They all recognized that the trouble was more than superficial and that 410 represented more than an isolated military defeat. (religion-online.org)
Since France's military defeat in June 1940 and the Nazi occupation, the conditions for Jews had gone from bad to worse. (firstthings.com)
However, in the work of William Faulkner, perhaps the only 20th - century novelist worthy of standing beside Hawthorne and Melville, the southern sense of defeat has been deepened into a genuine apprehension of tragedy, not so much by dwelling on the actual military defeat as by an unsparing delineation of the triumph of rapacious commercial values that followed it. (religion-online.org)