Word: thorniest
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...thorniest problems of the conference was the public debt incurred by the Dutch administration in Indonesia, which the new republic would have to take over. The Dutch had originally set the figure at 6.3 billion guilders ($1.7 billion), but the U.N. Commission on Indonesia, which hovered anxiously over The Hague talks, helped persuade the Dutch to scale down their demands to 4.3 billion ($1.1 billion). Another tough nut was the future of New Guinea, a large part of which is still held by Dutch troops. Under the compromise which Van Royen had engineered, both parties agreed to defer a decision...
Impotent Magic. Inside the Town Hall, company, union and city representatives bickered before 200 listeners. The thorniest issues: Yale & Towne's insistence on a return to the open shop; its refusal to offer any increase except one based on overtime. The 77-year-old Stamford plant had accepted a wartime maintenance of membership contract under protest. Now, labor leaders charged, the company was trying to "bust the union." (Rather than recognize a union, Yale & Towne closed its Detroit plant after a prolonged sit-down strike...
Rockefeller's resignation, announced the next day (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), was no better news. His successor, Spruille Braden, U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, had been the thorniest thorn in the side of Peron & Co. Said he on taking over his new job: "My policy respecting Argentine and U.S. relations will not alter in the slightest. On the contrary, the larger opportunities of my new post will make my efforts even more effective...
Americans could find a certain parallel in their own Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Some of its thorniest obstacles and most brilliant compromises arose out of the difference between the little states and the big ones. But the extreme range of size and power at the Philadelphia convention was from Massachusetts down to Delaware. Between them was an easy gradation in the importance of the other eleven states...
That "the fate of Europe . . . the history of the world" hung upon the fictional Sir Horatio and his little squadron will come as no surprise to Hornblower fans. The Captain and his men have long since become one of Dictator Bonaparte's thorniest problems - in three sparkling sea stories (Beat to Quarters, Ship of the Line, Flying Colours) later reprinted in one volume as Captain Horatio Hornblower. The Captain's creator, C. S. For ester, has made his name as a first-rate observer of contemporary British military and naval life (The General; The Ship). The Hornblower series...