the sense of poesy in the people; my happiest moments have been spent incanting: Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. .. .”
Usually he will add: “We must do things the hard way if we are to develop our characters, and if civilization is to survive. And the old calendar is hard and wrong and awkward. Best of all, it has naught to do with
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the modern tempo. This mechanical era of ours, in which everything clicks and moves with the maximum of efficiency, requires, no doubt, a new calendar, more in the spirit of the time. But I’m naturally against all this.
“The calendar is to this age what the spinning wheel is—a reminder of old times, a breath of antiquity floating through the twentieth century.”
Arrant nonsense, you will say. Certainly. But the Count quite convinces himself of his own arguments. Yet I remember a day when his actions seemed to belie his words as far as the calendar was concerned. If I remember rightly, he actually cursed our “spinning-wheel system” of reckoning time.
Descendant of an old Spanish family, possessor of a gaudy coat of arms, the Count is poor and is obliged now and then to work for a living. The episode I have in mind occurred at a time when the Count was in love with a sweet girl of my acquaintance who had the great merit of being wealthy. A marriage with the young lady, he was convinced, would assure him a life of happiness and he was doing everything possible to bring this desirable event to pass.
The opportunity for such a consummation arrived in the form of an invitation from the girl’s family to spend a day at their place in the country, a village so remote that there was only one train a day to be had by anyone who wanted to visit it. The Count accepted the invitation and made his preparations.
He was then working in New York and on the Saturday morning he was to set out for the country, he received a check for services he had rendered one of his occasional employers. The check was important for it represented all the money the Count possessed at the time. The train left at noon and so at 11 o’clock the Count, suitcase in hand, presented the check at the bank for cashing.
The teller glanced at the check and pushed it back through the wicket. “Sorry,” he said, “wrong date.” The Count examined the check, stared at the date, saw nothing wrong, pushed it back again. “How do you mean, sir?” he queried indignantly. “There is nothing wrong with the date.”
The bank clerk sighed and put his finger on the date. “Mister,” he said, “whoever gave you the check needs a calendar. Remember, Thirty days hath September . . . well, this check is dated September 31 and there ain’t no such date. If you can get whoever gave you the check to write you another one with the correct date, I’ll be glad to cash it.”
The Count swore as only a Spaniard can swear. He damned the calendar with its irregular, unbalanced system of reckoning time, this way, that way, up and down, purgatory, hell, and from every one of the 409 angular degrees of limbo—and dashed from the bank to telephone. It was Saturday, drawing close to noon, and he had to wait for a booth. His employer was out but was expected soon. The Count chartered a taxi, dashed for the
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office and when he arrived had to wait 15 minutes before the man, who had committed the error in the dating, arrived.
A stout good-natured man, this employer, he cackled over the error he had made. “Never was able to keep those things straight in my mind, why doesn’t somebody change the darned calendar? It’s as old fashioned as shoe buttons.”
The Count stood there pale and thin lipped, as the man wrote a new check. No cash was available. The check was the best he could do for the scion of Spanish grandees. To make a long story short, the Count missed the train and, in missing it, lost the girl. At least that is what I’ve been told. Life is full of grotesque episodes of this kind.
Count d’ldio, I understand, returned to his little apartment where hung a calendar presented to him by the local grocer, a lovely thing featuring a basket of fish. And there he spent 15 minutes firing both barrels of his shotgun at the pad of misshapen dates. The superintendent of the house summoned the police and the Count was taken to court. This part of the story is a matter of record and can be found in the files of the Seventh Magistrate’s Court in New York City.
The Judge, a sympathetic individual, saw the logic of the Count’s action, and released him with this remark:
“Young man, you only did what all of us have wanted to do to the calendar at one time or another. But remember you can’t reform the calendar with a shotgun.”
Count d’ldio, a jewel of inconsistency, never quite forgot the incident but often I have heard him rhapsodizing over that sign of a bygone age— the present calendar. “It’s a rough-hewn instrument,” he says, “like the wooden plowshare. It is a monument.”
To me privately he said under his breath, after one of these discourses, “Imagine sewing up a rip in your pants with a monument. Imagine a WAC or a lady welder in a crinoline. That’s the twentieth century with the old calendar.”
To every man his idiosyncracies, say I. Confidentially, let me say that in Count d’ldio, who talks against beds but sleeps in them, who berates plumbing but wallows in hot water, we have a typically ardent supporter of the streamlined calendar, especially one like the perpetual World Calendar of equal quarters, wherein days and dates stay put, a calendar which modernizes without destroying.

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THE THIRD MILLION
WAS THE EASIEST
By Joe Roberts, Press Representative, “Stars On Ice,” Center Theatre, Rockefeller Center.
IT was in the summer of 1940 that Miss Sonja Henie, three-time Olympic winner and tenth consecutive world’s figure-skating champion, together with Arthur M. Wirtz, Chicago executive and operator of the huge Chicago Stadium, made arrangements with G. S. Eyssell, managing director of the Center Theatre, to convert the Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center into America’s first and only ice theater.
The premiere of “It Happens on Ice,” on the evening of October 10, 1940, found in the audience many of Broadway’s foremost actors, national political figures and New York socialites.
More than three million people have paid to see the first and second editions of “It Happens on Ice,” and the first two editions of “Stars on Ice,” of which the second is still playing at the Center Theatre. It is believed that this combined figure established a new all-time high in attendance for a legitimate show in New York.
Even the most optimistic of Broadway showmen gave the ice show at the most sixty days when it opened in 1940. A combination of excellence in performance, special features, the manner in which it is produced, together with careful planning, has made all of these pessimistic show veterans “eat their words.”
After all, ice reviews on a mammoth scale are only about seven years old. In the spring of 1936, Miss Henie and Mr. Wirtz, she the glamour girl of the silvery surfaces, and he a successful businessman, recognized in each other something that was needed to bring ice skating as stage entertainment to the heights of their conception of what it should be.
So they planned a production of stature in keeping with the finest traditions of the musical comedy stage.
In this production only seven years ago, Miss Henie appeared as a star in the first huge all professional ice carnival at the Chicago Stadium. She has made skating history.
Today, as co-producer of “Stars on Ice,” she finds time to present and is ^starred in the “Hollywood Ice Review,” a touring ice show on the road
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less than three months, playing to thousands of people in the principal cities of America.
The operation of the Center Theatre is big business beyond the conception of the average member in the audience. There are one hundred and one champion skaters in the cast. An orchestra of sixteen musicians led by David Mendoza, furnishes the special music for this extravaganza. The pay roll of the non-professional people is huge, because the stage crew, the engineers for the ice plant, publicity, box office and executive staffs number over one hundred.
The ice plant is a factory in its own right. Fifty tons of ice are manufactured every twenty-four hours to make this novel stage possible. Someone with a sharp pencil has figured that this would supply a city of ten thousand people with ice sufficient for their needs. Bringing these figures nearer to earth, it means that two thousand homes could be supplied with fifty pounds of ice each, a day.
The stage, ice covered, includes forty-two hundred square feet, and is one hundred feet wide and sixty feet deep. The brine necessary to cover this vast stage with ice one inch deep is circulated through a total of more than thirteen thousand feet of pipe. The plant is never turned off.
