La Semaine du Parlement

As the week opened, Finance Minister Peret commenced to juggle in earnest with the incredibly complicated fiscal problems bequeathed to him by Premier Briand's last two Finance Ministers, MM. Loucheur and Doumer (TIME, Dec. 7 et seq.). From the additional taxes voted during the Dou-mer regime, M. Peret figured that he might derive 1,600,000,000 francs. He estimated that by still further drastic governmental economies he could save 500,000,000 francs. There remained a deficit variously estimated at between 3 and 4 billion francs. To meet it, M. Peret proposed to the Chamber Finance Commission:

1) An increase in the hated "business turnover tax" from 1.3% to 2%. Said M. Peret: "This is the only imposable tax which will meet the situation." None the less it was recalled that all the political parties in the Chamber pledged themselves to repeal this tax at the last election and have demonstrated time and again that they dare not raise it for fear of their constituents.

2) A poll tax scaled like the income tax and amounting to between 60 and 1,500 francs a head. After deliberating for some days, the Committee continued in doubt as to whether it would not be a mere waste of time to send a measure against which so many Deputies were pledged into the Chamber.

"Sucettes." Meanwhile the Deputies continued their incredibly fatuous byplay. M. le Docteur Adolphe Pinard, Professeur a la Faculte de Medecine, Membre de l'Academie de Medecine, Officier de la Legion d' Honneur, Dean of the Chamber, arose and literally diverted his peers with a baby's "comforter." Said he in a fine burst of oratory: "For two years--two years!-- have striven for the opportunity which is now mine. During that time and for years previously many of the infants of France have teethed upon a vile form of rubber nipple attached to a ring. In short upon a sucette. . . .

"How many of them have thus conveyed germs into their little mouths? How many have contracted adenoids through straining at the sucette? I do not know, my friends! . . . [But] after two years' silence I place before this Chamber a bill forbidding the manufacture of the sucette."

Delighted at this really "safe" issue, the Deputies rose to support or confute Dr. Pinard. An unidentified Deputy shouted: "Don't you know that if you take their sucettes away, they'll suck their dirty fingers?" Incensed, the sponsor of the bill replied: "At least, Monsieur, the little ones cannot swallow their fingers and choke to death, as often happens when a sucette becomes lodged in the throat."

Thenceforward the debate proceeded to a smashing climax, amid which the Deputies stigmatized and condemned the sucette by the tremendous majority of 370 to 153. Apparently warmed to action, the Chamber soon airily passed a section of the completely unbalanced budget, 415 to 128.

The tax measures were put off another week.

Malvy. Minister of Interior Louis Malvy departed for Nice during the week, there to recuperate from the shock to his nerves caused when he was ruthlessly attacked in the Chamber (TIME, March 29) and fainted dead away. It was later rumored that he would resign. Thus M. Briand was placed in a slightly better position for conciliating the potent enemies of Malvy on the Right, who want him out of the Cabinet at all costs. His equally important friends on the Left found themselves in a position to let him slip out under the age-old cloak of diplomats, "illness."