Word: arguer
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...Observer-Sooner or later we must ask-what of Shaw as a writer? Still more, what of Shaw as he claimed to be, a sage and philosopher? Will he last . . . ? Or will he be forgotten like his contemporary Stephen Phillips?* . . . Shaw had one superlative quality. He was the greatest arguer there has ever been . . . marvelous over a short distance; but he could not sustain an argument for more than a paragraph ... On all serious questions Shaw came down firmly on the side of the stronger . . . Even when he glorified a heretic he took care to choose Joan of Arc-someone...
...free Finland, editorial writers may say what they like about Russia, but they carefully think before saying it. The cafe arguer may damn Stalin to his heart's content, but he makes a joke instead. Finland's President proclaims publicly in the bleak tones of a bank examiner: "Our relations with Russia are friendly." In private he says wistfully, "Finland is a Western nation." Finland refused Marshall Plan aid on the ground that that would be entering an alliance against Russia, but it accepted a U.S. loan. When a newsman remarked that this was a pretty fine distinction...
...Arguer. As a boy in California, Mo. (1950 pop. 3,500), Clarence Streit had no trouble imagining that the mud pond back of the Streits' four-room frame house was the Atlantic Ocean. As an adolescent, he was an addict of romantic poetry and loved to quote Sir Walter Scott ("The train from out the castle drew, but Marmion stopped to bid adieu"). He was a formidable family arguer, once suffered a whipping by father Louis Streit, farm-machinery salesman and country fiddler, for arguing so long and loudly in bed that he kept the rest of the Streit...
...energies of this institution have been largely devoted to an adjustment of the several parts of the old system to suit the changed conditions of the new. What is to be the next great change in this process of growth is somewhat doubtful. The entire relegation of the arguer part of the work of the freshman year to the preparatory schools is avowedly one of these changes, but one which will probably require some years for its complete adoption. With the crying anomaly of freshman year abolished, Harvard will have advanced a long stride towards the realization of the ideal...