It is in operation twenty-four hours a day. But the operation of this huge plant does not approximate the headaches that are occasioned by the production of the show itself. More than ninety members of the company and the theater staff have been called to active military service. Three members of that famous quartet, “The Four Bruises,” are with the armed forces. Such famous skaters as Skippy Baxter, Neil Rose, Meryl Baxter, and Tommy Lee are among those who have answered the call of their country.
But the Army and the Navy are not the only factors with which Catherine Littlefield, the director, has to contend. Romance has blossomed nineteen times, and of these nineteen couples three have produced offspring who will probably be skating at the Center Theatre ice show when they reach the ripe old age of seventeen.
The cast does nine shows a week, including Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday matinee. There are six night shows, with no production either Monday afternoon or Monday night.
In spite of this continual grind, William H. Burke, the executive director, finds time to take the entire show to West Point each year, where it is produced on the Army ice rink. One thousand tickets a week go to soldiers and sailors. These are distributed through the USO. Arrangements have been made to entertain wounded soldiers from the Halloran Hospital on Staten Island and the Naval Hospital at St. Albans.
The hazards and the worries that confront those producing “Stars on
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Ice” are mirrored up and down Broadway and wherever paid entertainment is a factor. Few people realize the terrific overhead, the staggering obligations and the involved hazards in the operation of places of entertainment in this country. Jimmy Durante, in eight crowded weeks at the Copacabana, grossed an excess of $233,000. When Harry James played the Paramount Theater, the first week showed $105,000 in the box office. Playing at the Strand Theater, Jimmy Dorsey topped this figure with $112,000.
It was only a year or so ago that Frank Sinatra, a New Jersey boy who has something in his voice that, as his press agent says, makes women swoon, was earning $75 a week. Today he receives $2,000 a week for his night club appearances, an extra $1,000 for singing three songs on the Hit Parade, and Columbia has received orders for more than seven hundred thousand records of “All or Nothing at All.”
Bea Wayne, recently featured on the Hit Parade and the “Magic Key” programs, gets royalties from two million, five hundred thousand copies of “Deep Purple” alone.
It takes money, lots of money, to pay these salaries, not taking into consideration the huge pay rolls that accumulate from lesser but well-paid performers. But it is not all velvet. There are long hours of rehearsal. Few people know of the nerve-racking days spent in perfecting a production.
People in the “seats on the aisle” mildly or wildly applaud a number or an actor, never realizing, whether it is a featured skating number or maybe a few hot licks by a well-known clarinetist, the gigantic investment in time, temper and energy that has gone into that one bit of the show.
It takes upwards to $100,000 to produce a well-balanced musical comedy or icetravaganza. The financial hazard is only approximated by playing the stock market on small margins.
But Miss Henie and Mr. Wirtz, two of the keenest “showmen” in the business, felt that they really had something in their pioneering with ice shows. The success with which they have met has been the result of capable planning, instinctive showmanship, keen assistants, and exertion of the greatest kind.
Of these, not the least to play a major part in this phenomenal success was care in planning. And this extended from Marie Kennedy, the wardrobe mistress, up the executive ladder to G. S. Eyssell, the managing director of the Center Theatre itself. In this planning, the calendar did and does play a definite and distinct part.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have had to refer to the calendar during this run to determine days upon which additional advertising should appear. Week-ends interrupted by holidays, months with extra Sat
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urdays or extra Sundays when additional thought of necessity had to be given the advertising appropriations add to our worries.
The same condition obtains from the box office or front of the house to the back stage. Every executive must make constant reference to the calendar, whether it be in anticipation of the delivery of new costumes, the cleaning and repairing of old ones, or the number of people required as ushers. And all this because the calendar changes every year, having no definite plan.
In every phase of show business, not only at the Center Theatre, but throughout the entertainment world, the calendar plays a basic part. Name bands on tour must plan their itinerary to avoid certain “dead nights.” Dramas as well as musical comedies must anticipate with the keenest care opening dates, jumps from one city to another, the apportionment of advertising money, and good nights and bad nights.
For example, the average show has a matinee every Wednesday afternoon. Should, with our wandering calendar, a holiday occur on Wednesday, that show suffers the loss of one performance, because, as a rule, holidays call for an extra matinee. So you can readily see that a calendar that does not “stay put,” with holidays running helter skelter, can cause people in show business a terrific headache.
That is why so many men in this business, producers, press representatives, directors and accountants alike, see in The World Calendar of twelve months and equal quarters a way out of this dilemma because it is so well planned. Not only would a great amount of time be saved, time which could well be directed to extra efforts, but a formula would come into being which would make possible a definite plan of action in the front of the house as well as the back of the house.
This calendar plan would be of utmost benefit as well to those who depend upon the show business in part for their volume. Delivery dates for costumes, scenery and equipment could be more definitely established. Newspaper schedules would naturally become practically routine.
As a matter of fact, I can see no phase of the entertainment business wherein this simple rearrangement of our present calendar would not be of the utmost benefit. To paraphrase one of the “Four Bruises”: “What’s holding us up ?”
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TEXAS PROFESSOR
SUGGESTS PLAN TO
GET STUDENT HELP
J. W. Baldwin, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Texas, interested in The World Calendar, has developed the nucleus of a plan which would enlist the support of students and instructors alike. His ideas are so basic they cannot help but impress anyone interested in calendar reform. These ideas, expressed in a letter, are reprinted in part below.
NOTHING has impressed me more forcefully and more favorably in a long time than The World Calendar. It is the most practical proposal for a reform of the present crazy-quilt calendar which we have racked our brains over for centuries. What a boon to mankind would be the adoption of the calendar which you propose!
The bulletins which you sent me have been studied in my classes which are preparing teachers for social studies in the secondary schools, and have impressed these teachers and prospective teachers as offering an opportunity for a reform of the present calendar which it would be tragic to ignore. I have handed some of the bulletins to members of the University faculty, and after brief examination their comments have been, “What are we waiting for?” Not one has failed to register enthusiasm.
I am wondering what would be the best way to get this information to a much larger percentage of the educators than those who now have it. Do you have any plan for getting the information into the hands of college professors, and through them into the hands of college students?
I should be glad to assist in any way I can to help you with such a plan in this University of 700 instructors and 11,500 (peacetime) students— about 8,000 at present. It seems to me that from my office or from the office of the President, or from some other center on the campus, copies of this bulletin might be sent to all members of the staff through faculty mail with a cover letter requesting that they be brought to the attention of students in their classes or passed on to others who might be interested, or returned through faculty mail to the one who sent them for redistribution to other people in teaching positions or positions of leadership in the community.
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The high school principal on the campus just passed my office and said: “I want to get started on that calendar now.” It seems to me that it is not a matter of getting backing for this reform, but a matter of bringing it to the attention of people who would be glad to push it with the proper authorities. Would it not be wise, if you have not done so, to send copies of these bulletins to county and city superintendents, and to state departments of public instruction, and so forth?
It looks like you really have something which does not have to be sold, but merely presented. It sells itself. One cannot fail to see the advantages in hundreds of ways. I shall take the matter up with any group meetings where it is convenient here, and undertake other efforts which you may suggest.
The students who are taking my courses with the intention of teaching in the public schools this year are taking their copies of the bulletin with them to use in their schools and communities.
