Word: pleven
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...question of the week was: should France have a big, expensive army or a small, inexpensive one? Puffy-cheeked War Minister André Diethelm thought the army should be a whopper, chiefly as a matter of prestige. Lean, hardheaded Finance Minister René Pleven insisted that a small, tight, mechanized force was all that was necessary: in tomorrow's atomic war a massive array of manpower would be silly. Last week the Cabinet met in Paris, listened for five hours to the williwaw of conflicting opinions. The man who does France's bookkeeping finally...
...France's more delightful postwar fracases started last July, when gaunt, puritan Finance Minister René Pleven (a nonsmoker) refused to issue tobacco ration cards to women, implied that it was improper for them to smoke, anyway...
France's women (including Mme. Pleven, a smoker), fierce in their newly won political freedom, started to fight for social liberties as well. Last week, five weeks before the general elections, M. Pleven surrendered, officially admitted la femme qui fume into French civilization: starting December, women will receive tobacco rations...
...Minister Pleven also asked for a 3% to 20% tax on increment of wealth during the war (a "moral" necessity aimed at collaborationist profits). He calculated his two measures would yield revenues of 130 billion francs. He based his figures on a Government census of fortunes, in itself a radical departure from French financial tradition. Hitherto a passionate anonymity has shrouded the wealth of individual Frenchmen. The Government, said Minister Pleven, had discovered that France had 1,300 billion francs of national wealth in liquid form. His levies on wealth would siphon off 10% of this liquidity...
...French right-wingers the percentage seemed excessive. Cried conservative assemblymen: the proposed taxes would kill private enterprise and the incentive to save. Sneered Socialist Jules Moch: the proposed taxes were "too timid and too late." Growled Communist boss Jacques JDuclos: Minister Pleven was "toadying to the money interests...