Word: brasses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Four days before Ike's arrival, as Cabinet members and top military brass of 15 nations descended on Paris, the annual NATO Council meeting had opened. The setting was glossier and glassier than ever before. To replace the sagging "temporary" prefab it has occupied since 1952, NATO now inhabits a six-story, A-shaped (for "Atlantic") building containing $10 million worth of Danish and Belgian furniture, German and Dutch electronics devices, Italian marble, British kitchen equipment, U.S. airconditioning, and (alas) a French telephone system. But as if to prove Parkinson's law of "plans and plants,"* the first...
Able by their arms to intimidate civilian authority, brass-hats have spent some $2.5 billion on munitions since World War II-more, in most countries, than goes for health, education and development programs. The standing armies total 500,000 men and cost $1.4 billion a year...
...while Peru's Prado drew cheers, his navy brass was quietly concluding a deal to buy two cruisers from Britain for $4,000,000. President Jorge Alessandri of neighboring Chile, who earlier had assailed the "ruinous competition" in weapons, observed that "it is not a logical attitude to propose a conference and then to buy new arms." And despite Frondizi's stand, Argentine officers were in Washington purchasing 28 F-86F Sabre jets...
...miles of highway-and Brazil has no naval air arm to put aboard her. Argentina has spent $1 billion on defense since 1954. "Every time Ecuador buys armaments," notes Peruvian Foreign Minister Raul Porras, "we buy as much or more"; yet General Antonio Luna Ferreccio retorts for the brass: "Peru cannot be more disarmed...
Such mechanical extravagance became particularly popular in Germany. A gilded brass Krippe was presented in about 1589 to Elector Christian I by his wife, Sophia. When wound up, a globe on top opens, showing God surrounded by angels; a wall below slides back to reveal the manger, angels come down from heaven to music, Joseph rocks the cradle, the ox and ass rise from their knees, and the shepherds march in, followed by the kings...