Word: spaak
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...Europe-minded planner, Jean Monnet, who keeps a model of the Kon-Tiki on his desk as a symbol of those who take brave risks to prove an idea in the face of skepticism and indifference. The other man is NATO's newly chosen Secretary-General, Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, who has presided over the interminable treaty negotiations in Brussels. One reason why the near completion of the Common Market has burst on Europe as a surprise is that Spaak has learned from the past mistakes of would-be unifiers of Europe not to ask too much...
...question of life or death. At the very least, it is a question of our national independence." All over Europe there was a new rush of talk about a "third force," but this time with a difference. In the words of Belgium's Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, "the third force is not an attempt to neutralize Europe and place her at an equal distance between America and Russia. On the contrary, it expresses the European will to cease being a dead weight upon America and to become a genuine ally, ready to assume a full share of responsibilities...
Commented Spaak dryly: "The European nations are something like scattered chicks when they see a hawk hovering above them-whether in the form of Stalin or Nasser-they tend to come together...
Career: A brilliant, if often erratic student, young Spaak was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1916 when he tried to cross the Belgian frontier to join King Albert's expatriate army. Released at war's end, he studied law at Brussels, finished the five-year course in 2% years and, well-endowed with his father's gift for the dramatic, had a brief fling at the bar before entering politics as a fiery young Socialist (he was called a "Bolshevik in a dinner jacket"). In 1938 he became his nation's youngest Prime Minister...
...Outlook: Spaak was the first president of the U.N. General Assembly in 1946. In 1948 he called loudly and clearly for the West to organize and arm itself against the threat of Russia. Ever since then, he has been in the forefront of every effort toward European unity, impatient at "lip service" and "halfway measures toward that end as he has been active and ardent in support of practical progress." "To believe that we can still defend our selves, by ourselves," he told the Belgians last year, in support of NATO "is completely absurd." And he added: "For me, NATO...