Sentence Correction

The Schlieffen Plan, which the German army used to invade France in 1914, required that the last man on the right of the German line literally brush the english channel with his sleeve.

A. literally brush
B. was supposed to literally brush
C. would have literally brushed
D. will literally be brushing
E. was to literally brush

I am not able to perform POE in A & E. The sentence is talking about the past and 'was' pinpoints past .
Please Help

According to me the idiom goes like this : require that X Y.

Hence IMO A

@karanrulz4ever,

Could you please suggest what is X and Y here , I am not able to figure out.

Thanks in advance

Require asks for a subjunctive verb form.

E.g.
1) The teacher requires that you do your homework today.
2) The test required that he study for an hour every day.

A is right.

Would definitely go with A

I think that the answer is A..

the idiom is : require that X Y

Here, "required that the last man on the right of the German line" is X
and "literally brush the english channel with his sleeve" is Y

u combine the 2 and u get the correct idiom..

Hope this helps

Kushal

niksworth wrote:Require asks for a subjunctive verb form.

E.g.
1) The teacher requires that you do your homework today.
2) The test required that he study for an hour every day.

A is right.

Also note that many verbs can take either the subjunctive mood or the infinitive form:

The teacher asked that he study for an hour every day OR
The teacher asked him to study for an every day.

Choice E also splits the infinitive ("to literally brush", like "to boldly go"), still considered less desirable by some and incorrect by others.

Thanks Everyone

I still have doubt on X and Y .The X, Y suggested above seems to be part of an one going clause rather than two disctinct entity. We take X and Y as compareable entity such as in parallelism.

Jim's approach of subjunctive sound's more correct here. So, I see it as a Subjunctive check rather than idiom.

Kindly correct If I am wrong.