Word: mends
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ebullient Pierre Mendès-France is a youthful (38) politician with a veteran's flair for gauging the public mood. Last week spring burgeoned in Paris, and it was inevitable that winter-weary, war-worn Frenchmen should feel that at least half their troubles were over. Sensitive Mendes-France sniffed deeply and bounced up with the most optimistic official word yet on French recovery...
Said Minister of National Economy Mendès-France: "Conditions now appear ripe for improvement." The curve of the national economy, which touched its nadir several weeks ago, is now rising. Shipping is no longer so scarce; for example, the port of Marseilles handles more than its prewar tonnage. Carloadings are up. The textile industry is gathering headway. By 1946 French agriculture will supply the nation's bread, the period of "repairs" will be over, the period of "getting started" will begin. And by 1948 the period of genuine "economic planning" can be launched...
...Minister Mendès-France skipped lightly over certain qualifying facts: Marseilles' tonnage is mostly for Allied military use; for almost two years before the 1946 harvest is in, the nation will have to import its bread. But France, tired of endless greys, welcomed the first rosy hues...
Chaplain Dubois warned his church that it must mend its educational ways, for returning servicemen will have "little patience with half measures or compromises. . . . They will be ... men who have learned discipline and know sacrifice. To those who return, religion will be all or nothing. . . . [But] if [their] zeal and enthusiasm ... is properly directed, they will be the finest group of men the church has ever had as leaders...
Said a doctor standing by: "Look at that. First they take out the spleen, then they resect [cut and mend] the small bowel, next they sew up the rent in the colon. In civilian life any one of those would be regarded as a major operation." Before the two doctors finished, they had removed a total of nearly two feet of gut, which they tossed into a wastebasket...