Word: vainly
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Winning an Argument. The shock of the Socialist-Communist pact was aug mented by surprise. Since last spring, when left-wing Socialist Pietro Nenni and Communist leader Palmiro ("Hercules") Togliatti put their heads together in a vain attempt at merger, the political tides in Italy and the rest of Europe had been running against the Communists. Embarrassed by Russia's insistence that Italy must give up Trieste, Togliatti had received the indignant resignations of 8,000 Roman Communists in a single day. The Socialists had appointed Sandro Pertini to conduct their negotiations with the Reds, and since Pertini...
...polls and Allied Kommandatura control teams cruised through the city), the Social Democratic Party managed to get more than twice as many votes as SED. Even the Sedists' desperate last minute campaign stunts, including a performance of Beethoven's Ninth, fireworks and free potatoes, were in vain. The results...
...Russia alone that had conquered Bonaparte. But when the citizens of Paris looked for the other Allied leaders, they looked in vain. Britain's Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austria's Emperor Francis I and his Foreign Minister Metternich were dallying in distant Dijon; King Frederick William of Prussia was off tobogganing. Bonaparte was defeated; but the victors' sturdy unity was already succumbing to mutual anxiety, suspicion, self-seeking, and secretiveness...
...Though I am not conceited," writes [James Montgomery] Flagg [TIME, Sept. 30], "I am a vain creature." What does he mean by the distinction...
...distinction is this: "To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself." Max Beerbohm is quoted, from Quid Imperfectum...