Word: frenchmen
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...living was getting easier in most European countries. Parliaments were in recess, and the news out of Russia was not of cold threats but of warm toasts with obliging British Socialists. Puzzled newsmen seeking to measure French public response to the defeat of EDC found pockets of Frenchmen dejected by the destruction of a European ideal and other pockets newly passionate in their fear of Germany. But the general tone was "we couldn't care less...
...also becoming clear to many worried Frenchmen that the rejection of EDC had set in train a series of allied reactions which Mendès had not sufficiently anticipated. Shaping up before the French was one of those logical questions that French Premiers have a habit of putting to their allies. France might reject EDC, but is it prepared to go all the way and discard its NATO shield...
After having kept everyone waiting two years, Frenchmen found themselves alone, and many took pride in the fact. They felt a semi-righteous anger, as if everybody else was to blame for putting France on the spot, for failing to understand that EDC really never had a chance. To the end EDC partisans fought for a compromise which, even if successful, was the end of EDC as it had been...
...radio voice of Pierre Mendès-France rang out across France. "I am conscious as I tackle this question that it touches the deepest chords in our national feeling. Not only does it divide Frenchmen among themselves, but it tears each one within himself...
...Paris. In mid-August, temperatures dropped to a chill 57° on the English Channel coast and hovered near freezing on the French side. London last week had its coldest August day since 1871; Wordsworth's famed Lake Country had its 32nd consecutive day of rain. Frigid Frenchmen threw up their hands in disgust and dismissed the whole season (the worst, climatically speaking, in 78 years) as "l'été pourri"-the decayed summer...