Word: heroisms
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...nations which reject that belief, the latter have no alternative but resistance. If that resistance stirs up unedifying emotions, the same thing could be said of the feelings aroused in the innocent victims of any catastrophe--not only the emotions of fear and terror, but even those of exalted heroism, which, however admirable, inevitably disturb the desirable tranquility of normal life...
Without detracting one whit from the courage and heroism of the American correspondents in Europe today, I would like to point out that Hitler's war is not a personal war against the U. S. newspaper men in Europe. In Asia, however, the frustrated Japanese war lords blame the American correspondents in Shanghai and elsewhere for their failure to frighten and befuddle the U. S. and disorganize the Chinese in the occupied areas. The Japanese and their hirelings are today waging a personal war upon those heroes of the American press-Randall Gould, J. B. Powell, T. H. White...
...suspenders), run for the engines, and are speeding away with screaming sirens in less than a minute. The visitor, impressed by the leisure of the station, often forgets this other part of the fireman's life: the midnight alarm, the race through crowded or icy streets, and the calm heroism obscured by heavy smoke. He forgets that there are always a couple of the men doing their loafing in the Cambridge City Hospital and that from an occasional one of the 1800 alarms the engines answer each year some fireman doesn't return...
Lately reports on morale have been less enthusiastic. In grim, off-the-record speeches, British correspondents have warned Americans that it's all very well to cheer undoubted British heroism, but that the British can't be expected to take it forever...
Another paradox: Britons do not mind being told the worst but refuse to believe anything but the best. Winston Churchill knows this well, and one of the qualities which make his words reverberate with heroism is his ability to tell bad news and make it seem somehow good-to make gloomy sentences add up to buoyant paragraphs. Last week he spoke of casualties, property destruction, difficulties-of production, the flub at Dakar. His doom-ridden peroration was a bright passage in the literature of hope...