Word: mending
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With EDC gone, so would be the pattern of postwar diplomacy. Mendès-France, in releasing his country from the bonds of EDC, was also breaking the chain that kept Germany, Britain and the U.S. committed to France...
...French Air Force Dakota touched down one day last week at the Royal Air Force fighter base of Biggin Hill, near London. Out stepped a tired-looking Frenchman with a fat diplomatic briefcase. Pierre Mendès-France, Premier of France, was familiar with Biggin Hill: under very different circumstances he had visited it during World War II, as a navigator in a Free French bomber squadron...
Waiting to greet the Premier was Mendès' old commanding officer, Colonel De Rancourt, now air attaché at the French embassy in London. "You once confined me to quarters for ten days," Mendès said, recognizing him. "It was 14 days," the colonel replied. "You proceeded on a mission without orders." A rotund, familiar figure with a cigar was also on hand at Biggin Hill. Sir Winston Churchill, 79, who had driven seven miles from his country house at Chartwell, addressed his visitor, with his usual disregard for any language but English, as "Monsoor Mends...
European NATO? After his failure at Brussels, Mendès had flown directly to Britain. Convinced that EDC would be killed by the French National Assembly, he hoped to enlist British support for his own alternative: a larger, looser European alliance in which Britain might participate. Over lunch, with Churchill and Eden, Mendès explained that he would keep some of the features of EDC-for instance, the plan for pooling arms production. He argued that his proposal...
Western European NATO of seven nations, which would nestle within NATO proper like a kernel in a nut, would permit German rearmament and still be acceptable to France. It would have the backing of the French nationalists, said Mendès, because it imposed no restrictions on French sovereignty, of the Socialists because it would bring in Britain as a counterweight to Germany, of some of the "Good Europeans" because it retained at least a whiff of European Union...