Word: polished
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...uncivil disobedience unfolded in an air of solemnity as four Air Force officers sat in judgment at U.S. Fifth Air Force headquarters in Fuchu, 19 miles from Tokyo. As everyone knew, the ceremonial Honor Guard, to which Wheeler belonged, was the very model of modern spit and polish: 70 frozen-faced six-footers, strictly disciplined, heads closely cropped, attended by twelve pants-pressers, twelve shoeshine boys, two full-time tailors, and bevies of shy, eye-batting Japanese girls. Yet Airman Wheeler, a rebellious sort who did not like his job anyway, disregarded the orders of his superior, Lieut. William Shortt...
Military Career: At 19 served as enlisted man with the czar's dashing Novgorod Dragoons, then joined the revolution's Red irregulars, became a party member in 1919. Educated at Moscow's Frunze military academy, got final professional polish in Germany under famed monocle-wearing General von Seeckt, who taught him the tactics and strategy of the "breakthrough." One of a dozen or so professionals to survive Stalin's pre-World War II army purges (in which 374 generals were killed), rose rapidly in battle command. When Stalin panicked at the German advance on Moscow...
...Wladyslaw Gomulka. Recently the cardinal used the pages of a Roman Catholic weekly to warn that any priest collaborating with the Communist-run "religious" organization called Pax would risk "canonical sanctions." The regime suppressed the issue, ordered the newspaper banned from all newsstands and bookstores-a surprise to Polish churchmen who noted that even Communist publications have recently been critical...
Died. Sholem Asch, 76, Polish-born Jewish writer of popular Biblical novels (The Nazarene, The Apostle, Mary); in London. An erudite man who always carried a pocket-sized Hebrew version of the Old Testament, Asch was saddened by Jew-Gentile divisions, stressed in his work the common roots of Judaism and Christianity ("For me, it is one culture and one civilization"). He came to the U.S. in 1910, became naturalized in 1920, but left in 1953 "with a broken heart," after some extremist members of the Jewish community attacked an apparent shift in his views toward Christianity ("Intolerance among...
...insatiable Colette lived day in, day out with this appetite. The mere sight of a Camembert cheese roused desire to "feel the crust, measure the elasticity of the texture." Sapphires, spring's first lilies of the valley, the smell of humus, the sight of a dead tree branch "polished, glazed, oiled by generations of reptiles"-all these roused her. "She knew a recipe for everything, whether it was for furniture-polish, vinegar, orange-wine, quince-water, for cooking truffles or preserving linen . . ." It is no surprise to hear that "Balzac and Proust were the authors whom she reread untiringly...