"Very Prudent Game"

French women, who gain their ends without voting, saw their ten million men off to another 100% male election last week, this time to choose a new Chamber of Deputies.

Among a dozen parties, scores of groups and hundreds of independents who swelled the total of candidates to 3,617, the "Big Three" party leaders were two Gentiles and a Jew.

Jew Leon Blum, who calls himself a Marxian Socialist, has never been Premier despite the fact that his Socialists have been holding down more Chamber seats than any other party (112 out of 610). For 18 years, sad-featured, droop-mustached Socialist Blum has been looking and talking as though the worst were just about to happen--and this year France has at last felt Depression's pinch. Naturally friends have been saying, "Now's your chance!" and Leon Blum has been campaigning shrewdly, championing money and other things dear to the petite bourgeoisie, despite his Marxism.

"An international understanding must be reached," cried Socialist Blum, "to assure not only that the moneys of different nations shall maintain a fixed relation with gold but that an invariable relation shall be maintained between them!"

Gentile Andre Tardieu, Premier of France, has been running the country supported by a Right-Centre coalition (TIME, March 7). As the campaign drew to a close last week both Jew Blum and Gentile Tardieu became speechless from talking too much, had to let their final speeches be read by leather-lunged henchmen. Premier Tardieu's laryngitis grew so bad that he dared not even venture out to ballot. Thus of the French "Big Three" there remained shouting to the end only that redoubtable Gentile, barrel-chested Edouard Herriot, Mayor of Lyons and leader of the second-largest party in the Chamber of Deputies (107 seats out of 610), the misnamed Radical Socialists.

Neither radical nor socialist in any proper sense of either word, M. Herriot's party might be called "Liberal," has long been tantalizingly close to power. A swing in the French electorate is generally slow, but all M. Herriot needed was that the mass of voters should swing last week slightly to the Left--just far enough to upset Premier Tardieu's Right-Centre coalition and make it possible for Mayor Herriot to get together a Left-Centre coalition with himself as Premier. Experts agreed that a swing of only 40 seats to Right or Left in the Chamber might decide the issue--this with 3,617 candidates in the field!

Stomach Tablets, Shoe-Blacking. Any Frenchman can be a candidate, may nominate himself if necessary. Busy candidates have campaigned by phonograph, hiring henchmen to play their speeches on street corners. As usual in Paris at election time, boxlike billboards surrounded many a tree trunk last week, for the State must supply to each candidate free billboard space. If the candidate, instead of advertising himself, used his space to advertise stomach tablets, shoe-blacking or mineral water, that used to be the candidate's own business--but no longer. Last week the threat of a 10.000-franc fine ($400) kept French political billboards uncluttered by advertisements.

First returns of the election came from French Indo-China (because it is hours ahead of France). Early to the polls at Paris went His Excellency Paul Doumer, President of the Republic and Cardinal Verdier, Archbishop of Paris. Since Election Day was also Red May Day. all military garrisons within 100 miles of the Capital had been mobilized and police were on the qui vive throughout France, ready to pounce. Reds therefore kept mouse quiet (except in Ivry, Red suburb of Paris, where 13 Communists were arrested). Most excited was Candidate Henri Lorin who died in Bordeaux "of a heart attack brought on by excitement while the ballots were being counted." (Had he lived, M. Lorin would have been elected.)

367. To win the seat he was fighting for last week a candidate had to win by a clear majority. This all prominent party leaders did, excepting only Communist Leader Marcel Cachin. In his Paris constituency and in 366 others where no candidate won a majority new elections will be held Sunday, May 8, and on that day the candidate with a plurality wins. Of the "Big Three," Premier Tardieu and M. Blum won safe majorities (as did nearly all members of the Tardieu Cabinet), but M. Herriot was spectacularly returned to the Chamber by the largest majority which warm-hearted Lyons ever gave her hero.

At Nantes, the seat once held by Peace Man Aristide Briand was hotly fought for by Pacifist Joseph Caillaux, notorious for his Wartime efforts to make a separate peace with Germany. Sturdy Nantes, which loved the Peace Man, voted solidly against the Pacifist -- with the paradoxical result that Nantes elected one Armand Duez, a militant henchman of pugnacious Premier Tardieu.

With 60% of the Chamber's seats unfilled, bargaining began -- and most French elections are won by bargaining between the first and second polls. On the face of the returns Edouard Herriot's Radical Socialists led all parties with 63 sure seats. The Blum Socialists had done well to win 40 and Premier Tardieu's so-called Left Republicans were conceded to have made a poor showing with only 37. In Paris observers picked Edouard Herriot as probable next Premier of France. But sagacious Hero Herriot made a statement typically French: "I wish to study the situation and play a very prudent game."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.