Word: pocus
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...past several weeks it has been clear that the Germans have been giving the keystone plenty of attention. This time they varied somewhat the play acting that goes with standard Nazi infiltration. Instead of the usual hocus-pocus about being "tourists," they assumed new roles. A large number were reported to have debarked at Beirut from a hospital ship as fake-wounded, bandaged, limping and laughing. Others, blond, husky, erect, entered via Turkey under bogus passports as refugee Rumanian Jews, their suitcases marked with large Js. At Aleppo, German officers were strutting about in shorts, apparently made up as sportsmen...
...yards through the line. Frankie Albert, their southpaw passer, flipped a beautiful pitch to little Pete Kmetovic, who scampered into the clear, ran 14 yards, crossed the goal line standing up. A few minutes later, the Indians were back on Washington's 20-yard line. A little hocus-pocus-and they scored another touchdown. Just for good measure, in the last few minutes of play Stanford's little Kmetovic intercepted a pass, trotted over the line again. Final score...
Despite all the traditional hocus-pocus of bands and bunting, platform committees and "keynote" oratory, the forms and panoply had no more meaning than they had had at Philadelphia, before Wendell Willkie and his freshening forces swept the Republicans' fog away. To the Convention's keynoter, Alabama's William Brockman Bankhead, the 1940 campaign seemed to be nothing more than a necessary footnote. Said he: "The minds of the American people are now so deeply engrossed in . . . the preservation of our established order of life and institutions, that they will have no tolerance for the superficial banalities...
Since Catholic censors deal not with matters of fact but of faith and morals, the Detroit committee has had plenty of headaches over the slippery Coughlin discourses. Reputedly Father Coughlin several Sundays ago said something to which the censors had objected. Last Sunday's hocus-pocus suggested that the radio priest, expecting continued censor trouble, was building up a big issue to make the rabble roar again...
...political measure Garner is a good-natured loblolling cowhand who, through the political hocus-pocus that nowadays passes for government, has been drawing his breath, cigar and salary for seven years, and saying nothing, because he knows nothing, while twelve million people have had the opportunity, on relief, to become inured to the blessings of government by "the common people...