GIVES THE FRENCH A LESSON IN FENCING
No one sesémed to know how to handle that menace to the American Way of Life,- That is, until Harry: Truman gallantly stepped forward, It seems that the former president of the United States has been practicing with a Missouri-cavalry sabre, a souvenir from his years in the White House,
~ On March 17, while de Gaulle was basking in resounding "01éts" from all of Mexico's bull-fight fans, Truman told reporters in Duck Key, Florida, that the president of France had better "keep his nose out of our affairs or hetill get it eut off,"
There was quite a stir in the bistros of Paris. The lucky one who got the long straw was André Frossard of Le Figaro. His choice of weapons to meet that whistling razor edge was neither a poniard nor a rapier, He just walked up to his customer, shoes off, With one bare foot he pinned down Truman's long-toed slippers, with the other he first tweaked Truman's beak, then gave him the flat of the sole, first on one cheek, then the other:
"President Truman's words are not. empty and the survivors of Hiroshima, atom-bombed without warning, know to what degree action and thought are one in this redoubtable man, If he were still the head of the state that guilty nose would have been cut off twentyfour hours ago at least. The effect on the populations of the TAlliance for Progress! would be absolutely extraordinary. They would finally understand that the affairs of South America are the affair of North America and that it is dangerous to travel there without authorization, Meanwhile the nose of the general, confiscated by the State Department, would furnish American diplomacy with that organ of: perception which sometimes, it seems, it so cruelly lacks," '.[Le Figaro November 19.]
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