Word: meaningless
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...names of the villages (Liushe, Wangchiachuang, etc.) are meaningless 100 miles away, but in some, every single woman, without exception, was raped by the soldiers in occupation. In villages whose occupants had not fled quickly enough, the first action of the Japanese was to rout out the women and have at them; women who fled to grainfields for hiding were forced out by cavalry who rode their horses through the grain fields to trample them and frighten them into appearance...
TIME of Nov. 6 quotes New York Times Correspondent Tolischus' anecdote quoting Stalin as having reassured a Baltic foreign minister with the words, "Never mind, I'll protect you from these great Russians"-meaningful words turned meaningless because of a slight error. The reference is, of course, to imperialist traditions of Tsarist days, when the Great-Russians (Velikorussy) dominated the White-Russians (Belorussy), the Little-Russians (Malorussy) or Ukrainians and countless non-Russians, including the Baltic nationalities and Stalin's own native Georgians. Thus, Stalin spoke as one member of an oppressed nationality to another-as crude...
...correspondent asked Mr. Roosevelt whether the Administration's known intent to ask Congress for still more money for a bigger Big Navy means that he favors a "two-ocean navy." That phrase, said the President, is a beautiful slogan, meaningless in practice. Then he turned to a press-conference guest, Publisher Joe Patterson of the New York Daily News, said the same thing applies to that gentleman's favorite epigram ("Two Ships For One"). What the U. S. must have, the President went on, is a Navy big enough for its maximum, varying defense needs in any ocean...
...Skylark has Gertrude Lawrence to give it wings. Gertie is one of those girls it's fun just to be with, without doing anything in particular. She romps and coos and pouts and purrs so gaily (even when there is no reason to) that Skylark has the same meaningless but unmistakable high spirits that a person gets from singing in the bath...
...what was this high-sounding talk to lead to? Just vague expressions of good will, a meaningless passing of the peace pipe? The conference was not 48 hours old before it became specific as well as pacific...