Word: meaninglessness
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When Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt spoke jointly to the world their statement on the post war future was an extraordinary one. It was either meaningless-or almost Pentecostal. They did not use the language of realism, of balances of power, of geopolitics. They used language common to humanity but unusual for statesmen: "We came here with hope and determination. We leave here, friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose...
Most U.S. businessmen still don't know for sure whether 1943 has been a good year for them. So far it has been-but they know they must wait for the year end to see where they really stand. Well knowing that quarterly comparisons in wartime are almost meaningless, they nevertheless watched quarterly earnings reports last week, looking for clues. The National City Bank's earnings report for 275 big corporations, released last week, showed income after taxes for the first nine months of 1943 up 13% over last year (for the third quarter alone the increase...
...Gilberts, cutting off Rabaul, then striking at Truk. On the other flank the same kind of process will probably be in order-a pruning not only in Burma but down the line as well, at the Andamans, perhaps, or Malaya or the Dutch islands. The Japanese arteries will be meaningless when they have no flesh into which to feed military lifeblood...
...many airmen, the Administration's postwar air-commerce policy seems to be flying blind, while the crew sits in the cabin amiably discussing meaningless generalities. Last week the U.S. public learned that the Chief Pilot was sitting back there...
...observer sketches with a black pencil on a map printed in red. The transmitter, which is insensitive to red, sends only the black marks; consequently, if an enemy receiver intercepts the message, it shows only meaningless scrawls. But at headquarters the message is decoded by placing the transmitted sketch over a map duplicating the observer...