Word: ren
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...Consultative Assembly France's suave Finance Minister René Pleven offered a proposal as deceptively harmless as a Teller mine: a capital tax to be levied on all fortunes exceeding 100,000 francs. Minister Pleven called it a "tax of national solidarity . . . consecrated to financing reconstruction." The rate would be 3% to 20%. Householders would be allowed 200,000 francs exemption. Payments would be made in four years, but immediate payment would earn a 4% discount...
...canny Frenchman tried was to place old money on a horse expected to be scratched from a race at Longchamp-hoping that his bet would be returned in new money. (The trick failed.) People with servants redeemed extra money by sending their servants out with extra amounts. Finance Minister René Pleven was cheerful, but the staid old Bank of France considered the whole business a mess...
...heart of "Mother" Renfro was deeply touched this weekend where portly pitcher (Hutchings) was shelled from the box in the Braves-Cubs: "Ren" felt pity for this poor fat fell because his expansive midriff kept getting...