Word: mending
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Monnet's vision was of a Europe in which nations would progressively sacrifice chunks of their sovereignty for the common good. Pierre Mendès-France, France's new man of the hour, has substituted a tougher, harder-bargaining diplomacy in which nations make accommodations and pacts with one another, but jealously cling to their sovereign authority. In this he has the powerful support of the British Foreign Office, which instinctively prefers the more pragmatic, national approach. At the London Conference, the new pragmatism paid off triumphantly in the seven-nation Western European Union...
...many a "good European" mourns a lost ideal. Germany's Konrad Adenauer, fearing what he calls "the reviving game of European national states," has felt compelled to go along. But to the Benelux foreign ministers he said privately: "I am 100% convinced that the German national army that Mendès-France forces upon us will become a big danger for Germany and for Europe . . . My God, I don't know what my successors will do if they are left to themselves, if they are not bound to Europe...
Abiding Necessity. The new pragmatic nationalists have the upper hand: they know how to get things done. "European fanatics" is a term they increasingly use to describe men like Jean Monnet. Mendès-France signaled the change at the Brussels Conference when he demanded as one of his conditions for accepting EDC that members of the Coal-Steel High Authority be forbidden to take jobs under EDC. He was plainly gunning for Monnet...
...headlines were clear enough, but unbelievable: MENDÈS ATTACKS LIQUOR, PREMIER WANTS TOILERS TO DRINK WATER, GOVERNMENT TO ENFORCE REGULATIONS AGAINST ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION...
...consumption of alcoholic beverages, that spends 10% of its national income on liquor, supports one bar for every 68 men, women and children, doles out half a liter of wine every day to its soldiers, the whole thing sounded like some wild practical joke. Diminutive, dynamic Premier Pierre Mendès-France had tilted his lance successfully at many a sturdy French windmill, but this-name of a dog, it was like asking a cat to give up milk...