Word: soberly
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...uttermost parts of the world goes news of the election of Achille Cardinal Ratti, Archbishop of Milan, to be Rome's 261st Pope. Facts: he is 64, stocky, a onetime mountain-climber; famed as Papal Nuncio to seething Poland; a sober, scholarly cleric; a politically-minded, potent man of action...
...Sober, pious, less dramatic than it should have been, The Man Who Played God has the distinction of that crafty dignity which George Arliss injects into all his impersonations. His thin smile, his high nose, his punctilious diction relieve the antiquated arguments of the story (by Gouverneur Morris) which will be joyfully hailed by those who regard the cinema as an agent for good...
This is an altogether natural transition, but by deification Washington loses his significance. He was not omniscient, omnipotent, and divine. His genius was the sober brilliance of a thoughtful man. His life was determined by essential principles of which he never lost sight. He was a gentleman reared in and almost feudal civilization, maintaining to the last the virtues and the blemishes of that civilization. He was a leader of bright, if restricted vision, a politician of sound, if conventional theory, a man of careful, tranquil thought. Like Lincoln he possessed that rare ability of assessing human values...
...tradition. But he no longer is of value to Americans, beyond the comfortable knowledge that once in the old days there were giants upon the earth. It is enough for the present to wave flags, to beat drums, to construct tales of a hatchet and a cherry tree. The sober mind, the common sense, the courageous, generous spirit lie with, and are of, an age that is past...
...page from Swift, a page from Samuel Butler, a page or two from Jules Verne, Herbert George Wells and Anatole France: put them all together and they spell HUXLEY. Author Huxley points out that his brave new world is strikingly similar to a world simultaneously envisioned by a slightly soberer scientist, Bertrand Russell. Delighted when critics discovered that he was a Thinker, he is still unwilling to give up tomfoolery. In Brave New World he mixes it so well with sober, cynical conclusions that it is hard to tell where one stops and the other begins...