Word: lanser
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...issue: 1) Does Steinbeck put too much faith in the moral superiority of democracy? 2) Is Steinbeck wrong in portraying German soldiers as human beings? It has even been suggested that The Moon is veiled Nazi propaganda. In Manhattan the Belgian Commissioner of Information objected to Colonel Lanser, one of Steinbeck's Germans who recalls how, in World War I, an old Belgian woman killed twelve Germans with a long black hatpin. Said the Commissioner: "Mr. Steinbeck ... does a disservice to the Belgian reputation for dignity and fair play...
Revolt of the Masses. Later Colonel Lanser arrived, and told the Mayor: "We want to get along as well as we can. You see, sir, this is more like a business venture than anything else. We need the coal mine here and the fishing. We will try to get along with just as little friction as possible." He added that the people must go on working the mine. "But suppose," said the Mayor, "the people do not want to work the mine." "I hope they will want to," said the Colonel, "because they must." He explained that the Mayor would...
...Leader. He hated degenerate art and had destroyed several canvases with his own hands." Tonder was "a bitter poet who dreamed of perfect, ideal love of elevated young men for poor girls. ... He longed for death on the battlefield. . . . He even had his dying words ready." Only Colonel Lanser "knew what war really is in the long run. Lanser had been in Belgium and France 20 years before and he tried not to think what he knew -that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last...
Impossible Job. Then Alex Morden, a miner, bashed in one invader's head with his pickax. The invaders asked Mayor Orden to sentence him, to preserve order. The Mayor said he would, if the invaders would shoot the 20 men who killed the loose-hung soldiers. Then Colonel Lanser, who really knew what war is, smiled a little sadly. "We really have taken on a job, haven't we?" he said. "Yes," said the Mayor, "the one impossible job in the world, the one thing that can't be done." "And that is?" "To break...