Word: impressive
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Samurai v. Optimist. One of Toland's most effective devices is to flash from the misery of a hopeless battlefield to the wild unrealism of cables from Washington that demanded impossible resistance in high-flown language designed to impress world opinion. Commanders themselves could be dispiritingly callous: MacArthur, arriving safe in Australia as his troops made their last stand in Bataan, declared airily: "That's the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die-and the difference is just an eyelash." Too often, the difference was between the dedicated professionalism of the samurai...
...must be "a human being of such magnitude as to pull the mad chaos of our world into some kind of new shape--to put the impress of a larger spirit on it, so men may live undaunted by that terror that is man-made. For the terrible crises we face may be nothing less than God's call to us to reach a new level of our humanity...
Failure to Impress. Wagner had to work uncommonly hard for his third term. A docile favorite of Tammany Hall during his first seven years, Wagner this year annoyed the bosses by picking his own-and abler-running mates: Civil Servants Abraham Beame for controller, Paul Screvane for council president. For that effrontery, Wagner had to defeat State Controller Arthur Levitt, the bosses' choice, in a primary to win the Democratic nomination. But the primary gave Wagner what he badly needed: an issue. Ignoring the past, the mayor promised to put an end to "boss rule" if reelected, vowed...
...also for its only trace of weakness. Proficiency on such instruments as the cromorne (a woodwind) or the viele (a string about the size of the violin but held like a cello) is not often in demand, and so it is not surprising that the Cambridge ensemble should impress one more by vivacious spirit of performance than by craftsmanship of execution...
Madison fought the war mainly to stop British harassing of U.S. shipping. British men-of-war were keeping U.S. ships out of European ports and halting them on the high seas to impress U.S. sailors into the British navy. Madison never did succeed in rallying the nation behind the war. Merchants traded with the enemy throughout the war. Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were so opposed to "Mr. Madison's War" that there was open talk of secession. Madison had no control over Congress, tolerated incompetent subordinates in his Cabinet. A whispering campaign was launched suggesting that...