Word: reynaud
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Faure was the fourth choice to form a government, a man whom the party leaders themselves finally agreed was the best hope. "He is the exact middle," explained Elder Statesman Paul Reynaud. Shrewdly, the Assembly's old cuties had calculated that Faure was young enough, dynamic enough, and leftist enough to cut the ground from under Mendès with the voters. "His dialogue is left, his politics right. This is a very useful arrangement," said one supporter...
...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 Mendès' pretty wife. Outside stretched a long line of people hoping to be admitted to the few public seats...
...cried rightist General Adolphe Aumeran. "Without our agreement Amer ica will not dare rearm Germany." Insisted Gaullist Jacques Soustelle: "Every effort to get a modus vivendi with the East must be sought first. Logic dictates it . . . an alliance with Russia is a geopolitical must for France." Complained old Paul Reynaud, the man who was Premier in 1940 when France fell: "The Paris accords give the political hegemony to England and the military hegemony to Germany." Doddering old Edouard Herriot summarized for the fearful. "I refuse to accord [the Germans] either my sympathy or friendship," Herriot complained in his best emotional...
Former Premier Antoine Pinay declared that he, too, would abstain. So did Reynaud. Suddenly, the move to take refuge on the sidelines of abstention gained momentum. "Elections are only 18 months off," explained one observer. "If, by then, rearming Germany still worries Frenchmen, the abstainers can say, 'Don't blame us; we didn't vote for it.' If the Germans behave, the abstainers can contend, 'After all, we didn't stand in the way of the treaties.' " Socialists, pledged to vote for rearmament, began to panic...
Emerging from the meeting, Bidault encountered Reynaud. "Is the night going to be long?" asked Reynaud. "It may be long, but in any case it is ours," said Bidault with a sly-fox grin...