Word: rot
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Although students of municipal government have long agreed that Philadelphia is afflicted with political dry rot, that its water supply and fire protection are decrepit ("Filtered filth!" the late Mayor S. Davis Wilson said of Philadelphia water), few Philadelphia politicians have ever admitted that anything is wrong with their fair city. But last week Philadelphia's bumbling mayor, Robert E. Lamberton, was forced to sit through two detailed and heavily documented indictments of Philadelphia as a place to live...
...basis of post-World War I performance, the South could expect to see many of its now bustling yards shut down to rot after the emergency passed. But in 1941. past performances were a poor guide. The U. S. was committed to a two-ocean Navy, for the first time in its history. Quite possibly the nation would not soon again let its merchant marine decline to the decrepit state it was in at the outbreak of World War II-80% of its vessels obsolete or on the verge. With both Navy and Maritime Commission committed to a three-coast...
...novel triumphant. Then it became transfigured with Uplift-Mesmerism, Mormonism, Bloomerism, above all, Teetotalism and Abolitionism. As villain, the boozer rivaled the seducer, now plying his wenches with animal magnetism and transcendentalism, instead of sighs and potions. Among temperance novelists was Walt Whitman, who confided that he wrote the "rot" with the help of several bottles of port. Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was promptly answered by at least 14 pro-slavery novels, including Aunt Phillis's Cabin. Deep in their weeping willows and haunted groves, early U. S. novelists did not build better mousetraps...
...temper. When, aged 23, she started her school in Wallingford, Conn., she had no college degree but very definite educational notions. British-born and a militant feminist, she decided that girls should get no more coddling than boys, set out to establish a girls' Eton. Her motto: "No rot." Her program: athletics for all, self-government, hard work...
...that British pilots were "very clever"-they kept changing their altitude so that gunners could not hit them! The British planes, they said, were painted with a wonderful thick black varnish that made them "invisible": gunners could only shoot at their shadows on the clouds. This was the rankest rot. Most night bombers, German included, are given a coat of flat black on their under surfaces. And righteous though the German High Command's rage was at the Britons' "murderous" attacks on Berlin, they knew the enemy was aiming for military targets just as earnestly if not more...