To Catch a Vote

One of France's more delightful postwar fracases started last July, when gaunt, puritan Finance Minister Rene 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.

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