Word: huges
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Last week French Finance Minister Paul Reynaud presented his first wartime budget. It was for a year and it was balanced all right, but the joker in it was that it covered only civil and not military costs. These were huge enough-79,000,000,000 francs ($1,746,000,000), or an increase of $500,000,000 over last year's ordinary expenses. A few items which might possibly be called military costs were included: $309,400,000 for the relief of families of mobilized men, $55,250,000 for refugees from the war zones...
...important, the country has changed from a predominantly agricultural to an increasingly industrial nation. Cheese, butter and tulip bulbs are still important exports, just as windmills, wooden shoes, dikes are still a part of the Dutch landscape. But more typical of The Netherlands in the 20th Century are its huge international banks, its thriving merchants, its busy manufacturers...
Life in The Netherlands Indies is abundant. Dutch colonials grow rich on oil and rubber, fat on Bols gin and rijsttafel ("rice-table," a huge meal which requires a dozen natives to serve). Their activities at clubs are so serious as to be nearer worship than relaxation. The social hierarchy is solid and rigid as a marble staircase. After a party at the Harmonic Club in Batavia, Java, chauffeurs must line cars up according to their masters' standing, so that 20,000-guilders-a-year may drive off before 15,000-guilders-a-year...
...second round found King Ludwig still on his feet, shaking a sword while badgered by a corpse-faced woman with huge plaster breasts. Then they began to bring in the crutches. But not for Ludwig. While other mimes and ballerinas were hung and propped, while even the desiccated swan on the backdrop drooped under the caresses of a clambering nymph in white winter underwear, Ludwig stood it out. But as the music trailed off into the Pilgrim's Chorus, Ludwig sank to earth, plaintively opening a black umbrella...
...oozed from its eerie, greenish interior. Faint scrapings, squeals, slimy drippings could be heard far down in its inky bowels. Author Sanderson went cautiously inside. Clusters of giant grey bats whirred out of potholes. Crabs the size of footballs, their eyes bugging like periscopes, squatted on the floor, waved huge pincers, hissed like snakes. A luminescent lizard slithered into a dark crevice. An enormous red rat nudged his foot. Giant spider-centipedes scuttled across his hands. Blood-sucking vampire bats gnashed from black ledges...