Study in Bag-holding

(See front cover)

Within the week, world attention switched from Franklin Roosevelt to Adolf Hitler to Edouard Daladier. As the world had hoped-- and guessed--Chancellor Hitler backed down, the immediate German crisis passed (see p. 12). What was France with the largest army in Western Europe, the largest gold reserve and an international position the envy of every other European nation, now going to do?

The week's events brought Premier Daladier plenty besides Hitler to ponder. First there was the domestic situation. The existence of a French Premier, never too secure, becomes most critical at Budget time. France's budget, under consideration by the Senate for two weeks, comes up again for discussion by the Deputies this week. It cannot be balanced for 1953: as passed by the Senate last week it contained a deficit of $156,710,400. French Socialists under long-nosed Leon Blum served notice on the Radical-Socialist* Government of Premier Daladier that they would not support him unless the proposed cuts were restored in wounded veterans' and war widows' pensions, and in expenditures for social service education. Opposition of the fire-eating Right parties is constant, but in Daladiers own party a split is brewing with followers of Edouard Herriot, anxious to pay France's defaulted debt to the U. S. at once. Daladier and disciples are for nonpayment. As spokesman for the Right, Former Finance Minister Pierre Etienne Flandin popped up in the Chamber of Deputies last week and asked a number of questions that the world at large dearly wished to hear answered:

"As regards War Debts, will the French Government pay the Dec. 15 installment and will she pay the June 15 installment?

"As concerns the monetary question and particularly the gold standard, is it true that the Premier said he would not go to London unless the dollar and the pound were first stabilized?

"On the question of the distribution of gold stocks, what is the Government's feeling? Also on the proposal for a general devaluation of the world's currencies?

"On bimetallism what will be the French Government's decision?

"As regards raising world prices, the Government already seems to have agreed to it. . . . How is the Government going to reconcile this thesis with its internal policy of diminishing the cost of living?

Disarmament. Premier Daladier handled none of these dynamite sticks last week but he did tell the world what France was preparing to do on disarmament in the face of Chancellor Hitler's conciliatory speech--Nothing. To the Senate, which was timidly suggesting a 5% cut in military expenditures, he announced:

"All possible economies have already been made in a military way. . . . I'll never consent to any reduction in these items. . . .

"At present it would be illusory to slow down the preparation of military material. Only tomorrow will we know whether the other peoples are ready to disarm. ... I affirm that we can have confidence in our army, and I affirm that our national defense is assured."

The French Press echoed approval. A Foreign Office spokesman announced: "Yesterday, Germany was regarded as a peril. Dare anyone suppose today that it is France and her allies who are troubling peace?"

Terrier-like Inspector General Maxima Weygand asked the Supreme Council of National Defense to extend the period of compulsory military service from a year to 18 months because of the small size of the conscript classes of 1934-5-6, born in Wartime. The Military Governor of Paris, one-armed General Henri Gouraud, announced mass training for the Paris population against gas attack this summer, under the direction of that effervescent Corsican, Prefect of Police Jean Chiappe.

Daladier. To keep his Government Premier Daladier had soon to answer the questions of M. Flandin, to tackle the problems they aroused. French reporters have one adjective for him, solide. Stocky, blue-eyed, pugnacious, he is no orator like Herriot or the late great Briand. He is acquiring Calvin Coolidge's mid-term reputation for quiet stability.

But there is a difference in the Daladier and Coolidge personalities. Edouard Daladier was born near Avignon in Provence 49 years ago, son of a baker. Though Edouard Daladier was no Separatist, a friend of his boyhood was the late great Poet Frederic Mistral, reviver of the Provencal language. Desiring to be a schoolteacher, Edouard Daladier entered a normal school and studied under a plump vomit: man whose career was to parallel his from then on: Edouard Herriot.

Edouard Daladier fought in the trenches with much eclat. He was cited and decorated several times. Those were the days when nice young ladies "adopted" men in the service, knitted them mufflers and wrote them letters. Muscular Edouard Daladier's marraine was a Mile Laffont, daughter of a scientist. He met her on leave and married her.

In 1919 Edouard Herriot, by now a rising power in the Radical-Socialist Party, remembered his prize pupil and got him a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. He was a member of Herriot's junket to Soviet Russia, joined the Herriot Cabinet in 1924 as Minister of Colonies. Never catching the national spotlight, his influence in the party and in France grew & grew. He served in the 1926 Herriot Cabinet, fought ultra-Nationalist Raymond Poincare persistently, was elected president of the Radical-Socialist Party in 1927, became leader of a party faction separate from his old teacher last winter.

Edouard Daladier has the distinction of being the only French Premier ever to have been kidnapped. In 1929 two young French Fascists rushed him off in a motor car, in an effort to prevent his speaking at Strasbourg. M. Daladier escaped, reached the meeting rumpled but determined to talk.

Radicals and Radical-Socialists have an unofficial uniform in France: a soft black felt hat. The type of hat is left to the fancy of the wearer. M. Herriot wears a rather dumpy velour. Until he became Premier in January Edouard Daladier wore a romantic fedora. His first move in office was to antiquate newspaper files throughout the world by shaving his mustache and buying a new hat: a stiff, eminently correct black Homburg.

Conference. Obviously M. Daladier's most important job will be steering his country through the World Economic-Conference at London. He is well aware that such meetings can be like snipe-hunting at night with bag and candle. It takes at least three to hunt snipe--one to hold the bag and two to enjoy the joke. Edouard Daladier is firmly determined that if the London Conference is a snipe hunt, it will not be France that is left holding the bag. She is already holding the gold standard bag, with pound, dollar, mark and lira all cut loose. She cannot devaluate her money further without risking violent insurrection from hard-bitten French investors, who have already seen 80% of their savings swept away in the inflation and demonetization of the franc in 1924-28. And France has few bargains to offer foreign countries in tariff trading. Most of her exports are luxuries, the last thing that most governments will reduce tariffs on. The average opinion of French businessmen last week was that unless the three principal currencies--dollar, pound and franc--reach de facto stabilization not after but before the London Conference opens, there is little point in France's taking part. Following this idea, wires were pulled from Paris last week to set up an international equalization fund, similar to the British pound equalization fund, to peg dollar, pound and franc at or near their present level.

Empire. France's ace-in-the-hole for the economic conference is her Colonial Empire, one-third the size of Britain's, and with no cocky Dominions to fight for special rights and privileges. Several weeks ago, speaking in his old town of Orange where he once taught history, Premier Daladier warned the world that should the London Conference break down, France and her colonies are quite capable of becoming a self-contained economic unit. At the Ministry of Commerce in Paris last week, Premier Daladier, a former Colonial Minister himself, sat down with a handful of Cabinet Ministers and the Governors of all French colonies, protectorates and mandated territories to discuss cocoa, mahogany, wine, tea, petroleum, spices, cotton, wool, etc., arrange tentative quotas among the colonies, set up machinery for an official Colonial Conference in Paris, six months hence, after London.

*Neither Radical nor Marxian Socialist is the Radical-Socialist Party of France. It is best compared to the left-wing members of the British Liberal Party.

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