Bad Prophet?

During the election campaign, ex-Premier Paul Painleve, pacifist, academician, the man reputed to have favored pacifism during the War, yet took such delight in claiming responsibility for the appointment of le marechal Foch to supreme command of the French Army that he wrote a book about it, this man was reported in the Echo de Paris to have said: "Citoyens! The bloc National is the cause of all our national calamities. ... I am French, but I am European. . . . Liberty, fraternity, socialism! . . . Peace with Soviet Russia! . . . Above all peace with republican and pacific Germany who is also democratic and sincere. . . . Peace, peace at all costs! . . ."

M. Henri de Kerillis, journalist, last week quoted a speech made by Painleve in 1913, showing how the politicien made a bad prophecy, and asked if he may not now be a bad prophet. The 1913 speech: "Above their hateful militarism, the democracies of Germany and Austria offer us their hands and open their hearts to us. Citoyens, do not allow yourselves to be impressed by the phantoms of War stirred up by Reaction and Clericalism at bay."