Word: poltroon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...last week seemed about to give Asiatic history a new twist. It was as though President Roosevelt should have become a Mohammedan and prefaced his New Deal with some such words as: "Our American people seem to me a nation of jazz-loving gum-chewers, profligate instalment-plan buyers, poltroon capitulators to racketeers, gasoline-wasters and coffee-addicts." *See the ablest recent Far East volume, Can China Survive?, by New York Times correspondents Hallett Abend & Anthony J. Billingham (Ives Washburn, Inc. New York, $3). *Died 1908. Her Majesty has just been made the subject of a brilliant biography, The Last...
...case this did not squelch his critics who have called his policy that of a poltroon, the Prime Minister said that he is "quite content to be called a coward," if that is the name people give to his avoidance of a war between Britain and Italy. He added: "Though I wish to retire some day, I shall retire when I think fit. It is for me to decide, and for no one to dictate...
...navy. Her diplomatic service was "a stronghold of anarchy.'' The Kaiser's vacillating hysteria played hob with any sensible, straightforward policy. Author Wolff quotes some of the revealing marginalia the Kaiser was fond of jotting on state papers ("Bosh!" "What does this civilian know about it!" "Poltroon!" "Idiocy!"), gives several instances when his angry orders, if carried out, would have meant instant war. Of such diplomats as Russia's Isvolsky, Austria's Berchtold, England's Grey, he writes with temperate disapproval...
Flush with profits, von Ribbentrop turned to dabbling in German politics at a period when any mention of Adolf Hitler would cause President von Hindenburg to snort: "I wouldn't appoint that Austrian poltroon so much as a postman!" Undismayed, Major von Ribbentrop kept dropping hints among Der Feldmarschall's military entourage that it might be the smart thing to make some sort of deal with Hitler. Finally in January 1933, at the home of Cologne Banker Franz von Schroeder, von Ribbentrop engineered the first meeting of Political Upstart Adolf Hitler and weak, perpetually scheming Lieut.-Colonel Franz...
...Aggie, with a celerity only possible in the cinema, meets bis opposite, a precious, rich, bespectacled country boy (Charles Farrell). By throwing away his spectacles, telling him to talk out of the corner of his mouth, giving him the Irish name of her jailed lover, she turns the country poltroon into a man-eater and a construction gang boss, then falls in love with him. The complications arrive late, when the lover gets out of jail and Farrell's coddling aunt and charming fiancee (Betty Furness) come to town. Aggie hands Farrell back to his country fiancee, and embracing...