Word: germane
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fact, last week, Schuman was the most important. The conference was dominated by his dramatic proposal to merge the French and German coal and steel industries. The proposal was far more than an imaginative economic project; it was the offer of full partnership to Germany by its thrice-invaded, long-suffering and long-hating enemy...
Schuman's colleagues stirred uneasily in their gilt and cherry chairs. In theory they were all for adding Western Germany to Western Europe's defense front. In practice, they were dead set against any real German participation, e.g., German membership in the North Atlantic Treaty. As politicians, almost all of them still believed that damning the boche was the cheapest way of getting votes in France. A week before, they had instructed Schuman to stall on the whole issue. But now Schuman said: "J'ai quelque chose ici" . .[I have something here...
...wrong document, then produced the right one. It was a plan that would bring West Germany more surely into the West European camp than anything proposed so far; it would also lay the beginnings of real Western European integration. The plan called for pooling of the French and German coal and steel industries...
This move represents a great change in emphasis of French efforts to keep a hand on the German industrial throttle. Heretofore, she has put her trust in one-sided plans like the Allied Ruhr Control Authority and her fifty-year lease on Saar coal mines. But the Ruhr control has been honored more in the breach than in the observance, and it is the Rhine and the Ruhr, not the Saar, which are the keys to German industrial might...
Economically, the new French plan will unite the most basic industries of two complementary areas which have been segregated by trade barriers and periodic wars. Politically, it is an important step in integrating Western Germany into the Atlantic states, while keeping some check on the German industry that has been a crucial factor in two world wars. If the new proposal indicates genuine French-German cooperation, it may be the basis for further economic and political cooperation in continental Europe...