Word: usual
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Sirs: I have often wondered whether Miscellany is intended to be taken seriously and whether these believe-it-or-nots are verified with your usual care. In particular, being seriously interested in the homing instincts of birds and animals, I did not miss in the issue of TIME dated Aug. 14, the items labeled "Mother" (fleet Italian swallow) and "Toad" (Boston or Bust). Does the Miscellany editor have a pending file that will remind him to find out whether Teddy actually gets home again in April 1941? (Such a smart toad might reason that he is better off in California...
...Virginia hill that slopes into the Potomac, twice as many Americans as usual walked, hushed and hatless, to stand in sombre silence by the white marble Unknown Soldier's Tomb. In Sudbury, Mass., leathery old Henry Ford, who once called history "bunk" and with his "peace ship"* tried to stop World War I before Christmas 1915, told reporters: "They don't dare have a war and they know it. It's all a big bluff." About Hitler: "I don't know Hitler personally, but at least Germany keeps its people at work...
...left hand on a shiny sabre-hilt, Wilhelm II was considering an ultimatum to Russia (sent the following day): cease mobilization in twelve hours or Germany will fight. Stock exchanges in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, St. Petersburg were already closed in panic. But the London Exchange had had business as usual that Thursday. Many a U. S. businessman waved away Wilhelm's ultimatum as "pure bluff." At 23 Wall Street Mr. Morgan & friends emerged from meeting after three hours, confident there would be no World War. They announced the New York Exchange would remain open as long as there were buyers...
Peace. Strong on defense, Britain and France seemed weak on surprise. Neither gaunt Mr. Neville Chamberlain, taking his after-breakfast stroll as usual, nor serious M. Daladier, had the talent, training, or freakish love of shock to plan a move of the sort that Hitler had made. As profound gloom settled over the capitals of Europe-in Moscow, belatedly, as well as in Berlin-some great stroke of unprecedented originality, some inspired action unlike any that diplomatic history had known, seemed called for to answer Hitler's. But the imaginations of peace were not productive. Memories of Munich, when...
...something going on in their own back yards. Land-measuring commissioners were prowling around checking up on the small garden plots, on the collective farms, where peasants produce food for themselves. The wheat harvest dropped about one billion poods (602,000,000 bushels) below estimate. There was the usual 25% loss of grain between reaping and threshing, because the stalks lay in the fields for weeks, because too many combines were broken down. But this year both Dictator Stalin and Premier Molotov had said it could not happen again. It happened...