Word: ma
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Rout of Ma...
Thermometer mercury scrooched down in its tubes, showed 4° below Zero. Across the bleak Manchurian steppes just south of Tsitsihar snowflakes scudded in a driving blizzard that nipped soldiers' noses, soldiers' ears. Well-publicized Chinese General Ma Chan-shan with 23,000 Chinese troops was about to make his heroic last stand against 3,500 prosaic but efficient Japanese soldiers...
Japanese cavalry were first in the charge. Riding down the Chinese front line they cut a swath into which Japanese infantry poured pell mell, yelling. General Ma's right flank held at first. Chinese cavalry tried to encircle the Japanese right, but Japanese field guns and bombing planes stopped that. A lone Chinese anti-aircraft gun atop an armored car waggled and wobbled, frantically failed to hit even one of six Japanese planes. Nine Chinese field batteries blazed valiantly, but along a five-mile front superior Japanese armament turned the battle's tide. Chinese units broke, fled...
Uncorking the champagne, Host Ma proposed and sipped "a toast to America!" and "a toast to China...
...Lord is smooth-faced, suave, lively. As Seth Parker, he puts on a white wig and false beard, drawls genially and devoutly, becomes a skinny, saintly Yankee sage. He delivers a little sermon, pointed up with earthy rural witticisms. Leading members of his cast of ten singer-actors are "Ma" Parker, Capt. Bang (famed for his rendition of "Crossing the Bar"). Lizzie Peters, a comic spinster (played by Mrs. Sophia Mecorney Lord, mother of two), and Cefus, Lizzie's half-witted brother. To the accompaniment of an antique melodeon, Seth and his neighbors sing hymns. Titles suggest the neighborly...