Convenient Crisis

De Lasteyrie, Finance Minister, was in the Chamber of Deputies, attending to a routine finance bill. Only 80 deputies were present. The radicals proposed to adopt a Senate measure, proposing a 2,600,000,000 franc increase in pensions; the Finance Minister made an issue of the matter. The 80 voted. The attendants cast the proxies left by absentee members. When the vote was counted, the Government had lost by seven votes&$151;271 to 264.

M. de Lasteyrie rushed out and informed Premier Poincare, who was discussing the Turkish Treaty of Lausanne with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. M. Poincare resigned shortly before noon.

The resignation was received with wild jubilation by the radicals. The Chamber met again at three o'clock. Examination of the ballots showed irregularity in the vote that had turned out the Government. A recount indicated a Government majority of two--269 to 267. But Poincare faced the mocking Left, and declared: "My decision is irrevocable!"

Subsequent developments showed the "defeat" of the Government to be so convenient to Premier Poincare and President Millerand as to give rise to rumors that the whole thing was a put-up job, staged by M. Poincae in order to get rid of the unpopular Finance Minister de Lasteyrie and equally unpopular Minister of Agriculture Cheron.

President Millerand moved surely and boldly, revealing himself as the velvet hand within Poincare's mailed fist. He announced that M. Poincare would form a new Cabinet. In a statement from the Elysee Palace (Executive Mansion), M. Millerand showed that the radicals need expect no change: The general lines of the French policy cannot possibly be changed for any other reason than the clearly expressed will of the country. The President of the Republic has every confidence that M. Poincare, whose name symbolizes this policy, will form a new Cabinet which can continue this policy of firmness abroad and of order and economy at home.

As for foreign affairs, France cannot evacuate the Ruhr before total payment of reparations. At home France wishes to re-establish the balance of her budget, to refrain from loans and to undertake no expenditure not covered by equivalent receipts.

If by chance-- a possibility which the President of the Republic does not expect--it becomes impossible for M. Poincare to constitute a Cabinet, the Chief of State will call to power only a Cabinet resolutely determined to direct its general policy along the lines indicated above.

The day following this Presidential announcement, the Liberals were further dismayed by the announcement of the new Poincare Cabinet, one of the most skillfully constructed Governments ever assembled in French politics:

Premier and Foreign Minister: Raymond Poincare

Justice: Edmond Lefebvre Du Prey

Interior: Justin de Selves

Finance: Frederic Francois-Marsal

War: Andre Maginot

Public Works: Yves le Trocquer

Commerce, Posts and Telegraphs: Louis Loucheur

Labor and Health: Daniel Vincent

Public Education: Henri de Jouvenal

Colonies: Jean Fabry

Marine: Maurice Bokanowski

Agriculture: Depute Capus

"Voronoff" Cabinet. The new Cabinet contains. four former Briand Ministers, thus taking the heart out of the Liberal Party before the election. The inclusion of Francois-Marsal, Millerand's former Finance Minister, cements the union of Poincare and Millerand. The presence of Louis Loucheur, "French Stinnes," shows that Big Business will be heard.

It is a hectically brilliant constellation from which Poincare hopes to horoscope the looming elections.

Despite the fatal number of 13 Ministers, the boulevardiers, with the flair for the succinct, called the Cabinet shift "a Voronoff cure" in which Loucheur is the principal monkey gland. Politicians are not so sure that the operation has been successful and predict a collapse of the patient. The snubbing of the Republican-Democratic Entente group of the "Bloc National" and of the bitter Tardieu has estranged one powerful clique.

When Poincare made his first speech, flanked by his Cabinet "of all the virtues," his wounded enemies cried: "The same old policies with the former adversaries of those policies riding behind Poincare on the same old 100% French horse." For the present, the Government of France is a duovirate consisting of President Millerand and Premier Poincare. All those who oppose the Government are "unpatriotic."

Louis Loucheur, short, squat, with broad plump face adorned by corkscrew mustachios, is the symbol of the reputable French profiteer. He believes that the world should be governed by the captains of industry, and that financial and industrial magnates are under an obligation to promote themselves in politics. He is a man whose eye is always on the moneybags, whether in the lobbies of the Chamber of Deputies, where Ministries arise like bubbles on the breath of money and subside like bubbles when that breath fails, or in the Banque de France where money decides the life and death of Enterprise. He has often been described as the French Stinnes. He bears a greater resemblance to Herr Walter Rathenau, Germany's assassinated Foreign Minister, who fell a prey to Nationalist fury in 1922. He has all of Rathenau's grasp of the possibilities of industrial manipulation by virtue of depreciated money, he has "Rathenau's technical knowledge, and if he is Rathenau's inferior in versatility, he equals the late Minister in vanity and ambition--he is given to making speeches in praise of himself.

Once he crossed swords with Rathenau, at the Cannes conference of 1922, when, as Minister of the Liberated Regions under Briand, he was duped by the brilliant German. That duping led to his retirement to a mere deputy. Since then he has planned and waited to be Minister, Prime Minister, President, Dictator, whatnot, so long as he ascends the official ladder decorously. He is a Liberal, but when Poincare offered him the chance of a post in his new Ministry, he did not hesitate to desert his party. In Loucheur, France has a Minister of Commerce who made an immense fortune as War-time contractor and engineer. She has also a millionaire who believes that richesse oblige.