AMATEUR ATHLETIC UNION ENDORSES CALENDAR
The Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, under the supervision of which practically all of America’s amateur athletic contests are conducted, at its annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, December 4, unanimously endorsed The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters.	'
The formal resolution follows:
“The Amateur Athletic Union of the United States looks with favor upon the adoption of The World Calendar and urges the Congress of the United States to give serious and speedy consideration to the adoption thereof.”
The World Calendar Study Committee, headed by Gustavus T. Kirby, Chairman of the Westchester County Planning Commission and long associated with amateur athletics, had previously given no little study to The World Calendar plan. The action of the Union followed the recommendation of this Committee.
It was brought out in a discussion that a calendar that “stays put,” wherein every day and date remains the same, year in and year out, would be of indisputable value to an organization beset as the Union is by the intricacies of athletic events involving practically every amateur body in the United States.
The influence of the Amateur Athletic Union is tremendous and includes supervision of all types of amateur athletic contests, from inter-scholastic meets to the preparation and development of American participants in the Olympic games. This Union’s appreciation of the need for a stabilized calendar can but be the thinking and the reasoning of those business men, school authorities and amateur sportsmen making up its list of divisional heads, directors and officers.

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CALENDAR REFORM
ACROSS EIGHTEEN CENTURIES
As shown by source materials available in the Columbia University Library
By Bertha M. Frick, with the collaboration of S. A. Ives
This installment which deals with England’s problems of calendar adoption concludes the article prepared by the Curator of the Plimpton, Smith and Dale Libraries of Columbia University. The previous installment appeared in the Third, Quarter issue of the Journal of Calendar Reform.
V
ALTHOUGH the reform had won in Italy and other Catholic countries, it was by no means universally accepted. No attempt will be made “ here to recount its struggles in all the countries of Europe but it is of special interest to witness its fate in England, since this determined the policy of the American colonies in the matter. Recalling the effective work of the thirteenth-century Englishmen (Grosseteste and Roger Bacon) in pointing out the errors in the calendar, it might be expected that succeeding generations would have continued on the way so well begun. But one will look in vain for such a logical development.
It is easy to understand the fate of the “Popish Calendar” in England if one recalls the strife between the Catholics and Protestants at that time. In 1570, Pope Pius V had issued an edict excommunicating Queen Elizabeth; a few years later, Pope Gregory himself had attempted to depose Elizabeth by force of arms. Considering the times, a great deal of credit should be given to Elizabeth for paying any attention whatsoever to her archenemy’s proposals for calendar reform. However, on receiving notice of the intended change, she called upon the learned John Dee, the supreme scientific authority in England at the time, to give his opinion on the matter. On February 26, 1582, he submitted his report to Elizabeth’s minister, Lord Burghley, under the flourishing title, A Playne Discourse and humble Advice for our gratious Queene Elizabeth ... to peruse and consider as concerning the needful Reformation of the Vulgar Kalendar.1
» This has never been printed but is among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford. See Charlotte Fell Smith’s John Dee, p. 134.
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Although Dee believed that eleven days ought to be omitted in order to make the civil year agree with the birth of Christ, he was willing to consent to ten days, “the better to agree with all countries adjacent.” However, for practical reasons, he was opposed to dropping the ten days at one time. He proposed that the loss be spread through the summer months, allotting twenty-eight days each to May, July and August, with twenty-nine days for June, assuring the Queen that such a distribution “would not affect any holy days.” Burghley appointed a committee of three to go over Dee’s account, two of them being men of high reputation in the scientific world—Thomas Digges and Sir Henry Savile. A favorable report was rendered, and on March 16, 1585, the matter was presented to Parliament. The bill, entitled, “An Act giving Her Majesty authority to alter and new make a calendar according to the calendar used in other Countries,” was read a second time two days later, and then submitted to the Council of State, composed of Archbishop Grindell and three other bishops. But after consideration, the Council rejected the measure on the single ground that it emanated from the Church of Rome.
In 1645 a group of scientists at Oxford agitated the question of changing the calendar. One of their number, John Greaves, Savilian professor of astronomy, went on record as favoring the main points of the Gregorian calendar but disagreed with the idea of subtracting the ten days in one year. His argument reads:
For tho’ I grant that this were a quick Cure of a lingering Disease, yet it is against all Rules of Art in curing one Malady to make ten. For it cannot be, but that the Defalcation of ten Days in one Year must be of infinite Disturbance in the Commonwealth in all Contracts where necessarily a certain Time is defined. ... I shall therefore humbly recommend to his Majesty’s Wisdom and favourable Consideration . . . that for forty years Space there should be no Bissextile or Intercalary Years, or as we call them Leap Years inserted in the Calendar, by which Course it is most Evident, that ten Days will be subtracted in forty Years, and these forty Years, will be each of them Anni Aequabiles, consisting of 365 days as our common and ordinary Years do.
About the year 1700 interest in calendar reform was aroused again. In that year, if the Julian system were to be maintained, a day would have to be added for leap year. Since countries using the Gregorian calendar would not add that day (the century year not being divisible by four hundred) the Julian calendar would then differ from the Gregorian by eleven days. Furthermore, at this time the German Protestant states, the Dutch Reformed states and Denmark were changing to the Gregorian system. It was to be expected, therefore, that the reformers would take advantage of these arguments to push their cause. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London presented both sides of the
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question, including in their volume for 1699 three papers on the subject: the report made by Lord Burghley in 1582, the account written by John Greaves in 1645, and a group of letters by a contemporary mathematician and divine, John Wallis. James Hodgson, F.R.S. and Master of the Royal Mathematical School, writing of the matter in 1747 (Introduction to Chronology), maintained that:
The reasons why the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland did not then conform to it [the Gregorian calendar] was in a great measure owing to . . . letters written by the Reverend and Learned Doctor John Wallis; one to His Grace of Canterbury, another to the Lord Bishop of Worcester, and a third to Sir John Blencowe, who severally requested the Doctor’s Opinion of the Affair.
The burden of Wallis’ argument was that the Julian year had been in use so long that its worth was thereby proved. His conclusion reads:
It would be much more advisable (if the Papists would be as compliant as they would have us to be) for the Papists to return to their old Julian Year, than for us to embrace their new Gregorian . . . That the Julian Year is in itself a better Form, and more adviseable, than the New Gregorian, is undeniable; and all Astronomers, even Papists themselves (if not otherwise bigotted in favour of the Pope’s Supremacy and the Infallibility of the Roman Church) cannot but know it.
Again the agitation came to no account. Another fifty years rolled by, and the clamor for a calendar in agreement with the rest of Europe became louder. It must be remembered that England’s difficulties in calculating dates with other countries were further complicated by the fact that the British year began on the twenty-fifth of March. The result of this was the confusing fact that the expression for any English date between January first and March twenty-fifth would differ by one year, as well as eleven days, from the expression for that same day in most other countries.
An idea of public opinion of the time can be gained from articles in a contemporary periodical. The Gentleman’s Magazine, one of the leading journals, included comments and letters from its readers on pertinent topics of the day. Among these the “awkward English calendar” figured prominently. Since it was an era of literary disguise, most of the articles were signed with fanciful names. Even the editor styled himself “Sylvanus Urban!” In 1745 appeared a communication dated “Maryland, Feb. 2, 1745,” and signed, “Hirossa Ap-Iccim,” which presented plans for calendar reform similar, in many respects, to some present-day proposals. The measures suggested were: (1) Add four years to make the year agree with the year of Christ’s birth; (2) Divide the year into thirteen months of twenty-eight days each, the 365th day to be celebrated as Christ’s day and the thirteenth month to be named “Georgy” in honor of King George;
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(3) Establish Easter and all other festival days upon the same day each year. The Maryland contributor proposed to call this new calendar the “Georgian account, in perpetual memory of the reigning monarch.” In a later issue the editor commented on this “ingenious” gentleman’s proposals for a “new, correct, rational, regular, and easy account of time,” adding that if the author would send him the whole scheme he would “endeavor to publish or make some proper use of it.”
