Word: national
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...very important" that Hanoi and the Viet Cong not take over South Viet Nam, and by a 50%-to-37% margin Americans answer affirmatively when asked, "Is the war in Viet Nam worth it or not?" Despite that conviction, 45% of the U.S. public conclude that the nation is not succeeding in preventing a Communist victory in Viet Nam, against only 38% who think otherwise...
...always, he was as good as his word. In a final television appeal to the nation two days before the balloting, he had repeated an earlier warning to resign at once "if I am disavowed." Shortly after midnight on Monday morning, the voting trend unmistakable, De Gaulle sent a two-sentence communique to Paris from his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises. It said: "I am ceasing the exercise of my functions as President of the Republic. This decision takes effect at noon today...
France responded to this romantic view of herself in moments of national crisis; then it was comforting to have so impassioned a lover as De Gaulle ready and willing to serve. But eleven years of calls to greatness are too much for a nation, or a woman. De Gaulle had even been warned. During World War II, when France had been humiliatingly crushed in a six-week Nazi blitzkrieg, De Gaulle almost single-handed kept the idea of France alive. Whenever Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin tried to shape the war without due consideration of France, they were met with...
...whom he had witheringly described as the old hacks whose only concern is with "their own little soup pot on their own little fire in their own little corner." The French took a modest pride in De Gaulle's nuclear force de frappe, which presumably gave the nation a voice among the world powers. It even pleased the often xenophobic French that their gold reserves were sufficient to threaten the American dollar. At least the French man in the street relished De Gaulle's blocking of Britain's plaintive attempts to enter the Common Market...
...Gaulle acted in character as he took his leave. Like the divorce of a celebrated and long-established couple, the split between him and his country seemed almost unbelievable. Yet he kept his dignity: he neither accused the nation that rejected him nor accused others of causing the break. Undoubtedly, he would respond if France were ever to call him again. His love of France had always been mixed with a certain highhanded contempt-not only for the politicians but for the voters. Contradictory as always, France liked that high-handedness while at the same time resenting it. The voters...