Word: herriot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Auriol's tears, trickling into the muddy current of French opinion, were one of a number of streams which together seemed last week to be washing at the foundation of European unity against Communist aggression. Foremost were Speaker Edouard Herriot's declared opposition to the European Defense Community and Premier Antoine Pinay's tacit approval of Herriot's position (he knew what Herriot was going to say and did nothing to change it). After all, the whole idea of EDC was a cumbersome attempt to quiet French fears of German rearmament; now it looked...
...moment to close the floodgates, and Foreign Minister Robert Schuman did just that. Schuman's party, the M.R.P., threatened to withdraw from the government unless immediate consideration was given to ratifying EDC. Premier Pinay, who needs Herriot's party in his coalition but also cannot carry on without the M.R.P.'s 100 votes, promised that ratification of EDC would be debated in the Assembly in November...
Though France's old (80) Edouard Herriot is nowadays something of a cipher, he is also something of a symbol. Associated in most minds with the stirring days of Aristide Briand and the invincible Clemenceau. Herriot is 1) President (Speaker) of the French National Assembly, 2) leader of the influential rightist Radical Socialist Party. Last week Herriot the symbol threw a symbolic wrench into the delicate engineering of the European Defense Community...
Standing before a 16-ft. portrait of himself at a Radical Socialist congress in Bordeaux, Herriot attacked the six-nation treaty which would set up a multinational European army against Communist aggression. Said Herriot: "Does this treaty conform to our Constitution? I say no ... All the provisions of this treaty work to put France in a position of inferiority." Herriot's specific objections: 1) under articles 12 and 13, the Germans, and all other nations, could withdraw troops from the joint army on the pretext of putting down domestic disturbances, while if France wanted to withdraw troops to send...
...opposed to German participation in the general staff. Let them give us soldiers, nothing more." The French Foreign Ministry hurriedly denied that he had said such a tactless thing. In view of Herriot's opposition and Pinay's lukewarm support, ratification by the French Parliament is still possible, but chancier than ever...