The measures which finally brought about the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the establishment of January first as the beginning of the. year were due largely to the political influence of Lord Chesterfield and the astronomical knowledge of his friend, the second Earl of Macclesfield. Lord Macclesfield, considered the foremost astronomer in England, began the campaign with his Remarks upon the Solar and Lunar Years, published in the Philosophical Transactions in May, 1750. The next step came on February 25, 1751, when Lord Chesterfield, in a “brilliant and witty speech” before the House of Lords, introduced the bill, “An Act for regulating the Commencement of the Year, and for correcting the Calendar now in use.” On the following March 18, at the second reading of the bill, Lord Macclesfield gave a detailed explanation of the reasons for the need of the correction. Subsequently the Act was passed without a protest. The bill stipulated that the eleven days which would have to be dropped in order to right the calendar would be September third to thirteenth, inclusive, of the year 1752, with the “old year not to be used after December 31,1751.” With the Act was included an elaborate set of “Tables and Rules” showing holy days and the lessons for each day of each month. In the next session of Parliament, the bill was slightly amended to clarify the time of elections and payments of rents.
While the bill was going through the steps necessary for its adoption, the columns of the Gentleman’s Magazine were enlivened with many commentaries on the calendar. In the issue for March, 1751, the prominent astronomer and divine, William Whiston, addressed a letter to the Bishop of London “concerning the alteration of the style,” urging that all Protestant countries get together on the question of the calendar and decide on a uniform method of their own for determining Easter. The next month’s issue of the Magazine included a letter signed “Christophil Philochrone” in which the writer, although admitting the defects of the Julian calendar, argued strongly against accepting the Gregorian style. He offered as a substitute a scheme remarkably like the one proposed by Benedetti some one hundred and seventy-five years before. He suggested that the year begin with the first day after the winter solstice, that the equinoxes and solstices determine the beginning of their respective months, and that no month contain less than thirty days. He, too, proposed to call his calendar the
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“Georgian style.” Although his calendar was based on various astronomical data, his deduction could scarcely be called scientific:
Papists may well laugh at the simplicity of Protestants, if, after all the stir about, and since, the reformation, they see them take their pope’s faulty injunctions as canonical or authentic.
The August, 1752, issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine contains “a table to avoid confusion,” showing how the next month’s rent, wages, etc., should be computed for the shortened month. Apparently this proved insufficient, for the issue of the following January includes a much more detailed table for the same purpose.
That opposition to “losing” eleven days was to be met with is, of course, to be expected. A frequently-quoted ballad of the day begins:
In seventeen hundred and fifty-three The style it was changed to Popery.
As this recital draws to a close, it is refreshing to note that not all the criticism was vindicative. The Gentleman’s Magazine for September, 1752, carries an article with the caption: “Humorous letter on the N. Style” in which a certain “R. R.” writes “in greatest perplexity”:
Have I slept away 11 days in seven hours? . . . They tell me there’s an Act of Parliament for this. With due reverence be it spoken, I have always thought there were very few things a British Parliament could not do, but ... I should have guess’d the annihilation of time was one of them!
Perhaps this account of the struggles that calendar reformers of other generations have undergone will give some slight encouragement to those now working toward the sensible World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters advocated by the Journal of Calendar Reform and its friends.
Instruct the Planets in what course to run Correct old time and regulate the Sun.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A chronological list of source materials dealing with the calendar and available in the Columbia University library can be had by writing to The World Calendar Association.
OBITUARY NOTES
FRANK MICHAEL O’BRIEN, 68, Editor of The New York Sun, died September 22.
Mr. O’Brien was known among his colleagues as a forceful essayist of distinctive style. An editorial, written in 1921 for the old New York Herald, headed “The Unknown Soldier,” won for him the Pulitzer Prize for the year’s best editorial. He was born in Dunkirk, New York, educated at St. Joseph’s College in Buffalo, and had been in the newspaper business since 1893. He started as a proofreader and later became a reporter on the Buffalo Courier. But four times removed from Charles A. Dana in the successorship to the Editorship of The Sun, he carried on the traditions of his predecessor. Mr. O’Brien had long been an active supporter and enthusiastic worker in the interests of The World Calendar.
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LET'S CHANGE
THE CALENDAR
By Sam Bate, Author and Editor
From The Austin Magazine, Cheltenham, England, September, 1943
WE have put up with the idiosyncracies and eccentricities of the present calendar for long enough. It is high time we started our postwar reforms with the reform of the calendar.
Perhaps you are so used to it that you cannot see anything to reform. Well! here are a few things that are crying to be put right.
Why, for instance, do we have to put up with such a ridiculously short month as February ? Why should it only be 28 days for three years out of every four, and then, when leap year comes round, have an extra day thrown at it, like a rich relation giving something unwanted to a poor cousin ? February’s small stature is entirely due to the Romans, who used to take days away from it and give them to other months, whenever they felt like it.
Another silly thing about the present calendar is that whether you were born on a Monday or a Friday or any other day in the week, you only celebrate your birthday on the correct day of the week about ten or a dozen times during your lifetime. Why, if your birthday was on Tuesday, June 22, cannot every anniversary fall on a Tuesday ?
Another strange thing is the size of the quarters. In the legal and financial world, the year is divided into quarters, yet for some unknown reason three of the quarters are of different lengths. The first quarter is 90 days, the second 91 days and the last two 92 days each in length. The two “halves” are not equal either, for the first half of the year is 181 days and the second half 184 days!
Another anomaly affects the people who receive their salaries monthly. Seven times during the year, when the month consists of 31 days, the salary has to be stretched to include an extra day, and once, in February, it arrives three days earlier.
Admittedly the calendar as it stands now is the best in history although it has only been in use in this country for less than 200 years. Man was for centuries unable to find a method of calculation that satisfied him, or was in any degree accurate, with the result that history is full of datal inaccu
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racies. For instance, all our dates since Anno Domini are based on the false assumption which post-dates the birth of Christ by four years. Another is that Charles the First was beheaded twice! According to the Scots’ calendar he was executed in 1649, but English records say that it was in 1648.
Even now different parts of the world have different calendars. Take the Moslems, for instance. Their calendar says that this year is 1362, because they start their calendar from the date of the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. The Emperor of Abyssinia may decide to bring the Abyssinian calendar into line with ours, but at the moment it states that the present year is A.D. 1951. In Persia, it is only A.D. 1321 and in Japan 2603.
The strangest of all is the Hindu calendar. They start their reckoning from the first day of the life of Brahma. That wouldn’t be so bad if it was not for the fact that every day of Brahma’s life (Kalpas, as they are called), is equal to 4,320,000,000 of our years!
