Word: scorch
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...distance of twelve thousand ocean miles, and the undeveloped state of India's own machine-industry, have this consequence: Japan cannot be held on the Indian front by machines but only by a hostile population. If the common people like those of Russia and China are ready to scorch their own earth and carry on guerrilla warfare, Japan's forces can be neutralized and her conquests made fruitless, even if Calcutta falls...
They meant it. They had no uniforms, did no drilling, furnished their own guns and ammunition for target practice. But they were dead shots and they were ready to shoot. They were even prepared to scorch the good earth of Tillamook County...
...British had sworn to scorch the earth of Malaya, but the job was badly done. They scarcely singed the edges, left many a handsome prize for the oncoming Jap. U.S. Lieut. General Walter Krueger, commander of the Third Army, thought he could see the reason for the British failure: ignorance and insufficient explosives. He ordered an immediate training program to acquaint every combat unit under his command with the ins-&-outs of demolition...
...trial and here, as in Norway and Crete, it has broken down. A national tradition has for generations discouraged intelligence and science, to concentrate on sports and what it calls Character. Here is the result. History may decide that the kind of character that led the Russians to scorch their earth and blow up their Dnieper Dam has the higher survival value...
...Some plant injuries blamed on insects, drought, sun scorch, etc., have recently been traced by Stone's successors at Massachusetts State College to sulfur-dioxide leaks from household refrigerators and large refrigerating plants...