Word: ointments
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Only flaw in the ointment: the Germans may have faked and planted it for the British to find...
...there was one fly--and a big one--in the defense ointment. When Uncle Sam asked for recruits for his officers' jobs, he always demanded that they be "in good physical condition." And "good physical condition" meant perfect or near-perfect eyesight--a qualification which a number of students, after a year or so of peering at various and sundry textbooks, can no longer boast about. That meant that the undergraduate without the required 20-20 vision, qualified though he might be in ability, training, and in enthusiasm and eagerness to serve, was left out in the cold...
...Ointment...
...that Noah Lammock has become "an overwhelming menace." The rest is almost unmitigated breakdown. God plays the harmonium, Lammock preaches, underfed rhinoceroses lie about "like huge unpacked leather bags," the whole voyage disintegrates into weak comic strip. At length God identifies the Jonah, the unstrainable fly in the human ointment. He is "the essential treacherous cunning in man, the 'save a bit out of it' soul, the dodger of obligations, the profiteering partner, the undying Ananias, the sweater of opportunity, the area sneak, the bounder on the make, the official who is in with powerful friends, the player...
Frequently Professor Briggs interrupts his show to put in a plug for the Slo-Gro Corp. of America, makers of an ointment that retards the growth of hair and so permits users to reduce their barber bills. A great one for contests, the Professor has introduced the Slo-Gro Triple-or-Nothing, Take-it-or-Stuff-it, True-Blue Americana Quiz, on which contestants have a chance to make $50,000, provided they can figure out such problems as getting the cube root of 11,682⅞ within three seconds flat. No one as yet has won any prizes...