In the early days of civilization every country and almost every tribe used a calendar of its own and the Egyptians were the first to try to bring order out of chaos. They had a solar year divided into 12 months of 30 days. The five extra days at the end of every year were dedicated to their gods. But, because they did not take into account Leap-Year Day, in time the seasons were at loggerheads with the dates and the Egyptians found they were holding their summer festivities late in the autumn!
Hundreds of years later scientists tried to straighten things out by computing a calendar based on the three main datal sections in the Old Testament—Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham and Abraham to Christ. But when they tried to check these dates by Greek and other contemporary records they found that the discrepancies were anything from three to six thousand years.
Julius Caesar did get down to it in a businesslike fashion and his calendar was in use until the sixteenth century, when small errors he had made began to make themselves felt. Pope Gregory XIII reorganized it, but owing to the feeling between Catholics and Protestants it was almost two hundred years before it was officially recognized in some countries. It is Gregory’s calendar we are using at the present time.
Now The World Calendar Association has suggested a new calendar to start in 1945 which will sweep away the existing eccentricities and will give us the most perfect calendar in history.
To start with, they suggest four equal quarters of 91 days each. The first month of each quarter—January, April, July and October—would be of 31 days each and all the other months of 30 days each. New Year’s Day would always fall on a Sunday and Christmas Day on a Monday. (Thus Christmas would always be a long week-end holiday.)
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Whatever day the month started with, the same month would always start on that day every year in the future, and every month would have the same number of weekdays in it. (At the moment a month may have either 24, 25, 26, or 27 weekdays in it.)
Every four years Leap-Year Day would be added to the end of June, called an extra Saturday and made a World Holiday. There would still be an extra day to take care of, for to get four equal quarters the year was computed as 364 days. This extra day, suggests The World Calendar Association, should be added to the end of December, called Year-End Day and made an annual World Holiday dedicated to world unity and brotherhood.
Subject to the confirmation of the ecclesiastical heads who have already expressed their willingness to consider it, Easter would be fixed as Sunday, April 8; this would also give a fixed Whitsunday on May 26.
Already 14 countries have agreed to accept the new calendar including Norway, Spain and China; so if Britain and the U. S. A. agree to it, we may soon see the calendar altered for perhaps the last time.
CALENDARS, SHIP SUPPLIERS GREATEST PROBLEM
* Urp HE provisioning and equipping of ships of the new Canadian Merchant Marine has become a specialized, almost exact science,” says Raymond Arthur Davies, writing in Saturday Night, October 6, 1943, an interesting weekly magazine published in Toronto, Canada.
Mr. Davies, together with a staff photographer, visited a Canadian dock where one of Canada’s stout, new, merchant ships was being fitted for sea duty. He covered this operation with extreme thoroughness, even detailing the weight and quantity of the food necessary to keep the crew for their extended voyage.
Interviewing one of the Canadian National Railways supply men, whose duty it is to make sure that these ships go down to sea equipped with everything the crew will need on its hazardous voyage, he asked what they found to be their greatest headache. The bottleneck in equipping a ship and the items most difficult to obtain are “calendars, slates and slate pencils.”
“Why calendars?” he asked.
“Well, sir,” the supply man answered, “you just try to find calendars for 1943 along about the months of July, August or September, or a calendar for 1944 in October, when some of our ships are launched.”
“Almost everybody on a ship needs a calendar some time or other, and getting calendars ahead of time is harder than getting the proper amount of food.”
Mr. Davies could well have pointed out the advantages that this Canadian National Railways supply man would have had, had The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters been in operation.
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CURRENT PRESS COMMENT
Re-forming The Calendar
Savannah (Ga.) Press
July 17, 1943
INDICATIONS are that the movement to establish a new calendar to replace the Gregorian calendar which has been in use since 1582 will be carried on with renewed vigor next year. The question may well be asked why should this reform receive new emphasis next year. The answer is simple. In order to effect the reform without causing too much confusion, the year the change is made must end with December 30 or 31 falling on a Saturday. Such a year is 1944.*
The World Calendar Association, which carries on a constant campaign in favor of a new calendar, proposes to rearrange the calendar into quarters of 91 days each. Quarters now run from 90 to 92 days. In the new calendar each quarter would begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. A date of the month would always fall on the same day of the week and each month would have 26 weekdays, plus Sundays. A simple sum of arithmetic shows that four quarters of 91 days add up to only 364 days, and, inasmuch as every year has at least 365 days, the problem arises as to what to do with the extra day. The calendar reformers have solved that problem, too. In their calendar the usual December 31 would not be December 31 at all, but simply an extra Saturday, known as December W, and next year the day would be designated as December W, 1944.
The problem of the extra day in leap year is also taken into consideration. Under The World Calendar Association plan, leap year would be just like every other year except that after June 30 would come June W, the Leap-Year Day. One argument for the proposed calendar advanced by the Association this year is the confusion caused by varying holidays. In
the new calendar such a condition would not occur as holidays would always fall on the same day of the week each year. For instance, Christmas would always fall on Monday.
The chances are that advocates of calendar reform will put on more pressure next year as they will not get such another chance until 1950,* because under the Gregorian calendar January 1 will not again occur on a Sunday until that year.
Calendar Is Revised
By State University
Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman Review
October 13, 1943
AS a wartime move, the University of
• Washington has completely revised its calendar, shortening the regular academic year by three weeks and eliminating long vacations.
The change in calendar dates will accomplish two things, President L. P. Sieg pointed out. It will bring the regular quarter system at the university in closer conformity with the Navy V-12 semester system and it will make university students available for work in war industries during the summer at a much earlier date.
According to the revised school calendar, the present fall quarter will close on December 10 instead of December 15. The winter quarter will run from December 13 to March 3, including one week’s Christmas vacation from December 25 to January 3. Spring quarter will open March 6, closing on May 19 with commencement on May 20 instead of June 10.
•EDITOR’S NOTE: Other dates upon which both calendars meet, and upon which the transition may be made, are July 1, 1945, March 1, 1946, and May 1, 1946. See article by Henry W. Bearce, page 164.
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EXCERPTS AND REVIEWS
“I’ll Sure Pay You on February Thirtieth"
From Pittsburgh’s Future, published by the Junior Chamber of Commerce of Pittsburgh, October, 1943
REMEMBER how they kept changing the football rules awhile back and everybody yelled that they would ruin the game?
Something similar is afoot with the rules for keeping track of the date. For almost four centuries we have been struggling along with the present calendar. Of late years many movements have been underway to establish a new calendar. None of these appear to be perfect, simply because a solar year does not consist of “so many exact days,” but has 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds left over every year. Our present Gregorian calendar varies a day in about every 3,300 years.
Most practical of the proposed calendars is “The World Calendar.”
The Pittsburgh Junior Chamber’s Board of Directors passed a resolution on September 21 endorsing this calendar and recommending its adoption on January 1, 1945.
The World Calendar has many attractive features. With the same dates falling on the same days of the week, year after year, many business comparisons can be made that heretofore have been impossible. The idea of dividing the year into four equal quarters with 26 weekdays in every month has statisticians swooning with delight.
Radio broadcasting newspapers and magazines, with their four 13-week contracts, have already set up such a calendar. The stability and simplicity of the new calendar seem to meet the need of industry, government, social life, agriculture, science and religion. It has the approval of 14 governments including Brazil, China, Mexico, Spain and Turkey and is sponsored by numerous chambers of commerce, associations, federations and church organizations.
