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Updated: May 28, 2025
It had a mighty fascination for many fine minds of the second-rate sort last century; and judging from the phraseology of Tristan it seems to have captured Wagner. He was everlastingly bewildering himself with cheap catch-phrases which happened, through suggestion or otherwise, to stir his emotions.
In my opinion this theory of his was a complete failure, as his only successful pieces were those in which popular interest was excited by catch-phrases.
His rank in the Senate was established from the day he took his seat, and was never lowered during the period of his service. He was an admirable disciplined debater, was fair in his method of statement, logical in his argument, honest in his conclusions. He had no tricks in discussion, no catch-phrases to secure attention, but was always direct and manly.
Much of what he said was lost upon me, for, although he knew that I was a rank outsider, he used a jargon of nicknames, catch-phrases, and allusions that was apparently peculiar to the East Side Bohème. He was part of that little world, and he was unable to put himself in the place of one who was not. I subsequently had occasion to read one of his articles and I found it full of the same jargon.
But here the light is as strong in the eye as whiskey in the throat. Along with the flare, shadow, and mystery, they face the existence of people, places, costumes, utterly novel. Immigrants are prodded by these swords of darkness and light to guess at the meaning of the catch-phrases and headlines that punctuate the play. They strain to hear their neighbors whisper or spell them out.
I attempted to prove that the differences between Germany and Britain were not due to substantial grievances, but that those grievances were purely imaginary; that such catch-phrases as taking Germany’s place in the sun were entirely misleading, and that both the grievances and the catch-phrases were merely diverting the public mind from the one real issue at stake, the clash and conflict between two irreconcilable political creeds—the Imperialism of Great Britain, granting equal rights to all, based on Free Trade, and aiming at a federation of self-governing communities; and the Imperialism of Germany, based on despotism and antagonism and aiming at the military ascendancy of one Power over subject races.
For and against, about it and about, we had woven a mazy network of windy platitudes and catch-phrases, all devised to hide the manifest and manly duties of citizenship; all intended to justify the individual's exclusive concentration upon his own personal pleasures and aggrandizement, without waste of time or energy upon any claims of the commonwealth.
But the whole incident looks to me like a deliberate German plan to jockey an American cruiser into becoming a German submarine tender. "Let me see what else? Too proud to fight? Not much! We know the American people too well. Besides, we suffer from politicians ourselves, and know what political catch-phrases are. So don't let that worry you. "National Training for America?
At the end of half an hour the Piccadilly Tube was lined with sufficient explosive material securely rammed and tamped to ensure the permanent closing of the line. Still no Boche had been seen or heard. "Now, Howie," said Bertie the Badger, fingering the fuse, "what about it?" "About what, sirr?" inquired Howie, who was not quite au fait with current catch-phrases.
And so my commentary, New Year's Day, 1922, proceeds, using for points of more and more extensive departure the refrains and old catch-phrases of books two and three. William Vaughn Moody, and a more talked-of commercial film, The Miracle Man.
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