Word: prussian
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...observed, "it is the last 20 minutes that count." Last week there were strong rumors in Bonn that the four-power Berlin talks, now in their 17th month, might be approaching the 20-minute countdown. When the Big Four ambassadors meet this week in West Berlin's old Prussian High Court Building, they are expected to make it a marathon session that may last three days. Speculation was that they are ready to hammer out the last kinks in an "umbrella agreement" on the city's status. Such a breakthrough could not come at a more fitting moment...
...When World War I came, the French were ready to fight the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s. When World War II began, the Allies were ready to fight World War I. It is heartening to know, from the arguments of President Nixon and Secretary of State Rogers justifying the present level of U.S. troop strength in Europe [June 14], that we are ready for World War II if it should break out. STEVEN KOENIG Van Nuys, Calif...
...notes with regret in an afterword: "Now that I am on my way to the goal, I am afraid it is too late. I may not have time and creative imagination left for this 20-year work." Solzhenitsyn focuses on eleven days during the Czarist army's disastrous East Prussian campaign. He sees this period as the turning point of modern Russian history, leading to revolution and the birth of the Bolshevik regime. Although it occurs more than 100 pages before the panoramic novel's end, the excerpt that follows is the dramatic climax...
...takes place on the night of Aug. 29, 1914, after the rout of the Russians at Tannenberg. The Russian commander, General Alexander Samsonov (an actual historical figure), walks through the dense Prussian forests with the remnants of his staff. "He had only wanted what was good," writes Solzhenitsyn, "but it all turned out extremely badly." This is one of the novelist's principal themes?that good intentions are not enough to make the world a better place...
...perhaps paranoia. It is best articulated by Comedian Flip Wilson. In his familiar television routine, a dialogue is going famously, fairly humming with jolly good will. Then the other party touches Flip-a friendly clap on the shoulder, a matey hand on the sleeve. Wilson recoils like a Prussian who has been slapped. An expression of non-negotiable hostility does a slow freeze across his face. In a rising falsetto he cries: "Don't touch me! Don't you ever touch me!" Wilson is not just self-mocking the compulsive suspicion of a black being pushed around again...