Word: concept
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...independent republic . . . some of the benefits and advantages of Commonwealth connection . . . My personal view is that there is no middle course between Crown and republic, between in & out of the Commonwealth ... If in some nebulous and muddled way you can be both in & out of it, the whole concept of Commonwealth goes and what remains is mere name without substance, the grin without the cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
...clear, old-fashioned hand. It reduced the Emperor from godhead to symbol, abolished the feudal aristocracy, gave the Diet genuine power to make laws, guaranteed popular liberties, decreed sex equality, renounced the nation's right to make war, even for self-defense. It contained such alien concepts as "public servants" (ancient custom made bureaucrats responsible only to the Throne) and "pursuit of happiness" (many a Japanese finds this Jeffersonian concept immoral...
None of these arguments is particularly impressive. It is very doubtful whether the strongest possible Western European forces could do much to slow down an invasion from the east; even a completely equipped "Uniforce" would be terribly overmatched by whatever the Russians threw against it. The "Bridgehead" concept is getting more and more antiquated as the pace of modern war picks up; military strategists like to think that if we must fight a war, we should be able to pick a better operating area than historically vulnerable Western Europe...
...remedy, according to Niebuhr: let mankind return to the Christian concept that history is a drama "of God's contest with all men, who are all inclined to defy God because they all tend to make their own life into the center of history's meaning...
...sacrificing the composer's intentions for Koussevitzky's idea of effect, and the physical limitations of Symphony Hall's stage forced the conductor to use a smaller chorus than is ordinarily employed. But Dr. Koussevitzky's interpretation of Beethoven's masterpiece was one which for sheer beauty and noble concept will seldom be approached...