Word: gaillard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Explanation. In Paris French Premier Felix Gaillard, apparently unfazed by the disaffection of one of France's few remaining supporters in North Africa, promptly made matters worse. Racked by lumbago, Gaillard painfully hauled himself to the National Assembly, won his tenth vote of confidence (286 to 147) by promising to pursue the Algerian war with relentless vigor and to dispatch 28,000 more French troops to join the 500,000 already fighting the Algerian rebels. While he politicked, Gaillard left U.S. Trouble-shooter Robert Murphy and Britain's Harold Beeley cooling their heels, thus deliberately stalling their "good...
...Gaillard's excuse to Murphy and Beeley was the familiar one that in the present delicate state of French politics any conciliatory gesture he might make toward Tunisia would bring his government down. But in the present delicate state of Arab politics French failure to come to a settlement with the Algerian rebels was rapidly obliterating France's last hope of retaining any influence in North Africa...
...inability to keep the Algerian war out of conversational play was an inevitable consequence of 1) the weakness and confusion of France in crisis, and 2) the tightrope-walking nature of his own "good offices" mission. In Paris earlier in the week, France's Premier Felix Gaillard had belabored Murphy with the paradoxical French arguments that, on the one hand, "the essential question dividing France and Tunisia is the aid which the Algerian rebellion gets from Tunisian territory"; on the other, the Algerian war is a purely French concern and hence outside the scope of Murphy's mission...
...obvious objection to this scheme: it would severely handicap the Algerian rebels by depriving them of their privileged sanctuary and would thereby damage Bourguiba's prestige with his countrymen, the bulk of whom ardently support the rebel cause. In Paris U.S. Ambassador Amory Houghton urged moderation on Felix Gaillard, and in Tunis Ambassador Lewis Jones did the same with Bourguiba. At week's end Secretary John Foster Dulles, who had summoned French Ambassador Herve Alphand to his home the day after the Sakiet bombing, prepared to interrupt a long-planned vacation to take personal charge of U.S. efforts...
Away from the Ring. At week's end Félix Gaillard's government made a first gesture toward conciliation. Though it refused to match Bourguiba's offer to accept U.S. mediation-this, the French fear, would open the way to international "interference" in the Algerian rebellion-the Gaillard government announced that it was now willing to accept "the good offices" of the U.S. in settling the dispute. Even more important psychologically, Gaillard and his Cabinet tacitly admitted France's guilt at Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef by offering to pay damages to civilian victims of the bombing...