Clocks and Calendars
From Distribution and Warehousing, New York City, October, 1943
A POSSIBLE postwar development may be international adoption of a 24-hour clock and a simplified calendar.
The 24-hour clock is already established. The Army, the Navy, the Merchant Marine and the Weather Bureau use 24-hour time, and most countries throughout the world have adopted it. All that would be necessary for its general use here would be public acceptance and a law making it mandatory in the same way that wartime or daylight saving time was adopted. After all, any method of reckoning time, whether by clocks, calendars, moons, or events, is purely arbitrary and man-made.
Our present calendar, the Gregorian, has been in use since 1582. According to The World Calendar Association, it would be materially improved if it were simplified by rearranging the lengths of the months and equalizing the year’s quarters into 91-day periods. Each quarter would begin on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. A certain date of the month would always fall on the same day of the week. December 31 would become December W, Year-End Day, an extra Saturday, thus giving each year its full complement of 365 days. December 31, 1944, for example, would not be Sunday, December 31, but rather December W, and the day after would be Sunday, January 1, 1945. The problem of February 29 would be taken care of by having an extra day in June to be known as June W, or Leap-Year Day.
Fourteen governments are understood to have approved the reformed calendar. In the United States the National Education Association, various scientists’ societies, women’s clubs and state chambers of commerce have endorsed it. The arguments in favor of it sound plausible. Indeed, a new calendar for the postwar world might be an excellent way to start a new era.
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One Day for Play
By WILLIAM HICKEY
From London Express, September, 19t3
“QOON you will be discarding this 0 obsolete calendar.” So I am assured, in confident tones, by The World Calendar Association. They refer to the present arrangement of the civil year, as instituted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
The World Calendar Association points out that the existing calendar differs from year to year; the quarters are unequal in length; months have a varying number of weekdays. “This calendar,” they say sternly, “is unbalanced in structure, unstable in form, irregular in arrangement.”
In its place, they propose a calendar in which each quarter has 91 days (one month of 31 days and two of 30). Each year and each quarter will begin on a Sunday. “Balanced, perpetual, harmonious.”
As for that little business of the 365th day, which just won’t fit into the equal quarters, it is to be a World Holiday at the end of the year. It will be called “December W.”
Apparently, the change will relieve sales managers and advertising men. It will alleviate the toil of insurance workers.
Farmers will find their tasks easier and their profits higher. And America’s war effort will be increased through a saving in clerical labor.
Give us “The Fifth Freedom,” demands The World Calendar Association—freedom from the Confusion of the Calendar.
She Fights to Give World
A Streamlined Calendar
By JEROME DREIFUSS
Feature Editor, World Feature Service
From Greensburg (Pa.) Review, October IS, lSlfS
TF MISS ELISABETH ACHELIS wins
-L her unrelenting campaign against the inertia of an entire world, she will manage to do the following—give us one holi
day at the end of the year, fix it so that all holidays will fall on Monday (so that we shall have three-day week-ends), make it so that the calendar will not vary and one will serve us a lifetime, help bankers, merchants, accountants, lawyers, workers out of muddles.
What Miss Achelis, a mild but persuasive and indefatigable maiden lady of handsome looks and white hair, wants, is to change our calendar. This trimly and modishly dressed, independently wealthy woman of a New York socialite family has, since 1929, been a tireless apostle for calendar reform. The World Calendar Association, of 630 Fifth Avenue, New York City, which she founded and earnestly works at, is the fountainhead of her activities.
In 1929, she heard a lecture on calendar reform, an idea backed by the late George Eastman, a goofy stunt with 28-day months, and 13 of them. Miss Achelis recognized the need for a better calendar, but rejected this one. Then she heard of one proposed a hundred years ago.
The idea is simple, and, briefly stated, works this way: The 365 days of the year are divided into four quarters of three months each. The first month in each quarter has 31 days, the rest have 30, making 91 days in a quarter. That accounts for 364 days of the year; the 365th is called “Year-End Day” and is an international holiday. Leap-year days are given to June.
They almost put over the 13-month monstrosity at the League of Nations at Geneva, but valiant Miss Achelis went there and single-handedly defeated it. Since that time calendar reform has become her crotchet, life and everything. She speaks to women’s clubs, has traveled extensively, wangled 14 countries into accepting the idea pending world agreement.
“The trouble is that everyone agrees the idea is good and of benefit, that is what prevents them from doing enough about it,” Miss Achelis told us. “But I am confident that in 1945, when the year starts on a Sunday, we shall have a World Calendar.”
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FROM THE MAIL BAG
A
We should like to say that actually, the textile industries of the whole world would derive great benefit from having the year divided into equal quarters. We congratulate you on your initiative since a great deal of confusion in industries would be avoided by putting your plan into practice in perfect mathematical form. We thank you for your kind attention in asking for our opinion with regard to The World Calendar.—Manuel Campanella Rodriguez, General Manager, Workmen’s Administration, Mexican Silk Mill, Inc., Mexico, D. F.
Personally, I quite approve of revision of our present calendar.—James Washington Bell, Secretary, American Economic Association, Evanston, Illinois.
I thought it might be of interest to you that Professor Martin Fleck of Eastern New Mexico College lectured to my Business Administration students on the new World Calendar. One week after his lecture the class voted to adopt the new calendar by a margin of 19 to 6. Those who opposed the new calendar did so upon the objection of stabilizing Easter. It is significant that such a large majority favor the adoption of the new system. Professor Fleck is exerting much influence in our locality for the new calendar.—Dr. Ira C. Ihde, Assoc. Prof, of Economics, Eastern New Mexico Coll, Portales.
This is something we really need. In all fields, manufacture, mining, business, agriculture, and the professions, as well as in all the processing industries, there is great need for simplification in time and record keeping.—Prof. E. R. Gross, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N. J.
May I add my vote of approval and endorsement to the many others you have received in favor of your calendar reform plan. As a statistician, I am especially appreciative of the need for calendar revision.'—Paul H. Jacobson, New York City.
Certainly your World Calendar would provide a significant streamlining of the war effort—significant in that it would
furnish additional indication of the all-out effort to supply and equip our army in its struggle against the enemy of our country and our civilization.—Lt. Henry Alexander, U. S. Army.
We have pretty carefully studied over your proposal and we agree with you that now is as good a time as any to change days and dates of the world to agree with this suggestion.—L. G. Sever, Exec. Vice Pres., Mt. Vernon Car Manufacturing Co., Mt. Vernon, Ill.
I hope you can get the present calendar situation straightened around because there is no denying the fact that it leads to a lot of expense, suppositions, etc., trying to compare the operating figures of one month with others in many instances. —Owen L. Coon, Chairman of the Board, General Finance Corp., Chicago.
I have been receiving the Journal of Calendar Reform for several years, and am most heartily in sympathy with your aims and procedure. You are doing a generous work for the common good.— Rev. William T. Kane, S.J., Librarian, Loyola Univ., Chicago.
I find the Journal of Calendar Reform which you send me both interesting and instructive.—Dr. J. S. Battye, Principal Librarian and Secretary, Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.
