Word: belgians
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...Spaak was elected president of U.N.'s General Assembly, where the world for the first time noticed the big Belgian's political skill, his moving oratory, his practical internationalism. He hulked over the nations' quarrelsome confusion with patience, fortitude and humor (rumor had it that he read mystery stories during the duller speeches...
...Bolshevik in Dinner Jacket. Rival principles, like rival callers, have walked in & out of Spaak's life at top speed. He was born (1899) of a notable and nonconformist Belgian family who felt, in the words of a friend, that they were born to lead Belgium. His maternal grandfather, Paul Janson, and his uncle, Paul Emile Janson, were great Liberal leaders; his father was a well-known playwright; his mother, a Socialist, was the first woman to sit in Belgium's Parliament. At 75, white-haired, good-humored Senator Spaak listens proudly to the speeches...
During World War I, aged 17, he tried to enlist in the Belgian army, was caught by the Germans and interned. After the war, he took a law degree, successfully defended union leaders and Socialists. "He wins juries by sheer weight," said one Brussels judge. "They think such a big man can't be wrong." By 1933 he had become the leader of Socialism's extreme left wing, chiefly because there he found more opportunities than anywhere else. Said he: "It is not sufficient to be right, we also want to be victorious ... As for the majority...
...search for a form of security for Belgium, Spaak turned to the narrow solution of neutrality. It was perhaps the least sensible thing he ever did. He obtained from Germany, France and Britain promises that the Belgian frontiers would not be violated. He hoped that Belgium could be another Switzerland...
Spaak's Belgians are no more attracted by sacrifices than other Europeans. Certainly, they have no wish to see their economic standards reduced to those of Western Europe, even if the latter were thereby slightly raised. Rather do they hope that the rest of Western Europe will come up to Belgian standards...