Word: mende
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Means, Not Ends. Pale and defiant, Mendès took the rostrum. Looking at Pinay and Reynaud, he snapped: "I admire your energetic attitudes, although they have not always been in evidence . . . The treaty hung fire for 2½ years. It was signed by the Pinay government, but I don't recall Monsieur Pinay trying to bring it to a vote...
...Mendes pressed on: "We were paralyzed by our indecision. Now that we are freed of that particular indecision, we must act and quickly." He proposed to recess the Assembly, but demanded a vote of support for the foreign policies he intended to pursue. The debate showed, he argued, that "if there is a division, it is not on the end, but on the means of organizing Western defense . . . Our policy is unchanged: that of the Atlantic alliance and the organization of Europe, which should be founded on Franco-German reconciliation ... I cannot believe that we shall fail to find...
After the Battle. Mendès retired to his country retreat at Marly, relaxing in slacks and sweater. On the littered political field of battle, musketry still rattled and firing squads went about their melancholy tasks. Reynaud, Pinay, Schuman, Bidault, Pleven and Laniel issued a defiant pledge that they would never give up the fight for EDC. The Socialist Party expelled Jules Moch and two other prominent anti-EDC rebels. The M.R.P. expelled three. Three pro-EDC Ministers resigned from the Cabinet, exactly counterbalancing the three anti-EDC Gaullists who had resigned three weeks ago in protest against Mend...
...Mendès had seriously shaken the nation's-and the western world's-confidence in him. True, the Assembly vote had borne out his oft-repeated contention (in the face of the U.S. State Department's insistence to the contrary) that there was not a majority for EDC in the Assembly. But conceivably, on the impetus of his triumphs in Geneva and Tunisia, Mendès could have pushed EDC through. He still had, and has, great popular support in a country which is fed to the teeth with most of the old political faces...
...choose" had failed to proclaim his choice; that the man of bold actions had acted the part of a man of devious devices. France's allies were distressed by his accusations that they had ganged up on him, charges that fanned French chauvinism and rekindled old hates. For Mendès, the way back would be harder now; doubts were now planted...