Word: fears
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Dusty History. By this week it appeared that Berlin's envelopment and destruction would have to be total. Fear-crazed men fought beside the fanatics as the teeth of the clamp bit deeper by the hour. Now the Russians were on the main spokes of the wheel of Chaussees and wide Strassen that led to the hub at Alexander Platz. From Weissensee and Pankow they bit in toward the big Sportspalast, where Adolf Hitler had recited much of the history that now had turned to bitter dust...
...Budapest to 19th-Century New England, and renamed the swaggering, bad-tempered barker Billy Bigelow. It has also, to its loss, reduced his swagger and taken away his Continental, scamp-like grace. But it tells much the same story and weaves much the same mood. Billy acts tough for fear of seeming tender, beats his wife lest he reveal he loves her. He commits a crime for his unborn child's sake, dies, leans carelessly against the bar of Heaven, returns to Earth for a day to try to do a good deed...
...armies of long ago," observes Moran, "were recruited, broadly speaking, from men who did not feel fear. Their courage seems to have had its roots in a vacant mind. Their imagination played no tricks. . . . Were the descendants of these yokel soldiers the backbone of our army ... in 1918? I shall answer that the man who felt no fear was hardly to be found in that...
...Resolve. Modern war also puts a far greater strain on men's nerves than ancient warfare did. It has introduced monotony, terrible noise, ever-present danger of shell or bomb out of the distant blue, long-continued lack of any rest period or of any moment free from fear. Lord Moran defines courage as "a moral quality . . . not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power...
...confirming his fear that 1946 was completely unfamiliar with the ivy-covered folklore of the 300-year old institution, he swing on his Freshman room-mate accusingly. "Did you ever hear of the old letter-carrier who used to climb across the roof from one entry of Matthews to the other, as a short-cut to save steps?" he demanded. Upon the expected "no," Vag settled back and sighed unhappily...