Word: grimness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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First impression is this: the Soviet Union is still a shoddy, grim, rude place. Stores and public transportation are badly crowded; the new buildings are poor in quality, as is most clothing; service is slow even in the National, overlooking the Kremlin, which is Moscow's best hotel; the faces on the street are unsmiling, preoccupied, severe...
...devastating acts of sabotage, the F.L.N. terrorists turned, not upon their fellow Algerians, but upon the French themselves. Even as Premier de Gaulle pleaded his cause in Algeria (see above), the two-year-old F.L.N. threat to "carry the war to France" became-at least for a while-a grim reality...
...Dust. A miracle it was not. It was a triumph of technology over nature. For the second straight year, the prairie earth was made to yield more moisture than it received. An almost snowless winter gave way to an arid spring; by June topsoil began to blow in a grim reminder of the Dirty Thirties. "Every time there was a sprinkle." said a Moose Jaw farmer, "I'd go out and kick the soil. All I got was a cloud of dust...
Moorehead leaves his subject with a grim picture: the murder of the Czar and his family. The Bolsheviks later executed five responsible for the massacre, establishing a tradition-elimination of witnesses-that would cost many of the Reds their own lives. Concludes Moorehead: 'The wheel had now turned almost full cycle from [Czar] Nicholas to Lenin, from autocracy back to autocracy again . . . Bread and Peace' had been at the heart of the party's program from the beginning. What Russia was now about to receive was famine and civil...
Split Idol. Gage's last major adventure as a missionary was a bold and dramatic episode. With an Indian guide, armed companions and his "blackamoor" bodyguard, he walked into a deserted cave where ancient Indian deities were still worshiped. Coming upon a grim idol and ignoring its scowl, he ordered the idol removed. In church next Sunday, he preached on the text: "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." At a suitable moment the friar produced the idol and had it chopped to pieces with an ax and burnt. Later the idolaters had Gage cudgeled, stabbed...