"We were about to perish for lack of air," said Finance Minister Rene Mayer last week. "We had to smash the window with a single blow." Mayer chiefly meant that, without devaluation of the franc (TIME, Feb. 2), French recovery would have been stifled through inability to sell goods abroad. But for a few days last week, Rene Mayer and Premier Robert Schuman had French Socialists at their throats. As advocates of dirigisme (directed economy), Socialists did not like the breeze of free enterprise that threatened to blow through the smashed window....
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