Cabinet of Premiers

From Senlis, from Orleans, from Rouen, Chartres and Lyons they came, 8,000 grey-blue soldiers clumping into a Paris that, for the day, was placidly peaceful. Throughout the city headquarters were set up, rolling kitchens were fired and posts mounted. Workmen were out at dawn scattering clean yellow sand in the Place de la Concorde, the Place de la Republique and along the boulevards near the Chamber of Deputies to keep soldiers' horses from slipping. An emergency Cabinet headed by six onetime Premiers of France had taken charge. There had been bloody storms before and there might be more after, but for that day the Third Republic seemed to have survived.

After three weeks of desultory rioting, Paris suddenly became its ancient savage self. Mobs of veterans, of Communists, of screaming young Royalists tore through the streets. Some were headed by brass bands, some carried the tricolor, some the red flag. Each group was for a different cause but all were united against the small-mindedness of the Chamber of Deputies. In the broad Place de la Concorde occurred the bloodiest street battles Paris has seen since 1871. Drawn up at the opposite end of the square were blue-caped police, steel-helmeted Gardes Mobiles and mounted squadrons of the Garde Republicaine, guarding the bridge across the Seine to the Chamber. The first volleys went high above the crowd, splattered the pale stonework of the U. S. Embassy. But the mob swept on, firing in return. The next volleys were low and straight. Torches hurtled through the windows of the Ministry of Marine, setting its ground floor on fire. Terrified mobsters hammered frantically on the locked gates of the Hotel Crillon for shelter.

Then came the Spahis. Just before midnight the Algerian cavalrymen in their scarlet and white bournouses charged down with drawn sabres and drove the mob back up the Rue Royale to the Madeleine. Sedate Weber's Cafe became an emergency hospital. Ancient waiters carried the wounded in from the streets, ripped their aprons and napkins for bandages. Passing doctors operated on the restaurant tables.

Serious fighting lasted 48 hours. One of the hottest set-tos took place before the neo-Renaissance HOtel de Ville. Here the mob, mostly youngsters, was led by 13 perspiring Municipal Councilors with their tricolor sashes wrapped round their stomachs. Communists led the crowds that battled police three days later around the Place de la Republique.

Everywhere the mobs made a monkey of the late Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann. When pale Napoleon III ordered him as Prefect of the Seine to rip up streets, tear down blocks of old houses and lay out the magnificent system of wide Parisian boulevards, his object was neither to speed traffic nor create beautiful vistas, but to build streets easily swept by cannon and prevent the erection of such barricades as had cost the lives of so many soldiers and pulled down three regimes before him. As fine a barricade as Victor Hugo ever saw suddenly rose across the Champs-Elysees last week. Tin chairs, uprooted trees, paving blocks, parts of wrecked taxis and sections of newspaper kiosks composed it. It was topped by a row of wooden horses wrenched from a merry-go-round, and proudly on the crest stood the rioters' bullet-scarred banner, a large tin sign: DEFENSE DE MARCHER SUR L'HERBE--("Keep Off the Grass"). Rioting spread to the provinces, to Lyons, Lille, Nice. Amid howls for his political head, Premier Daladier called at the Elysee Palace, handed in his resignation after eight tormented days in office. "Power is not worth such sacrifices," said he as he left. "That is the reason for my decision. . . . I do not wish demonstrators to be shot down by soldiers. I do not want to expose those 20-year-old children. Certainly not!" Gastounet. As never before, France needed a Strong Man. That she could not find, but there was available the next best thing, a good, honest man without enemies. Early in the afternoon President Lebrun telephoned to the country place of his 70-year-old predecessor, Gaston Doumergue, begging him to take the government. Swarthy Pierre Laval also telephoned him. So from even deeper retirement did white-chinned old Raymond Poincaire, War President and "savior of the franc." M. Doumergue accepted but with conditions. He must be given power to recess Parliament if necessary and govern by ministerial decree. That evening he was leaving the village of

Tournefeuille ("Turn Leaf") for Paris.

