Word: plain
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...mechanized group under General Chiu Ching-chuan (whose second in command is the Gimo's younger son, Chiang Wei-kuo) broke up a Communist attempt at encirclement, and helped other Nationalist divisions to fight their way back to the west and south. The well-watered North Kiangsu plain seethed like an ant heap with soldiers on the move, as Government Field Commander General Tu Yu-ming desperately shifted his men over rutted roads and torn-up rail tracks to establish a new line with its back to the broad Yangtze. Past the military columns rattled slow trains of flatcars...
...this scattered activity added up to one gathering purpose. That purpose called itself the Caribbean Legion. Some of the Legion were political exiles, some were plain mercenaries, but they all had a common object: the overthrow of Caribbean dictators. Around the Caribbean circuit, in Havana, in Caracas, bustling agents were collecting arms, haggling for battle-weary aircraft, signing up an occasional recruit. The Legion's first target: Nicaragua's Dictator Anastasio Somoza...
...needs to know what kind of mourning is appropriate to driven-bird shooting (a black arm band on a tweed coat) to the unfortunate who still needs to be told that "oil is mispronounced 'erl.' " Some of it is what the whole book imagines itself to be: plain common sense and practical advice. But there is also a great deal of pedantic nonsense whose prissiness would drive a climbing Milquetoast to despair, as he struggled always to say "telephone" (instead of "phone") and "whiskey and soda" (instead of "highball"). "TOMATO," says Author Fenwick firmly, "is better pronounced...
Maybe it's fate. Maybe it's just plain bad luck. But Ken O'Donnell's injury last Saturday which cost the Crimson his services for the rest of the season keeps intact an injury voodoo that has hit every Harvard football captain for six of the last seven seasons...
...this static idea will turn its back on progress and become socially reactionary. The Germans have twice let it lead them into aggressive war, although they, of all people, should have known better. One of their great historic achievements was to "stretch" the sandy acres of the Prussian plain, by good farming. As a result of good farming practices and highly skilled industry, Germany had the highest living standard of Continental Europe. Yet, obsessed by slice-of-cake thinking, it set out to conquer more "biotic potential...