Word: frenchmen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Communists were grabbing for Laos and Cambodia, as well as Viet Nam. But with most Frenchmen ignorant of the pitfalls in such a ceasefire, and impatient for peace, Bidault would find it difficult to reject it out of hand. Commented Bidault: "Very able and very specious. It would mean the complete swallowing of Indo-China by the Viet Minh...
...deeds are most crucial to the negotiations at Geneva is a small, enigmatic Frenchman who set out to teach history, not to help make it. Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, 54, speaks for the divided mind and flagging spirit of France. But his own mind is undivided: more than most Frenchmen, he has a passionate dislike of the Communists...
Well before Dienbienphu's day of defeat came, many Frenchmen at home had given up. "Verdun?" said the moderate left-wing newspaper Combat bitterly. "Verdun was a position which could be held at all costs because the entire future depended on it ... But what does Dienbienphu mean for the French fighting man? ... An obsessive, slow and stubborn war. A terrible kind of war for which the French were not made-because they have clear intelligence, and like to know for what they are fighting. They are impulsive, and need to have a little glory stirring their flags, a little...
...this reverse . . . France will have the virile reaction of a great nation." Without signal, the Deputies of France rose to their feet-all but the many Deputies of the Communist Party (and one ex-Gaullist). In their smug disdain for the dead of Dienbienphu, the Communists who call themselves Frenchmen showed their true colors...
...most of the anger Frenchmen heaped on their confused, divided leaders. "Who placed De Castries and his men in this trap? Who is officially or unofficially responsible? . . . Who? What party? What minister? What general?" demanded Franc-Tireur. On their allies: "Why didn't America help us?" moaned a bewildered old Parisian lady. And on themselves : "The fighters of Dienbienphu died because we lied to ourselves . . . What these sacrifices demand is an examination of our conscience," said Le Figaro...