"Don't exaggerate," said he to newshawks on the train. "I always mistrust miracles and miracle workers. And now excuse me, I must put on a clean collar to go and see the President of the Republic if I am to set a good example."

It was the sort of talk all France wanted to hear. Paris remembered how jolly Gaston Doumergue once rented a dress suit for a reception at the Elysee, how when years later he occupied the Palace as President he used to sneak out a side door to play belotte with cronies from the south, how he issued Presidential approval of the "Charleston" in 1927, how as the 67-year-old Bachelor President of the Republic he suddenly married a widow. Through streets littered with debris, crowds followed him shouting "Vive le bon petit Gastounet!"

A new Cabinet was quickly formed containing representatives of nearly every party except Royalists, orthodox Socialists and Communists. Much was made of the fact that, including "Gastounet," who served as Premier once before in 1913-14, six onetime Premiers were in it: Edouard Herriot, now Minister of State without portfolio; Andre Tardieu, also a Minister of State; Pierre Laval, now Minister of Colonies; Albert Sarraut, now Minister of the Interior; Louis Barthou, now Minister of Foreign Affairs. Republican idealists were more concerned over the fact that for the first time since the founding of the Third Republic the Cabinet contained two generals. Marshal Petain, defender of Verdun, was the new Minister of War. General Victor Denain, onetime military aide to President Doumergue, is the new Minister for Air. The Cabinet of Premiers' first move was to announce that the plight of Austria was quite as vital to France as anything happening at home. Premier Doumergue and Ministers Herriot, Tardieu, and Barthou formed a sort of Directorate of Four to take up the problem at once. This was followed by an official footnote to reassure Frenchmen that this group had no intention of becoming a Dictatorship like the famed Directorate of First Consul Bonaparte.

In the two days that followed, Paris had a chance to bind up its wounds. Accurate figures on casualties were almost impossible to obtain. Checking the official figures against their own careful survey of all Paris hospitals, U. S. news agencies agreed that 16 people had been killed, about 400 seriously wounded. Finally French officials admitted 21 dead, 2,400 seriously wounded.

Where these swift developments left Jean Chiappe no one pretended to know. Under great pressure, the dapper prefect of Paris police had been dismissed by Premier Daladier because one section of the public believed that he had wilfully failed to prosecute Swindler Stavisky, because another section believed that he collected a fat fortune in office by subtly blackmailing crooked politicians. But even without these groups smiling Prefect Chiappe still had enormous personal popularity throughout Paris. No sooner was his removal announced than roars for his restoration were heard. Rioting crowds interlarded "Vive Chiappe!" with cries of "Voleurs!" "Assassins!", saved their most savage attacks, their deadliest brickbats for the blue-clad Garde Mobile, a section of the French constabulary that was invented and organized by Prefect Chiappe himself.

Jean III. Scrawls of VIVE LE ROI! on walls and sidewalks and roaring young Royalists swinging loaded canes were not lost upon a very tall, very dignified exile in Belgium. Two days after the bloodiest fighting the Royalist newspaper Action Franc,aise published a manifesto that had come by special courier from Brussels:

"Frenchmen: From the foreign land where a law of banishment cruelly detains me, I bow with sad emotion before the dead and wounded who, at the cost or the risk of their lives, accepted the challenge to probity and honor given by an unworthy Government in its panic-stricken impotence. . . .

"Frenchmen of all parties and of every class! The hour has come to rally to the Monarchist principles on which was founded and conserved during centuries the greatness of France, and which alone can assure peace, order, justice and continuity of purpose and deeds. Given in exile. . . . JEAN III."

Whatever may become of the Government, there is little likelihood that Jean III, or even his pale handsome aviator son the Comte de Paris, will ever sit on the throne of France. Despite their noise, there are not many more than 50,000 convinced Royalists in all France. Most of them are old ladies with lorgnets and an

Air, old gentlemen with wasp waists and Ascot ties. There remain perhaps 10,000 Camelots du Roi who fight in the streets for a sentimental ideal and to express their disgust at all politicians in office. Jean, Due de Guise, became pretender to the throne because he is a great-grandson of the very bourgeois Monarch Louis Philippe. He is an excellent gentleman farmer.

