Word: bluffs
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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OPPOSITION: "Parliament is a bluff with which you hope to cheat public opinion...
...will appear to many critics that the plea of national honor is a mere bluff to hide the real objection Japan's reluctance to cripple effectively this highly profitable trade. It is well known that Japan gains most from the unrestricted trade in Chinese opium, and that Japanese merchants now handle most of this dope trade, having replaced the British as the foremost traffikers. This disingenuous attitude of quibbling over means of enforcement will not blind the world to the fact that Japan, while anxious to pretend cooperation with western nations in a humanitarian program, is at bottom unwilling...
...This is a most serious situation. The resignation of the Government is not, as is surmised by our opponents, a mere bluff. The very existence of the whole reconstruction program is threatened. It is not merely a question of this strike which prevented us from remaining in office, but it is also the spirit of the people on these questions...
...genesis of the college "bluff" has been traced to its remote psychological roots in the insistence throughout early education upon a prompt answer of any sort, rather than an honest "I don't know." The current Educational Review points out that a wrong answer counts no more against a student than inability to answer at all. From the beginning students are encouraged to write "something", whether they know anything or not. This dangerous facility is carried into college, and the student, trained unconsciously in this form of intellectual immorality, develops the art of bluffing to its highest degree...
...present the average college student probably feels justified in bluffing curricular work in order to devote his time and effort to outside activities. If intellectual interests, which so often seem subordinate in American colleges, are reinspired, the occasion for and the practice of bluffing will cease. Until then the bluff of "pencil point knowledge" will appear the acme of shrewdness to the sophisticated undergraduate...