One item considered to be of enough interest to the readers of The Sunday Times to be placed in the front of the paper, right up there with the fur ads was the welcome news that French champagne was being reserved for export rather than domestic consumption and the same policy was expected to be put in place for fine liquors, cognacs, perfumes and luxury dresses. The Manhattan fashionable set had done without for so long. It was terrible the sacrifices one had to make in wartime.
The Sunday Times also covered the press conference given by Mme. Felix Gouin, the wife of the President of the Provisional Government of France, in her suite at the Waldorf Towers. Mme. Gouin had been in city for three weeks, with a side trip to Washington D.C. for a visit with Bess Truman, and was leaving by plane that morning from La Guardia Field. She was accompanied by Mme. Renee Blum, the daughter-in-law of Leon Blum, a pre-war French Prime Minister, the first Socialist and Jew to head that government. After being tried by the Vichy government for treason, Blum was imprisoned by the Nazis in Buchenwald and Dachau but survived the war. Described as a slight, blonde woman, Mme. Gouin appeared dark-haired in the accompanying photo where she was posed beside a window and radiator. Blum was also in town as a guest of the city.
Mme Gouin was in the States to visit relief organizations. During her press conference, she thanked American women and school children for their aid and asked for more help, especially shoes, wool clothing and "spreads" for sandwiches since French children had nothing to put on their bread. Champagne was not at the top of her list.
She fielded the lightweight questions posed her by the assembled press. Yes, she had eaten a hot dog, her first, on this trip. She was much impressed by the Automat, the pressure cooker, the circus and "little American hats with flowers on them." She thought American fashions were "very pretty and much more practical" than French fashion On a more serious note, she said that the reports on American troop misconduct were "highly exaggerated' although, she noted diplomatically, whenever armies were sent to a foreign land there were bound to be some unruly ones in the bunch. And France was "tired of troops" of any nation, including their own, after quartering French, German and American armies.
Her husband, Felix Gouin was a Socialist. The French provisional government in 1946 was an uneasy coalition of democratic Socialists, Communists and centrists. Gouin was out as head of the government by June, after only six months. He had succeeded Charles de Gaulle and was replaced by centrist Georges Bidault in June. Bidault served six months and then was replaced for one month by Leon Blum.