Word: bevins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After Cripps went home to devalue the pound, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin stayed on in Washington. He had a meal with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Vice President Barkley and Senator Tom Connally. Then Bevin and Acheson settled down with platoons of experts to compare their views of the world. They discussed...
China. Acheson and Bevin agreed that Chiang Kai-shek's government was beyond help and beyond hope, except for the hope that Russia might not be able to exploit the Communist conquest. Britain has heavier investments in China than the U.S. has; she is more eager to stay in business there, despite the fact that the Reds have killed Britons and shot up British ships in the Yangtze River. The U.S. and Britain agreed that in making deals with the Communists, they would look out for each other's interests...
...lull in the political East-West conflict which had focused so much attention on the West's economic troubles, like sharp reefs exposed in an ebb tide. Yet nobody thought it safe to assume that Moscow would make no more bids for power in Europe. With Bevin, Schuman and Acheson in Washington, the representatives of nine other Atlantic Pact nations* joined them to blueprint Western defense machinery. In this field, the statesmen were on sure ground; a scheduled three-hour meeting lasted only one hour...
Once, when Beaverbrook did act without consulting Franks, he got himself into difficulties. The Beaver turned up at a cabinet meeting with a set of inaccurate labor figures, which Franks and his statisticians could have told him were wrong. Bevin, who loathed Beaverbrook, was quick to spot the error. In the cabinet meeting they started quarreling and Churchill had to intervene saying: "I really can't have two of my cabinet ministers carrying on like this," "Well,", said Bevin, "I won't accept those figures from Beaverbrook. I'll accept them only from Franks...
Furious, Beaverbrook returned to the Supply Ministry with his figures, called for Franks and asked him if they were right. Franks told him candidly they were wrong. But as Beaverbrook was still reluctant to admit the error to his archfoe, Bevin, he ordered Franks to try to find some way to reconcile these figures with the right ones. Franks smiled, went to work with his statisticians and devised an ingenious way of doing it. Having proved he could achieve this little triumph of twisted cunning, Franks burst out laughing. "That," said he, "is what I would call chicanery...