Word: valor
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...believed, like Doc Peret, that somewhere inside each man is a biological center for the exercise of courage, a piece of tissue that might be touched and sparked and made to respond, a chemical maybe or a lone chromosome that when made to fire would produce chain reactions of valor that even the biles could not drown. A filament, a fuse, that if ignited would release the full energy of what might be. There was a Silver star twinkling somewhere inside...
Since the action occurs around 1941, the two audiences react in vastly different ways. The U.S. memory bank of World War II does not contain the traumatic wound dealt the Russians who suffered casualties in the millions at German hands. The valor, the burden and exhilaration of common sacrifice experienced in Russia during those years simply did not exist on the American home front. Thus the bruising flood of memory that Russians bring to Echelon can come from U.S. audiences only in spurts...
Thracian men were famed for their martial valor over centuries--even the Romans admired their bravery and preferred them as gladiators (Spartacus was Thracian). Yet there was more to them than banditry alone, as this range of art works dating from around the 16th century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. proves. For Thrace was the land whence came Orpheus, mythical musician-king who enchanted the most ferocious beasts and defied Pluto, the king of the underworld; it was the country where the Horseman--a god combining aspects of Apollo, Dionysos and Asclepius--was at once the object of popular...
...generation ago Germany troubled the peace of the world, and the American people chose to enter a war to end wars, a war to make the world safe for democracy. That was a noble action and its heavy sacrifices in treasure and in blood are consecrated to valor and ideals. But that war stands condemned by its results and America must not again be dragged into the anarchy that is Europe...
Moral: Digression is the better part of valor...