You know I have always been interested in following the program of The World Calendar Association. During the readjustments that are in store this would seem to be an appropriate time to inaugurate what must inevitably mean a change to the good in our calendar arrangement. Let us hope also that by the time this would take effect in 1944 that the world will be at peace again and international cooperation in science be inaugurated on an even more permanent basis.—Dr. Harlan T. Stetson, M.I.T., Needham, Mass.
By 1945 may we see a new order in many things—one of them, the calendar. —William H. Barton, Jr., Exec. Curator, Hayden Planetarium, New York City.
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THE WORLD CALENDAR ASSOCIATION
Elisabeth Achelis, President	Emerson Brewer, Director
Harriet A. Lillie, Secretary-Treasurer
AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE William H. Barton, Jr. Henry W. Bearce Mrs. Frederic Be^gs
Rev. William Adams Brown, D.D. Dr. Clara B. Burdette Mrs. Frederick H. Clausen
Capt. J. F. Hellweg, U. S. N. (Ret.) Mrs. Gustav Ketterer Mrs. Rowland H. Latham Bishop William T. Manning Charles S. McVeigh Hon. Dave H. Morris Prof. Wm. Starr Myers Dr. L. S. Rowe Howard C. Smith Bishop Ernest M. Stires Julius F. Stone Rabbi Martin M. Weitz P. W. Wilson Dr. Mary E. Woolley
FOREIGN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Admiral Jos£; Guisasola (Argentina) Dr. Eugene Delporte (Belgium) Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino (Brazil) Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir (Canada) Prof. Alberto Cumming (Chile)
R. P. Eugenio V. Rosso, S.S. (Chile) Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yti (China)
R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, S.J. (Cuba) Dr. Herbert Blume (Danzig) Barney N. Morgan (Dominican Republic) Lord Desborough (England) C. David Stelling (England) Paul-Louis Hervier (France) Abraham Frowein (Germany) Athanase Politis (Greece) E. Keith Eason (Ireland) Amedeo Giannini (Italy) Dr. Joaquin Gallo (Mexico) Juan Rivera Reyes (Panama) Luis Montero y Tirado (Peru)
R. P. Antonio RomanA, S.J. (Spain) Rt. Hon. H. L. F. Lagercrantz (Sweden) Raymond Mage (Switzerland)
Dr. M. I. Dereoglu (Turkey) Edgar J. Anzola (Venezuela)
Membership is based on active interest in the study of adequate and effective improvement of the calendar. Owing to lack of space, a large number of names have been omitted. They will be printed in future issues.
Arnold Abrams, New York City
F. E. Anderson, Army Insp., Albuquerque Lillian G. Brown, Teacher, Polson, Mont. W. J. Brownstone, Merchant, N. Y. C.
Jules Brunet, Industrialist, Montreal Bertha Mays Clarke, Los Angeles Rev. Antonio da Monterosso, Buenos Aires H. Daniel, Medellin, Colombia H. Dissley, Dairyman, Portales, N. M. Fanny Eitel, Librn., No. Bessemer, Pa. W. J. Franke, Gov. Emp., Rensselaer, N. Y. Soc. de Geografia e Historia, Guatemala Bernard A. Gross, Atty., New York City Grosvenor Library, Buffalo, N. Y.
Banco de Descuento, Guayaquil, Ecuador Harvey High Sch. Libry., Painesville, O. E. N. Hill, Supt. Schs., Humboldt, Kan. Sheldon Horowitz, Student, Bronx, N. Y. Industrial Dept., Detroit Board of Commerce George Ingraham, Advertising, New York City Jewish Nat’l and Univ. Library, Jerusalem O. C. Kerney, Assn. Exec., Newcastle Miss H. Kirschner, Student, New York City Rev. Walter Lazenby, Jr., Portales, N. M. Lions International Ser. Clubs, Chicago Mrs. Enda Luke, Miami, Fla.
Inst, y Observ. de Marina, Cadiz, Spain B. R. Matteson, Publisher, Albion, Ind. Marie McDonnell, Librn., Palestine, Tex. J. H. McKinney, Insurance, Owensboro, Ky. E. F. McKune, Agri., Denver Dr. E. C. L. Miller, Phys., Richmond, Va. Earl S. Miller, Printer, Binghamton, N. Y. J. H. Miller, Agt., Fayetteville, W. Va. Helen A. Miner, Stenog., Spokane, Wash. John C. Mitchell, Educ., Philadelphia A. C. Mitchill, Librn., Newark, N. J. Arthur H. Mockridge, Dover, N. J.
R.	L. Montgomery, Student, Atlanta, Ga. L. S. Moody, Businessman. Augusta, Ga. Dr. Charles S. Moore, Pierce City, Mo. G. G. Moore, Galveston, Tex.
John S. Moore, Org. Off., Dayton, O. W. E. Moorehead, Educ., Lancaster, Pa.
Elmer E. Moots, Educ., Mt. Vernon, la. J. L. Morrill, Univ. Pres., Laramie, Wyo. Marco Morrow, Ed., Topeka, Kan. Ohland Morton, Wilburton, Okla.
B. H. Moses, Univ. Dir., Endicott, N. Y. F. Myers, Meteorol., Tatoosh Is., Wash. J. A. Nelson, Stock Checker, Berkeley New History Society, New York City Ruth E. Northey, Lynn, Mass.
Owosso Chamber of Commerce, Mich. J. P. Peterson, Educ., Minneapolis Rev. Peter H. Pleune, Louisville, Ky. Russell A. Plimpton, Art Exec., Minneapolis Maurice T. Plummer, Auburn, Me. Prof. James P. Poole, Hanover, N. H. V. P. Popovich, San Francisco George M. Potter, Org. Exec., Alton, Ill. Elizabeth Powell, Teacher, Elkton, Va. Newman M. Powell. Teacher, Yorkville, O. H. P. Powers, Assn. Dir., Gallop, N. M. Mrs. O. K. Powers, Berkeley Laurie Pratt, Los Angeles Rev. Otto Press, Editor, St. Louis Elwyn G. Preston, Jr., Treas., Boston Mrs. Jean C. Price, Chicago Mando Primo, Teacher, Sheffield, Ill. Cap. John H. Prichard, Buffalo J. G. Pruscha, Org. Exec., Passaic, N. J. Reeta Pullou, Teach., Lambertville, Mich. R. V. Rammage, Hammond, Ind. Lee A. Richmond, Chicago Bill Ritner, Stud., San Marino, Cal. C. Dudley Roberts, Los Angeles Rev. Ernest W. Robinson, Portland, Me. Mrs. Helena H. Rogers, New York City E. B. Rollins, Educ., W. Somerville, Mass. Sister Rose de Lima, Educ., Convent Station, N. J.
Adelaide C. Rothballer, Stenog., Buffalo J. M. Rowse, Mountain View, Cal. Christian Rutbell, Endicott, N. Y. Morris Sanders, New York City M. Scheenbach. Adv. Mgr., Woodward, Okla. Rev. Fred. Schweitzer, Ridley Pk., Pa.
194
JOURNAL OF CALENDAR REFORM
Lewis Sealy, Hotelman, Brooklyn Alverda Sell, Teacher, Bergey, Pa.
John P. Sherrard, i'rin., Buffalo
Carlton M. Sherwood, Org. Off., N. Y. C.
T. L. Shull, Bduc., Valley Stream, N. Y. Dr. R. A. Silk, Port Jefferson Sta., N. Y. G. F. Simmons, Univ. Pres., Missoula, Mont. Gaya Prasad Singh, Legis., Muzaffarpur, Behar, India
Prof. Jorge Soto, Bogota, Colombia
Lyda Simms, Teach., Guntersville, Ala.
