Word: defeatists
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...says that as far as ice deposits on "unimportant" Cambridge streets are concerned, "God put it there and God will take it away." Coming in an era of atom bombs, Mark I automatic calculators, and, of all things, snow removal machines, such an attitude seems to take on definite defeatist implications. One might even attribute a philosophy of life to it; but unfortunately the situation is not so simple nor complex as a set of beliefs built around a snow version of the axiom that what goes up must come down. No, the answer is simply that a shortage...
...Minister's Job. Methodist laymen reserve their highest disapproval (98%) for the minister who "seems pessimistic and defeatist concerning the achievement of the goals of the Christian Church." Explains Sociologist Leiffer: "This does not mean that Methodist men and women desire a Pollyanna religion or preacher. . . . But they expect their religious leader to have . . . a belief that good eventually will triumph, and a consequent assurance and patience even in the face of disappointing conditions...
...this was enough to send the Democrats into the campaign with a defeatist psychology which cost them still more votes. While Republicans plugged away with positive promises (such as the 20% tax reduction), Democrats stayed on the defensive. In close contests, poor Democratic morale was enough to swing the election to fighting GOPsters...
Urging ex-servicemen to "resist the defeatist trend now gaining momentum in America," Edward J. McHale, National Field Secretary of the American Veterans Committee, told the Harvard AVC chapter at its first fall meeting last night in the New Lecture Hall that old-line veterans' groups demonstrated at their recent conventions how incapable they are of meeting today's problems...
After World War I, isolationists and liberals disillusioned with Versailles, alike, joined in temporary alliance to sell this country the defeatist bill of goods that the war had been fought in vain and that this country's "national sovereignty" was contingent on its avoidance of foreign infection from international organizations. And so the upper chamber of this nation's legislature, incidentally breaking Mr. Wilson's heart, decided not to involve the United States in the League of Nations lest this country be drawn into another World War. Russia was not permitted to become a member state of the League...