Word: belgians
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Locals lounging about the Grand-Place of the Belgian town of Chièvres-hardly grand and barely a place-stared sullenly as the cavalcade of black limousines and a police escort swirled up. "Things like that don't happen much around here," allowed one, "so we figured that it must be that Chape [Walloon dialect for SHAPE] thing again." It was. NATO's General Lyman Lemnitzer, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, was hunting new quarters...
Under Charles de Gaulle's eviction order, SHAPE must vacate its lodgings outside Paris by April 1. When NATO decided to move its command to Belgium, the generals expected Belgians to propose a site at Wavre, just outside Brussels. But the Belgian government, a reluctant host in any case, had other ideas. It suggested a less attractive spot at Chièvres, 35 miles southwest of the capital, a far safer site for Bruxellois in case anyone ever drops an atom bomb on NATO's military headquarters. Understandably, SHAPE recoiled in horror, since for almost two decades...
Spaak spent his life fighting nationalism, which to him was an evil that had divided Europe for centuries. When he resigned from the Belgian Parliament last week, Europe lost its greatest practicing internationalist...
...Flag & Tennis. Born near Brussels in 1899, Spaak was the son of a writer and director of the Brussels opera; his mother was the first woman to become a Belgian senator. He was always something of a political contradiction. Entering Parliament in 1932 as a radical Socialist, he thought nothing of spending a day waving a red flag at a Socialist demonstration, and then retiring to the tennis court or the plush comfort of Brussels' exclusive Leopold Club...
...German ambassador called on Foreign Minister Spaak to read a statement from Hitler. The German never got a chance to speak. "My turn first, Mr. Ambassador," said Spaak, before he threw the German out. Escaping from the Wehrmacht, Spaak spent the war in London as Foreign Minister of the Belgian government-in-exile...