Word: drumheads
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Memoirists are the musicians of history. Churchill's English eloquence thumped the drumhead of World War II into a heroic thunder with his wartime memoirs. Charles de Gaulle drew a dry bow over the taut strings of French postwar political chaos to produce his searching remembrance of things past. Now Konrad Adenauer is onstage with the first volume of his memoirs, covering the period from 1945, when Germany lay in ruins, to 1953, when the postwar Wirtschaftswunder dawned. Adenauer's instrument, not surprisingly, is a brisk and Bachlike clavier, well tempered by the author's 90 years...
Congress enacted the code in 1950 in response to complaints about "drumhead justice" during World War II, when the number of courts-martial hit 750,000 a year. In one sense, the complaints were no surprise; civilian soldiers, whether draftees or volunteers, have made known their distaste for military rules in every U.S. war since the Revolution. But Congress was also aware of the professional soldier's compelling argument that autocracy is a military necessity. As General William Tecumseh Sherman warned in 1879: "An army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every change...
Another serious space-suit problem is flexibility. Contrast between the pressure inside and the vacuum outside tends to make the suit as tight as a drumhead. To move at all, arms and legs must be fitted with accordion-like joints. To judge by his motions, Leonov could move his arms fairly freely, but his legs and torso seemed stiff and straight most of the time...
...Frederick G. Frost Jr. & Associates: "World War II is a convenient dividing line. During the war, new, lighter materials were developed. The masonry wall eight to ten inches thick gave way to a plastered metal lath partition two or three inches thick." The whole thing resonates like a drumhead...
...only course, under the Articles of War, is to court-martial Billy Budd for killing a superior officer. And the only penalty prescribed by the articles is death. "We don't deal with justice here, but with the law," Vere finally persuades a member of the drumhead court. And the court knows of no way to save Billy Budd, makes the soul-wrenching decision that he must hang. Next morning, as the rope tightens around his neck, Billy cries in a clear voice: "God bless Captain Vere...