Word: bevin
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...Bevin displays little humor and geniality around the office ("Life is Real, Life is Ernest" soon became a common quip). He likes a drink and a chat, but is pathetically awkward at making friends. Nevertheless he won underpaid Foreign Office hearts by going to bat for a general salary raise. When a friend suggested that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Daiton, might object, Bargainer Bevin roared: "I'll take the worthy doctor by his pants and swing him around my head till...
Decline of Empire. When Bevin sat down after his first foreign policy statement in the House of Commons, one of his colleagues on the Government bench dryly remarked: "He's picked up all of Eden's principles and dropped nothing but his aspirates." (Commoner Bevin still occasionally drops his aitches; during the war he whipped on his workers with "Give 'itler 'ell!") Different as Ernie Bevin is in manner and method from urbane Anthony Eden, and from all the kid-glove and silk-hat diplomats before him, he has not veered from Eden's course...
...years of Bevin's life have marked the decline of Britain from the world's first industrial and naval power to a position of strategic dependence on the U.S. At the time Bevin was born, Britain was able to make more armaments than all of the rest of the world put together. When Bevin became Foreign Secretary, Britain could not make a tenth of the world's output of weapons. Yet from her days of pre-eminent power Britain had inherited over 13 million square miles of empire with 450 million people-and with them a sense...
...price of victory had been high for Britain. The price of peace might be higher still. How much could Ernie Bevin afford to pay? How much could he afford not to pay? Those questions would define the hostory of the next quarter-century...
...clear already that Ernie Bevin had not become the king's Foreign Secretary to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. Socialist or no, Bevin meant to fight for the king's Empire. As always, he would drive a hard bargain. Above all, he would fight-as he had fought last week in UNO, for a way of dealing with Russia that did not involve giving in to every Russian demand...