Word: pessimistic
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Dates: during 1910-1919
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...anyone at home dares suggest that possibly the enemy may be stronger than we expect, he is looked upon as a pessimist. If he protests against heavy expenditures for displays of an emotional sort, he is fortunate if he is not considered openly unpatriotic. Even those who have been to France and have seen war stripped of its garnishings, ineffectually try to stem the tide of current opinion. Nothing but time and suffering can do it, and how intensely painful the realization is going to be! We will find that, though we are sending to France armies of the finest...
Another British push drives the Germans toward home, and the pessimists out of sight. The dispellers of cheerfulness had their day when Russia turned inside out, the Plave became No-Man's Land, and New York went back on Mitchel. Through the clouds of gloom, however, rays of optimism appear. The man who tells us the war is going to end in six months will now misinform us for a few weeks, and thereby satisfy his prophetic instincts. Ground for encouragement does exist, nevertheless, not on the tongue of the seer, but on Flanders mud, Allied union and American progress...
Books are barren things without breadth. The little urchin on the street selling papers to a thousand passing people is more deeply versed in human psychology than the college man of twice his years specializing in abstruse philosophy. He knows that all men are not selfish, as your embryo pessimist would believe, and that all men are not prosperous and well-fed, as the young college optimist would like to hope...
...Charles Mills Gayley, an extract from whose recent book, "Idols of Education," is quoted below, is apparently a pessimist concerning conditions at American colleges. Nevertheless the following extract should interest the thinking portion of the Harvard undergraduate body...