United States or China ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What Björnson, not without dignity, objected to was not so much the personal attack, as that the whole play attempted "to paint our young party of liberty as a troop of pushing, phrase-mongering adventurers, whose patriotism lay solely in their words." Ibsen acknowledged that that was exactly his opinion of them, and what could follow for such a disjointed friendship but anger and silence?
The opponents of the President, led by Roosevelt, contended that Wilson was lacking in "patriotism, courage and foresight"; that the failure of the administration to protest against Germany's march across Belgium was due to timidity and a "mean commercial opportunism" which caused the President to act in the spirit of refusing to perform a duty unless there was a pecuniary profit to be gained thereby; and that the interchanges of diplomatic notes with the German government were "benevolent phrase-mongering" which did not accomplish anything.
He despises it as hypocrisy and phrase-mongering. The Jew who really desires to break with his national past and to be absorbed by his Christian surroundings? For that Jew, Reform Judaism does not suffice; he goes a step farther, the step that leads to the baptismal font.
In its grossest and most servile form quotation is a lazy folly; a thought has received some signal or notorious expression, and as often as the old sense, or something like it, recurs, the old phrase rises to the lips. This degenerates to simple phrase-mongering, and those who practise it are not vigilantly jealous of their meaning.
Word Of The Day