Word: mends
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With Knowledge of Folly. For the free world, the settlement legitimized a crushing defeat already suffered. Through spirited bargaining, France's Premier Pierre Mendès-France kept his hold on a few degrees of latitude across Viet Nam's waist, won a few extra months of respite for free Viet Nam. But these were no more than bargaining old bones, tossed to the West by the Communists to get a deal. If the Reds swallowed only part of Viet Nam now, they could afford to wait for the rest. By the swapping of a few parallels...
...Closing Hours. Amidst all the relief felt for the ending of the Indo-China war and the acclaim for his dazzling display of diplomatic virtuosity, Pierre Mendès-France, the realist, had no illusions and said so. Geneva had been a disaster for France, forced on him by past mistakes. On paper, Mendès-France had got more last-minute concessions than any one had expected, but the agreements were full of potential booby traps. Biggest one of all: the agreements depended on Communist promises...
...villa by Lac Leman, three men hunched over a great man of Indo-China late one night last week. One was the Communist Viet Minh's Pham Van Dong; another was France's Premier Pierre Mendès-France; the third was Albert Sarraut, an oldtime French empire builder who had been governor of Indo-China in lordlier days when there were no such irritants as the Viet Minh. Each had a red pencil in his hand. Beneath their hands the map was slashed with red lines, until Viet Nam began to look like a body crisscrossed with...
...midnight the meeting broke up. "Agreement is near," yawned a sleepy French official. Mendès had only 24 hours left to make good on his pledge to get peace or resign...
Last week the Mendès-France government announced that Baylot had resigned from his job and would be given a "high diplomatic post." This done, the Mendès-France government, on its own, banned the Communist Bastille Day parade. Though he was being kicked upstairs, Baylot was not disturbed. Said he: "We have broken the back of the Communist Party here. They would not dare stage a big demonstration now." His parting gift last week came, ironically, from the Communists: not only did L'Humanité lose its suit against him, but it was ordered...