Foreign News: The Hard Bargainer

All week long, a sour little man in a rumpled blue suit, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, darted among the Homburg-hatted diplomats of the West and flummoxed them. France's Pierre Mendès-France was something new to postwar diplomacy. He made no effort to appear obliging, did not seem to care whether anybody liked him personally or not. He had little to bargain with except the hopes he himself had aroused by pledging his troth to Western European Union in London. Now, with all the invitations issued, the guests on hand, the church bells pealing...

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