Word: monumental
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Black Fear. Last week, on the 111th anniversary of the Blood River battle, the thanksgiving day turned into a raucous demonstration of Boer chauvinism. Prime Minister Daniel Malan's nationalist government formally dedicated a new monument to the Voortrekkers, a massive, brooding granite tabernacle on the boulder-strewn veld near Pretoria. South Africa's 8,000,000 black people were excluded from all celebrations. For days before the actual dedication ceremonies, while bonfires blazed in the hilltops around Pretoria, frantic rumors had swept the wretched native settlements that the white men were bent on a bloody sequel...
More than 700 people fainted in the broiling sun, but swarms of sightseers climbed the monument's steps to gaze reverently at the bas-reliefs of Voortrekker heroes and other figures of South African history. At noon, a shaft of sunlight fell through an opening in the monument's dome upon the words "Ons Vir Jou Suid Afrika" (We for You South Africa), engraved on an altar 130 feet below. The crowd watched in solemn silence while organs played; at that moment, throughout the land, bells pealed from every town and village belfry...
...lost in the strident Afrikaans outburst was the calmer voice of former Prime Minister Jan Christian Smuts, who pleaded: "Let this monument of our genesis be ... a symbol not only of the past but of our reconciliation . . ." Judge Newton Thompson bluntly spoke for South Africans of British descent: "If you want our country to flourish and be happy, then you must take us with you, not as your subordinates . . . but as your equals at your side...
...Another monument to the strange economics of the Government's price-support program (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) was on view last week. It consisted of 4,000 tons of cottonseed, piled high on the concrete tennis courts of a former naval air station in Oklahoma City. Bought and paid for by the U.S. taxpayer (through the Commodity Credit Corp.), the cottonseed seemed destined for the same fate as the mountains of potatoes, eggs and other commodities which the Government in the past has bought...
White Elephant. In Chicago, Hilton ran into tradition of another kind. For years the $30 million Stevens, world's biggest (3,000 rooms) hotel, had stood like a half-filled honeycomb as a monument to the folly of its builders. The Army used it as a barracks at the beginning of the war, and in 1943 Chicago Contractor Stephen Healy bought the white elephant and caught Hilton's eye by making it pay in the war boom that was suddenly filling all hotels. But when Hilton began to bargain for the Stevens, he met his match in Healy...