Word: mending
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Premiers took a break to stroll around the pond in the autumn dusk. Then Mendès broached the question on which the week's success (and German sovereignty) depended. The French Assembly would not tolerate any economic isolation of the Saar from France, Mendès said bluntly, or agree to its political union with Germany. It must remain "European-ized," even if there was no longer any European community to which to attach it. Adenauer was reluctant to renounce all claim to the Saar as German territory. Mendès conceded that any agreement reached would...
Adenauer was taken aback. Mendès shrugged. It had to be, he insisted. Adenauer objected that his coalition leaders would never agree in effect to muzzle German parties and newspapers. Ask them, suggested Mendès. Adenauer said he would see them when he got back to Bonn, and let Mendès know. That would not do, said Mendès; he had to know this week. Adenauer agreed to summon his coalition leaders to Paris...
Before breaking up for dinner, Mendès asked when Adenauer was returning to Bonn. Probably Saturday night, said Adenauer. "Oh, hell," said Mendès. "That means we've got to get this agreement on the Saar by Saturday then." Mendès likes deadlines, and Adenauer understood: if he did not agree to a Saar solution by Saturday, Mendès would not sign Germany into sovereignty. Der Alte drove back to Paris tired and discouraged. "Many things lie heavily on my heart," he told his aides...
...when the Saar was not concerned, Mendès was all reason and optimism. He politely declined the chairmanship of the four-power meeting, saying that this was only a continuation of the London Conference, and Sir Anthony should preside. Soon other diplomats were swarming into Paris (and it took a practiced diplomat to know which was a meeting of the Big Four, the Big Nine, or the Big Fourteen). Smoothly, as if he had not a reservation in the world, Mendès joined with the other four members of the Brussels Treaty, plus Canada...
...kept insisting on the word "irrevocable." Adenauer's coalition leaders, arriving from Germany, were firmly opposed to any concession which would permanently detach the Saar from Germany. "I cannot go to my Parliament with some vague promise that we will agree on the Saar sometime in the future," Mendès told Adenauer...