Major Antedating of "Cold War"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:39 PM -0400 7/31/02, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Mark A Mandel wrote:
>
>>  #1938 _Nation_ 26 Mar. 345  (heading) Hitler's Cold War.
>>
>>  How does the sense compare with that of the other cites?
>
>The context matches up with the definition in OED, although obviously not
>matching up with the specific subdefinition referring to the Soviet Union.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
That would, of course, still distinguish it from "The Cold War" used
as a name [what Strawson called a description that has grown capital
letters, like the Church of England], as it's been since...the Orwell
quote?  Actually, looking at the OED, I can't be sure.  The context is

1945 'G. ORWELL' in Tribune 19 Oct. 8/1 A State which was..in a
permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours.

and there's no way to know without looking at that issue of the
Tribune to know his referential intention.  The very next cite, which
also predates Walter Lippmann, is quite clear:

1946 Observer 10 Mar. 4/3
After the Moscow Conference last December,..Russia began to make a
'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire.

I would still (following the trajectory model of W. A. Read) give a
lot of credit to the 1947 Lippmann Times column, which was actually
called "The Cold War" and generalized it to the Russian bear vs. the
"free world", rather than just ("just, the man says--for shame!") the
British Empire.

On a related topic, it's interesting to find this at the OED entry
for "iron curtain", 26 years before the famous Churchill statement:

1920 MRS. P. SNOWDEN Through Bolshevik Russia ii. 32 We were behind
the 'iron curtain' at last!

Larry