Word: civilizations
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Since the days of the Kaisers, German civil servants (Beamten) have been a privileged caste. "The Beamte doesn't have much," the saying went, "but he has it for life." The civil service was notably honest and efficient, but it looked upon itself as the masters of the people, not as their servants. Wrote one angry German critic in 1909: "The sergeant-types, who properly belong on the drill field, have gradually penetrated to the highest ranks of public administration." The authoritarian civil service survived the Weimar Republic, was made to order for Hitler...
Early this year the Bonn government shoved through a law restoring the old caste system, its provisions guaranteed to keep the snug, smug bureaucrat happy. Samples: civil servants may not be dismissed for incompetence; vacancies need not be made public and opened to competition. The Allied High Commissioners, in vetoing the new law, reminded Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of his promise last November "to liberalize the structure of government and to exclude authoritarianism," insisted that he produce a more democratic civil service...
...news was the civil war raging between Pompey and Caesar. There was a sharp cartoon about Cicero, whose indecision in the crisis was lampooned in a caption, "Otium Cum Dignitate" (inaction with dignity). There had been strange doings at the Circus Maximus: two gladiators got tangled up with the umpires and decapitated one of them. The weather forecast: "Frigidus." Such was the state of the world last week as reported in Britain's only Latin newspaper, Acta Diurna (Daily Register...
...Tape. They were quickly disillusioned. With the war on, Maclean was as repelled by his cozy desk job as his superiors were determined that he should stay in it. In Foreign Office Regulations, Diplomat Maclean found the loophole he was looking for: an inexorable rule that any civil servant who participated in politics would have to resign. Hurrying around to his chief, Sir Alexander Cadogan (for the last four years Britain's delegate to U.N.), Maclean declared a sudden passion for political controversy. "In that case," replied Sir Alexander with icy brevity, "you will have to leave the Service...
...Town is the third volume in Richter's trilogy of Ohio from post-Revolutionary War times to the Civil War (the first two: The Trees, The Fields), and starts after the War of 1812. Richter picks up his story at the point where pioneer Ohio, its woods cleared and safe, is becoming a town society. Sayward Wheeler, a hardworking, sweet-souled "woodsy," and her lawyer-husband, Portius, could now relax and enjoy life. With loping, casually connected episodes, Richter tells how the nine Wheeler children grow up, how Sayward reluctantly agrees to leave her cabin for a fancy house...