Word: blum
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...Party had been vastly aided by France's hunger, discouragement and national humiliation. The U.S. had deepened all three of these factors by keeping the French waiting, hat in hand, for a loan. Last week, after the French voters had rejected the Communist-sponsored Constitution, special emissary Leon Blum, who had been cajoling U.S. officials for eight weeks, found his path easier. Washington woke up to the fact that, France might be saved for the world the U.S. hoped to build. At week's end the Export-Import Bank was on the point of giving France new.credits...
President Truman's proposed $7 billion limit on foreign loans and stiff Congressional opposition to foreign lending were the obstacles Blum faced. But Washington observers thought France might get up to three-quarters of a billion through the Export-Import Bank...
...Yelling on the Fairground." Blum was helped not a whit by Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, who tactlessly made explicit what everyone knew was implicit in the Blum mission-the contention that unless France got U.S. aid she would likely turn to Communism. Said Bidault: if France does not get a big loan "we would almost inevitably be compelled to organize our economic policy in other directions." The world knew "other directions" meant Moscow-ward...
...rightist Parisian daily Epoque angrily accused the foreign minister of "torpedoing" Blum's "most delicate mission." Said L'Aurore: "This is not public diplomacy. This is yelling on the fairground. . . . Bidault talks to the Americans in a manner best calculated to upset them-by threatening blackmail." Bidault hastily said he had been misinterpreted...
...already blowing from "other directions." At Odessa on the Black Sea, ships took on the first carloads of 500,000 tons of grain the Russians had promised to France. Communist Leader Maurice Thorez was busy telling his countrymen about Russia's beneficence. A Courrier de Paris cartoon showed Blum as a gloomy war bride bound for the U.S., surrounded by sympathetic French girls saying: "Poor thing, her G.I. doesn't want her any more." Russia was not above trying to win Marianne on the rebound...