Politically even his name is unfortunate. Louis XIX. Henry V, even Philippe VII might be a name to conjure with, but John III leaves even French romantics cold. John II (1319-64) was an ineffective monarch who suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the English at Poitiers, spent years of comfortable but embarrassing captivity in London and when released returned voluntarily to Britain to die because he was unable to raise the ransom he had promised Edward III. Even in France there are few who could recognize the flag of the Bourbon monarchy: a white banner with golden fleur-de-lis. Causes. As an example of civic corruption the Stavisky scandal pales into in significance beside the disclosures of the Teapot Dome and Seabury investigations in the U. S. The $30,000,000 worth of Bayonne pawnshop bonds involved was less than one-tenth of the amount involved in the failure of New York's S. W. Strauss & Co. (TIME, March 27. et seq.) Yet in neither case did Aldermen stand cheering on the barricades, or cavalry trample bondholders or waiters carry the dying into Childs'. Fundamentally last week's riots were the relief of a long-suffered national nausea induced by the Chamber of Deputies. Depression, the unbalanced budget, Stavisky. high taxation, fears over the Nazi menace all contributed. Deputies are elected only once every four years. They represent some 14 different parties, no one of which can form a government without bickering and bargaining. But they can upset any government on a simple vote of nonconfidence. Since the present Chamber was elected in May 1932 France has had seven Cabinets. All the most important domestic problems have been postponed time & time again. A small-minded Chamber has throttled the executive branch of government. The prospect of two more years of the same tactics from the same men was more than Frenchmen could bear.

Even so Frenchmen might not have loaded their pistols and marched to the barricades but for a few facts unimportant in themselves but of great psychological significance. Since October France has had two frightful train wrecks, one major airplane disaster, all with appalling loss of life. All these were blamed on Government operation. Also it has been the coldest, most uncomfortable winter since 1923. Paris has the same latitude as Newfoundland and even in warm winters little sunlight reaches its streets from November to April. With the Seine frozen, the wind bitter, taxes and prices high and the chauffage central out of commission, nerves have been raw.

Francism? When a people grow disgusted with their Parliament, Fascism is the most obvious alternative. Correspondents in Paris last week promptly discovered an organization of French Fascists who wear funny shirts and black berets, issue mouth-filling pronunciamentos, and in a play on words like to call themselves Les Francists. A form of Fascism may come to France, but the odds are heavily against the Francists having much to do with it. What the average Frenchman wants is a Parliamentary government that will work efficiently and at the same time preserve his individual liberty. Frightened at the Fascism latent in the Doumergue emergency Government, all France registered unmistakable protest in a nationwide one-day general strike.

Except for the Communists, there was little bloodshed. Emergency squads kept power and light plants going. Army and Navy engineers moved into telephone and telegraph offices. Excited correspondents calling New York were liable to get Prague or Buenos Aires but it worked moderately well. The railroads continued to run. But beyond that the tie-up was almost absolute. High spot of the day was a mass demonstration of 25,000 Socialists and Communists in the Cours de Vincennes, where a few daring youngsters climbed the statue of the Republic and affixed a red flag. Then the crowd marched slowly in to Paris shouting together "Unity, Unity, Unity, Down with Fascism!" Stalking along in the van, wrapped in a towel-like toga, his big bare blue feet clad in sandals, pounding the cobbles, was Raymond Duncan, erratic brother of the late Isadora Duncan. Parisians cheered him as he passed. Vegetarian, dress reformer and Utopian, Raymond Duncan has been completely out of the news since that day in 1930 when he collected ten tin buckets of sea water at Manhattan's Battery, made salt from it to honor Mahatma Gandhi.

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