Word: mending
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Premier Pierre Mendès-France, said an unfriendly critic recently, is like a man on a bicycle who has to keep moving to avoid a spill. Last week, though no spill seemed imminent, the Mendès-France bicycle was patently wobbling...
...Mendès stalked to the rostrum. Tight-lipped and curt, he announced that he was making the approval of this minor item a matter of confidence, and staking his government on the outcome. What was more, he warned he would repeat this procedure as often as necessary to get the budget voted on time...
Deputies grumbled unhappily about "government by machine gun," but few thought the Assembly would dare to refuse Mendès his vote of confidence. He was too popular with the country, his victories at London and Paris too recent, his scheduled visit to Washington too close. They grumbled; but Mendès-France, too, seemed to be well in control of things...
...eight Frenchmen and pro-French natives were dead, more than 30 wounded. Paris Le Monde lamented: "All this happened as if an invisible hand were looking for a way to destroy Franco-North African solidarity at the exact moment when we were about ready to strengthen it." Premier Pierre Mendès-France, who wants peace and a settlement in North Africa, had just served notice, in one of his fireside chats, that his government was going ahead with plans to let French Africa "have her large part in the social and economic expansion of the entire French Union...
After 290 rich colonial years, the "French presence" in India came to an end. Pondicherry and three other small enclaves ("pimples on the face of India" Jawaharlal Nehru had once called them) were turned over to India, in accordance with the recent agreement between Nehru and Pierre Mendès-Fraance. Thus India effortlessly picked up 193 square miles of territory and 320,000 new citizens. The reek of gunpowder attended the takeover, but it came from joyfully exploding fireworks...