"We Accuse . . . !"

Sober French trade union leaders and the property-hugging French proletariat were at their wits' end last week as obstreperous Communists and wharf scum at the naval ports of Brest and Toulon staged a bloody dress-rehearsal of revolution.

In Brest bold Sub-Prefect Jacques Henry risked lynching by Red mobsters who had torn down the tricolor of France from his Sub-Prefecture and hoisted a Communist banner, to the vast delight of Moscow (see p. 24). While rioters surged around him singing the Internationale, M. Henry grabbed the lanyards and began hauling down the Red flag amid a hail of rivets, bolts and paving stones, one of which bloodied his head. Shouting "Vive la Patrie!", injured Sub-Prefect Henry not only shoved and bluffed his way out of the crowd without giving up the Red flag which he had seized but also rescued the French tricolor. Abashed by his courage, the mob quieted, only to be aroused later by Reds who finally managed to start a window-smashing spree which left the narrow streets of Brest a seeming shambles.

Next day Labor Syndicate Head Berthelot, representing most of the 6,000 workers at the Brest Naval Arsenal, angrily announced: "We accuse extremists, Communists, of provoking this trouble! We accuse especially the professional agitator Balliere!" After going to work again, the 6,000 proletarians at Brest Arsenal showed where they stood by abruptly stopping work for an hour in a "folded arms protest" against the 10% wage cut decreed for state employees by budget-balancing Premier Pierre Laval (TIME, July 29).

"Hang Laval!" and "Laval to the Stake!" was the cry at Toulon two days later as a minority of 700 workers at the State gunpowder plant marched out singing the Internationale. They were joined by Riviera rabble which swept through the streets smashing windows, robbing shops, cutting electric wires and wrecking lampposts to make looting easier in the balmy darkness. As police and steel-helmeted Gardes Mobiles rushed in, they were sniped at from the housetops. Shrieking Communists ran about encouraging everyone within earshot to "Build barricades against the Cossacks!"

Soon French warships in the harbor swept the rooftops with their searchlights while crack French Colonial marksmen tried to pick off the snipers. All Colonials used in the streets were white, the Government announced, but Toulon's electric plant and some Municipal buildings were put under guard of coal-black Senegalese. Vice-Admiral Louis Berthelot of the Toulon naval station declared: "The arsenal workmen have sent me a delegation saying that they do not wish to be linked with last night's bloodshed which they ascribe to underworld agitators eager for loot." Meeting in a suburb three miles outside Toulon, the arsenal workers cheered their regular leaders, who urged them to return to work. Said Prefect Maunier grimly: "If the workers recommence their rioting, it will be their misfortune. We are ready for them now: In future Toulon will be so strongly guarded that any outbreak will be quickly mastered."

Sailors of the French Line were meanwhile staging the strike they patriotically abandoned to permit the Normandie to sail on her record-breaking maiden voyage (TIME, June 10). They walked off the Champlain at Havre last week and for two days most of her 670 passengers were fed and bedded in Havre hotels at French Line expense. Meanwhile the men's leaders wrangled in Paris with Minister of Merchant Marine William Bertrand, saddest man on the Normandie's maiden voyage.* Since employees of the French Line are paid largely by State subsidy, M. Bertrand insisted last week that they must take the 10% wage cut State servants must take. But this sternness M. Bertrand followed by a question. Would the French Line crews go back to work at 10% lower pay if given overtime work regularly enough to bring their total earnings up to the present level?

Since money-hugging French Proletarians scarcely think of how much they work in their concentration on how much they earn, the seamen answered with a roar of "Oui!"', rushed back to their ships which sailed with all speed from Havre, while the French Cabinet announced Depression-busting decrees (see col. 3). General grumbling and unrest in French ports last week, with some rioting and shouts of "Hang Laval!" at Cherbourg, showed that the Premier was acting none too soon.

* Because the Flandin Cabinet fell while he was at sea and a rival politician on the spot in Paris copped his job of Minister of Merchant Marine in the new Laval Cabinet. Friends on the Normandie warned M. Bertrand that this would happen, urged him to call up M. Laval by radio telephone. ''That is not done!" exploded French M. Bertrand. "I cannot remind the President of the Council that I exist, by telephone!"

On his return trip, in token of his shelving, M. Bertrand ceased to dine on the Normandie with the wife of the President of France. After this self-effacement, which Frenchmen considered in exceedingly good taste, he put on a short, sharp political fight in Paris to get back his job as Minister of Marine, got it.

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