Word: mending
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Before the debate had run two days, EDC's friends felt their cause was lost, and sought to delay. They even offered a motion urging Mendès to return to Brussels for one more try at persuading other EDC partners to accept his sweeping amendments. It was a desperate retreat for men who had previously denounced Mendès' revisions. EDC opponents countered with the deadliest weapon in the rules of order, a question prealable-which calls for an immediate vote to decide whether the subject before the Assembly is worth discussing at all. To adopt...
...voting began. Deliberately, Mendès-France and his Cabinet abstained. When it was over, Assembly President Le Troquer, who had lost an arm to the Germans in World War I, announced: "By 319 votes against 264, the National Assembly adopts the question préalable. In consequence, ratification of the European Defense Community Treaty is rejected...
...held themselves together: all 99 Communists voted solidly against EDC; so did all but six of the 73 Gaullists. The Catholic M.R.P.s of Bidault and Schuman voted 86 to 2 for it. But 53 out of 105 Socialists bolted party discipline to vote against* 34 out of 76 Radicals (Mendès-France's own party) voted against EDC; so did ten out of 24 Deputies of Pleven's U.D.S.R...
...monster is dead . . . the era of the lie is ended," proclaimed the leftist Combat. The Communist Humanité crowed: "A great victory." Pro-EDC critics charged bitterly that Mendès had allowed the 99 Communist votes to decide the fate of France. Mendès apologists insisted that had the debate continued to the bitter end, the anti-EDC majority would have swelled to about 115, enough to kill EDC even without Communist help...
...Assembly, Mendès' foes launched a savage attack designed to bring him down. There was now no alternative to a revived and uncontrolled Wehrmacht, they charged. Cried ex-Premier Reynaud: "You have killed a French idea which restored French prestige . . . You often appeal to young France, but what do you offer her? You hurl her back into the blood of the past...