Word: mende
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...Premier has grown increasingly remote. Most of the bright young brain-trusters who clustered about him in the early days and spouted eager advice while a barber shaved him or a waiter served lunch have been banished from the inner chambers. For intimate guidance, Mendès now relies on only three disciples-Jean Soutou, 43, and Claude Cheysson. 35, who are intelligent Quai d'Orsay types, and Simon Nora, 33, who is something of a financial wizard. Even emissaries specially summoned from as far away as Indo-China find themselves closeted with the young aides for lengthy interrogations...
...Socialists' (105 seats in the National Asisembly) refusal to join his government. Mendès now concedes that in his first days as Premier he moved too fast, and did not lay proper groundwork for Socialist cooperation. The issues that attracted them (IndoChina, North Africa, EDC) are now disposed of; some of his proposed economic reforms may prove pure hemlock to the Socialists...
...Assembly's close vote on German rearmament. In private, Mendès keeps referring sadly to the narrowness of the plurality (27 votes). He deliberately let EDC die on the assumption that he could get a husky plurality for straight German rearmament. He now realizes that his gamble has hurt French prestige abroad...
...breakdown of French negotiations with the Tunisian nationalists. This is the deepest of all Mendès' disappointments, because he had looked on Tunisia as a beginning, whereas all the other hard decisions taken were endings...
While he was away last week, the National Assembly convened to elect a new President. On the third ballot. Deputies voted 232 to 188 to turn out Incumbent Socialist André Le Troquer. whose party has been most consistently behind Mendès' policies in spite of its refusal to join his Cabinet. In Le Troquers place the Deputies elected Pierre Schneiter of the Roman Catholic M.R.P. Though Schneiter, a Resistance hero and mayor of Reims, is personally not hostile to Mendès in the fashion of Mendès-hating M.R.P.er Georges Bidault and his followers...