Rev. Dr. George A. Simons, N. Y. C.
Rev. A. G. Sinclair, Bloomfield, N. J. Margaret I. Skauen, Newton, Mass. A. B. Slattengren, Ins. Exec., Chicago O. F. Sloeth, Auditor, Charleston, W. Va. Joseph J. Sott, Instr., Clifton, N. J.
Arthur de Souza Costa, Min. of Fin., Rio de Janeiro
Rev. Paul Sperry, Washington, D. C.
M. J. Spinks, Bookkeeper, Dallas
Dr. J. Sudweeks, Teach., Provo, Utah
S.	A. Thompson, Co. Off., Washington, D. C.
Dean E. T. Towne, Grand Forks, N. D.
Dean Lake Traxler, Chicago
Arthur R. Tucker, Ed., New York City Kenneth B. Walker, New Hyde Park, N. Y. Prof. Patterson Wardlaw, Columbia, S. C.
Mrs. Burnett D. Warner, Chicago
Prof. Paul E. Werner, Washington, Conn.
George H. Wettach, Banker, N. Y. C.
E. Grace White, Educ., Chambersburg, Pa.
Mrs. Georgia Wicks, Los Angeles
Rev. J. H. Wierts, Fort Meade, Fla.
H. M. Wiley, Co. Off., Wheeler, Tex.
Booth M. Williamson, Peoria, Ill.
Rev. Thos. A. Williams, Wichita, Kan.
Ed E. Wilson, Publisher, Rock Is., Ill.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
ARGENTINA: Comite Argentine del Calen-dario Mundial, Admiral Josd Guisasola, Chairman, Ministerio de Marina, Buenos Aires,
AUSTRALIA: Committee on Calendar Reform of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, C. W. Allen, Secy., Solar Observatory, Canberra.
BELGIUM: Belgian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Professor M. Dehalu, President, I’Universitg de Liege, Liege.
BOLIVIA: Comitfe Boliviano del Calendario Mundial, Don Moises Santivanez, Chairman, Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre.
BRAZIL: Comitd Brasileiro do Calendario Mundial, Rear Admiral Radler de Aquino, Chairman, Rua Raul Pompeia No. 133, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Rational Calendar Association, Lt.-Col. J. Murray Muir, Secy., 82 Jane St., Toronto 5.
CHILE: Comite Chileno del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Cumming, Chairman, Calle Manuel Rodriguez, Santiago.
CHINA: Chinese Association for the Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Ch’ing-Sung Yu, Director, National Institute of Astronomy, Kunming, Yunnan.
COLOMBIA: Comit§ Colombiano del Calendario Mundial, Bogota.
COSTA RICA: Comite Costarricense del Calendario Mundial (Igualmente de Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador y Nicaragua), Don Teodoro Picado, Chairman, San JosA
CUBA: ComitS Cubano del Calendario Mundial, R. P. Mariano Gutierrez Lanza, Chairman, Belfin Observatory, Havana.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Comitfe Domini-cano del Calendario Mundial, Barney N. Morgan, Chairman, Box 727, Ciudad Trujillo.
ECUADOR: Comity Ecuatoriano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Rafael H. Elizalde, Chairman, Calle Cienfuegos 158, Santiago, Chile.
ENGLAND: Rational Calendar Association, C. David Stelling, Director, 38, Parliament Street, London.
FRANCE: ComitS National pour la Reforme du Calendrier, Senateur Justin Godart, President; Paul-Louis Hervier, Secy., 5, Rue Bernoulli, Paris.
GERMANY: Deutscher Ausschuss fiir Kalen-derreform, Dr. Grosse, Geschaftsfiihrer, Neue Wilhemstr, 9/11, Berlin N. W. 7 — Der Weltbund fiir Kalenderreform, Dr.
FOR REFORM OF THE CALENDAR
Rudolph Blochmann, Secy., 24 Lornsen-strasse, Kiel.
GREECE : Greek National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. S. Plakidis, Secy., Observatory of University of Athens.
HUNGARY: Hungarian Committee for Study of Calendar Reform, Dr. Paul Vajda, Secy., 9 Eotos Utca, Budapest.
IRELAND: Committee for Calendar Reform, E. K. Eason, Secy., 80, Mid. Abbey St., Dublin.
ITALY: Italian National Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Amedeo Giannini, Secy., via del Seminario, 113, Rome.
MEXICO: Comite Mejicano del Calendario Mundial, Dr. Joaquin Gallo, Honorary President; Dr. Horacio Herrera, Chairman, Sociedad de Estudios Astronomicos y Geoflsicos, Av. Observatorio No. 192, Ta-cubaya, D.F.
PANAMA: CornitS Panameno del Calendario Mundial, Juan Rivera Reyes, Chairman, Panama City.
PARAGUAY: Comity Paraguayano del Calendario Mundial, H. E. Senor Ministro Coronel don Luis Irrazabal, Chairman, Calle Moneda 1938, Santiago, Chile.
PERU: Comite P.eruano del Calendario Mundial, Don Luis Montero y Tirado, Chairman, Casilla 220, Lima.
POLAND: Polish Committee for Calendar Reform, Albin Jakiel, Chairman, Krasiu-skiego, 21 m. 27, Warsaw.
SPAIN: Spanish Calendar Reform Committee, Rev. Father Antonio Romani, S.J., Chairman, Observatorio del Ebro, Tortosa.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Committee on Calendar Reform, Prof. Emile Marchand, Secy., Mythenstrasse 2, Zurich 2.—Comite International de Cooperation de 1’Association Universelie du Calendrier, M. Raymond Mage, Secretaire General, Palais Wilson, Geneva.
TURKEY: Committee on Calendar Reform, Dr. M. I. Dereoglu, Secy., P. O. Box 1121, Hanhaym Han No. Io, Istanbul.
URUGUAY: Comite Uruguayo del Calendario Mundial, Prof. Alberto Reyes Thevenet, Chairman, Liceo de Ensenanza Secundaria Hector Miranda, Calle Sierra 2268, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Comite Venezolano del Calendario Mundial, Don Edgar J. Anzola, Chairman, Apartado de Correos No. 207, Caracas.
YUGOSLAVIA: Yugoslavian Committee on Calendar Reform, Georges Curcin, Chairman, Poenkareova 25—III, Belgrade.
THE CALENDAR FOR EVERYBODY
By Elisabeth Achelis
DO YOU KNOW... Your Calendar COSTS Time, Money and Labor? DO YOU KNOW ...The World Calendar Will SAVE These?
Commerce and industry lose thousands annually and everyone is handicapped because the calendar never "stays put.” Your son, daughter, husband or brother in the Armed Forces, uses the simplified 24-hour clock time, and they and you will recognize also the simplicity and stability of The World Calendar of 12 months and equal quarters. It benefits everyone.
Read about this epoch-making improvement, the sixth great calendar change in 6,000 years, in which America with other nations can unite the world on one calendar.
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This Advertisement Is Appearing in Book Sections of New York Times and Other Metropolitan Newspapers.
YOUR Country needs YOUR MONEY for VICTORY
Buy more and more WAR BONDS and STAMPS for an early PEACEI