Word: premiered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Defense or Liberation? If war came, would the U.S. fight in Western Europe? The Europeans are uncertain about that. Harry Truman's St. Patrick's Day speech to Congress, which implied a promise of military help, was not enough for them. Belgium's Premier Paul-Henri Spaak appeared shortly in Washington and asked for a definite commitment. It was not forthcoming. Pundit Walter Lippmann and others noted that the U.S. could hardly help going to war if Russia attacked Western Europe, since U.S. troops east of the Rhine would have to be pushed aside first. But Europeans...
Clement Attlee and Ernie Bevin dissociated themselves from this dog-in-the-manger attitude-but they had both been angry when France (which shed its Socialist Premier for a Popular Republican) devalued its currency and permitted free trade in the franc. For one reason, it violated British Socialists' notions of a properly managed currency, and it hurt them worse to discover that it did not seem to hurt France...
...Brussels last week, the man who, as much as any single individual, is responsible for this state of affairs told how it had come about. He is Paul-Henri Spaak, Premier of Belgium. With his cherubic frown, his bulging forehead, his pugnacious lower lip, he bears a startling resemblance to Winston Churchill; in the whole grey and sagging circle of European leaders, he is one of the few men with a spark of Churchillian fire. With one hand thrust truculently into his trouser pocket, he uses the other to tick off the reasons for Belgian prosperity...
Spaak had not yet found a formula to satisfy both sides, but he sat at his desk (with four telephones) churning out ideas. Callers were ushered in through one of the three doors to the Premier's office-usually a moment after a rival had been ushered out through another. "In a crisis," says Spaak, "see everyone, and keep on proposing things...
...Play a Bad Card . . ." "I felt I had something to do in politics," says Spaak of this period, "but all the doors were closed." In 1935, a door opened. Premier Paul van Zeeland asked him to enter the Cabinet as Minister of Transport, Posts & Telegraphs. Spaak accepted. Then, excitedly, he telephoned his mother: "Maman, if your telephone breaks down, complain directly to me. I'm the new Communications Minister." The next year he became Foreign Minister...