Word: mends
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...weeks after the fall of Pierre Mendès-France, France was still without a government. President Coty had gone to the right and gone to the left; three men (Antoine Pinay, Pierre Pflimlin and Christian Pineau) had failed to satisfy the Assembly; this week a fourth, Edgar Faure (Mendès-France's Finance Minister), was trying, and once again the air was filled with the bickering, squabbling and jockeying that characterizes the National Assembly of the Fourth Republic...
...votes. Biggest is the alcohol lobby, which keeps French winegrowers, beet farmers and distillers producing twice the alcohol the French can drink and forces the government to buy the surplus at four times the world price. The North African lobby, run by Senator Henri Borgeaud, took alarm when Mendès tried to reduce the colons' control of the local police. As a result, Algeria's Rene Mayer and 19 other Radical Socialists deserted their own Premier and brought his downfall...
Moment of Truth. The dramatic moment came when ex-Premier René Mayer, an influential industrialist (identified with the Rothschild interests) and a member of Mendès' own Radical Socialist Party, took the rostrum. Mayer, whose constituency is Constantine in Algeria, was against Mendès' attempts to negotiate a North African settlement with the nationalist rebels. He was plainly on the side of the French settlers, and brushed aside talk of cruelty on the part of the French forces. "Repression always has a cruel aspect," he said coolly. "But this time it has been just...
...front bench, Mendès sat immobile, a little paler than usual, white cuffs peeping out from the sleeves of his dark suit. Mayer turned towards Mendès: "You have already asked many times for the confidence of the Assembly. Today personally I will not be able to vote for it. For I do not know where you are going." Gaullists, Catholic M.R.P.s and Radical Socialists thundered applause...
Shared Responsibility. Mendès spent the dinner hour furiously revising his speech of rebuttal. By 9 p.m. he was back in his seat. One by one the Deputies drifted in. Dapper ex-Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, sniffing revenge (Mendès replaced him during the Geneva Conference), set down his briefcase, happily opened a newspaper. He was followed by 76-year-old Paul Reynaud, who sat in the fifth row, his old hooded eyes staring straight in front and his head nodding constantly with a nervous tic. The galleries were jammed with spectators, among them Mend...