Word: defeatists
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...like the Big Four meeting, little things like a drop in the price of tea, bred confidence in Tory meeting rooms. The Liberal London News Chronicle reported that in "Labor committee room after committee room, there is the grey admission that half the workers are disheartened, the other half defeatist." There were, of course, Laborites who would deny it. But most of the betting was that unless the wind turned full about, Britain was about to vote the Conservatives back...
...with the Nazi legions rolling into a divided, defeatist country, Reynaud cried: "If a miracle is needed to save France, I believe in miracles because I believe in France." He called for "clouds of airplanes from across the Atlantic," but because he was driven back to Bordeaux, boxed in by collaborationist politicians and forced to yield the government to Marshal Petain, his overly optimistic rallying cries in 1940 are cynically remembered today...
...General Weygand, then 73, France's CinC, a defeatist of another stamp. Active, shrill, offensive in argument, Weygand believed, like "French professional officers generally," that "their army alone excelled in war, that fundamentally [the British] were not soldiers." It followed that only a lunatic could believe that the British could win against an enemy who had already beaten the French...
...nothing premiers like Pinay and Laniel have thoroughly discredited this segment. And since the French people also have little faith in the militant Gaullist Right, they would probably vote for a coalition of groups farther left than Mendes-France. Such a Popular Front would bring with it a defeatist, pacifist policy that would undo much of what has already been accomplished towards strengthening the West. Dulles' trip to Paris this week shows that U.S. planners have finally seen the fallacy of a one-shot cure-all for the ills of Europe. For those who would fight communism with slogans...
...defeatist, no pessimist, he urges intellectuals to cultivate "the nerve of failure," to live with the possibility of disapproval and defeat. Neither in life nor in politics is this a formula for victory. But in both it may be a help in reducing numbness and restoring zest-which is the appropriate style of freedom...