Word: rostrums
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This week Vice President Alben William Barkley will step up on the rostrum of the U.S. Senate with his gavel, and the 83rd Congress will come to order. The Senate and the House will organize, and then will begin a resolute fortnight of shadow boxing...
Shortly after midnight, Pinay stepped to the rostrum and snapped, "I now ask the Assembly to note that it is impossible for the government to continue its task . . ." In the stunned silence, the Premier stalked out. It was all very unusual, to quit before being thrown out. Next day Pinay announced: "I'll never go back to that bear cage again." The black-market rate of the franc, which had fallen from 480 to a low of 390 during Pinay's save-the-franc administration, began climbing, and reached 420 only two days after his downfall. That familiar...
More surprising was the reaction in the country. From the ornate rostrum of the Chamber, beneath the stone-eyed gaze of Attic beauties, the prosaic tannery-man from St. Chamond ticked off the things he proposed to do: fight inflation, which had shrunk the franc to one twenty-fifth of its prewar value. Bring down prices, not by dirigisme (the Frenchman's word for government controls) but by persuading the big industrialists and the countless Antoine Pinays of France to be content with more reasonable profit margins. Balance the budget, not by his predecessors' resort to higher taxes...
This week Antoine Pinay was back on the rostrum to face more confidence votes, his crinkly hair neatly combed down, his left hand tugging primly at his waistcoat in a characteristic gesture. Another crisis was at hand. Antoine Pinay was gladder than ever that he had left his toothbrush at home, and not in the Premier's palace...
...From the rostrum spoke the dry, spare, 76-year-old Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Ordinarily icy and unemotional, Adenauer summoned up all the passion and eloquence he could muster. "It is the fateful hour of Germany!" he cried. "We are at the crossroads of slavery and freedom . . . A vote of 'no' on these treaties means 'yes' to Stalin . . . Germany's position is more exposed than ever before in her history. Germany is divided and torn, disarmed and defenseless She is overshadowed by a colossus that is trying to enslave and swallow...