Word: mend
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...week's end, France's Premier Pierre Mendès-France had only 16 days left. His pledges were still only pledges. In Indo-China, where he had promised to get peace in 30 days, the French abandoned a third of the Red River Delta without a fight. From both sides of the Atlantic, apprehensive allies warned him against any attempt basically to alter EDC. Trouble flared in restive Tunisia and Morocco...
...just two weeks in office, Mendès-France had already had more impact on France-and Europe-than any French Premier since De Gaulle. Here was a man who bluntly announced what he thought France should do, demanded authority to do it, and acted as if he meant to carry it out. After years of trimming and timidity, Mendès-France had struck off the deadhead of France's postwar malaise-immo bilisme. Whether his 30-day gamble gamble is won or lost, the French people had found in Mendès-France something that had long...
...Must Choose." Mendès-France believed in himself. And last week, in hundreds of letters to newspapers and the government, Frenchmen declared their belief in him. "Your presence gives us comfort," wrote a pensioned widow. "A man who speaks to us with frankness and simplicity, you have restored confidence long lost to us," wrote a retired miller...
...Mendès was frank to the point of bluntness. The nation, he said, had been living beyond its means. "For years, we have undertaken tasks beyond our strength," he said. If the crepes suzettes sizzled as lavishly as ever in Paris' chic restaurants, it had been because the economy was propped by U.S. aid, and kept in an artificial fever of inflation by governments which lacked the courage to face realities. France's military commitments were far beyond what its economy could support. Mendès insists: "We must choose"-a favorite phrase...
Next day, the French Assembly installed a Premier pledged to get peace at Geneva within 30 days. Mendès-France's reported terms-abandonment of Northern Viet Nam and the Red River Delta, in return for a neutralized Laos and Cambodia-exactly accorded with the bargain Britain had long privately advocated. Eden put off his departure to confer through Saturday afternoon with Molotov, Chou and France's Jean Chauvel, hammering out an agreement that representatives of "the two sides" would meet immediately in Geneva or "on the spot" to discuss "the withdrawal of all foreign armed forces...