Hornet & Pal

Thundering special trains carried Monsieur Andre Tardieu back and forth between Paris and Geneva (390 miles) by night last week. The cost was enormous, but not for a Great Man who is the premier of a Great Power. Busy as a hornet,

Andre Tardieu darted zip to make a Cabinet in Paris, darted zip back to the Geneva Conference where he arrived as Premier, Foreign Minister and Chief French Delegate, darted zip back to Paris and again zip to Switzerland. No U. S. traveling salesman travels harder. Frenchmen (most of whom are only as busy as bees) call their hornet-premier "Tardieu I'Americain." Pals are Andre Tardieu and Pierre Laval. They may sooner or later cease to be pals, for French politics has a way of rupturing personal friendships.* But up to last week Senator Laval and Deputy Tardieu had kept the Premiership of France bouncing back and forth between them for 26 out of the last 28 months. In the new Tardieu Cabinet shrewd Pal Laval, who was himself Premier only three weeks ago, lay low, took a minor post.

The new Cabinet: President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs--Andre Tardieu. Vice President of the Council, Minister of Justice and Controller of Administration--Paul Reynaud. Interior--Albert Mahieu. Finance--Pierre Etienne Flandin. National Defense--Franc,ois Pietri. Public Instruction--Mario Roustan. Public Works, Communications and Merchant Marine--Charles Guernier. Commerce and Posts--Louis Rollin. Labor--Pierre Laval. Public Health--Camille Blaisot. Agriculture--Dr. Claude Chauveau. Colonies--Louis de Chappedelaine. Pensions and Liberated Regions--Auguste Champetier de Ribes.

Amid a fist fight in the Chamber of Deputies, confidence in this Cabinet was voted 309 to 262, whereat a spectator in the gallery dropped dead "of excitement" (said the Chamber physician). Later the new Cabinet will face the Senate, which overthrew the previous (Laval) Cabinet. Lying extremely low as Minister of Labor, Pierre Laval was obliged, as his first duty, to report that Frenchmen "totally unemployed" increased 19,000 last week to a grand total of 600,000.

Naturally Pal Laval was shrewd enough to sugarcoat this unpleasant pill with a statement that Great Britain has five times more unemployed than France, Germany eleven times more, the U. S. 17 times more.

/- Pal Tardieu was proud of having cut his Cabinet down to 13, proud of having rolled Army, Navy and Air into one Ministry of Defense.** Richer in gold than she has ever been before (see p. 17), France is now rushing to discreet completion the most powerful and most adroitly concealed chain of fortresses ever constructed since the world began. In the next nine months alone the new Ministry of Defense will spend $600,000,000, according to budget estimates published last week. Secret, France's defense program is nevertheless known to consist of a series of fortresses, largely subterranean, strung like pearls along almost her entire land frontier from the English Channel to the Mediterranean. Subways connect large key forts with smaller posts so that men and munitions may be rushed from fort to fort beneath the poppies of a smiling countryside.

French strategists say that these forts can maintain a cross-fire amid which no army could advance or so much as a rat live. Sunk deep in Mother Earth, the forts are supposed to be able to withstand indefinitely the most powerful bombardment, the heaviest bombing.

* Recently ruptured: the friendship of Aristide Briand and his protege Pierre Laval, the great old man withdrawing to his farm at Cocherel.

/- The Laval estimate was 10,000,000 U. S. unemployed. President William Green of the American Federation of Labor last week put the figure at 8,300,000, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Hyde at 6,000,000. On this subject only the British and German Governments compile reasonably accurate statistics.

**BitterIy contested in the U. S. Congress at present is a bill to merge all U. S. fighting forces under a Department of National Defense (TIME., Feb. 29).

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