Premier's Privat

In Paris the astonishing feats of political tightrope-walking, by which Pierre Laval last week had maintained himself as Premier of France for seven months, have gradually focused fascinated interest upon M. Maurice Privat.

Reporters see this little man in horn spectacles waddle through the great iron gates of the Quai d'Orsay and up to the Premier's state apartments several times each week. Although known principally today as Paris' No. 1 Astrologer, M. Privat has behind him many years of working journalism. He is the author of a fat stack of works comprising his investigations of celebrated judicial cases, exotic crimes and the lives of statesmen he knew as a reporter. The incredible report which much of Paris now avidly believes is that Astrologer Privat assists Premier Laval from day to day in charting the course of the French Republic and more especially in trying to solve the Ethiopian Question.

To call upon Maurice Privat recently went a close friend of the astrologer who happens to be the same sort of journalist-investigator he once was. Soon Privat was volubly discussing his new profession:

"I have been an astrologer now for three years. Astrology is a marvelous science and an infallible one, whereas clairvoyance is a gift and arrives at only problematical conclusions. For example, in August 1934, I had taken my son to Turckheim in the Vosges mountains. As I had nothing to do. except for walking, I set up Louis Barthou's horoscope--he was then Foreign Minister. As I was seting it up, I suddenly saw Uranus in the Gemini or 12th House. Why, I said to myself, there has been an attempt upon Barthou's life. As I knew that was not so, I progressed the planets and arrived at the date Oct. 12, 1934. I calculated still more closely and finally fixed upon Oct. 10 at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

"When the Moon conjuncts Uranus, that signifies an assassination or attempt at assassination. The Moon strikes the blow, and the presence of Uranus indicates firearms. Uranus governs everything mechanical. Astrology is a perpetual progression. The Egyptians based their predictions upon experience and observation; why shouldn't we do more? Therefore, immediately upon my return to Paris in September I went to see Louis Barthou, with whom I was especially well acquainted, as M. Barthou was an ardent Hugophile and I had been presented to him by Gustave Simon, Hugo's testamentary executor. So our ideas on literature coincided. At any rate, I made known to him the result of my deductions adding, 'Between the loth and 15th of October, take special precautions.'

"I noticed at once that my statements had upset him. I had very strongly the impression that here before me was a doomed man.

" 'An attempt upon my life?' he said. 'With a knife?'

'No, with a firearm. You will be wounded in the left arm, under mysterious circumstances, during a journey. Take the greatest precautions.'

"Now, as you know, no royal visit ever was less carefully guarded than King Alexander's. You would have said that the guards had been kept as far away as possible and everything which contributed to or surrounded the assassination was of a mechanical natur --arms, automobiles, cameras.

"Besides, remember that those whom the gods destroy they first make mad, and note the terrible coincidence by which Barthou began to run after he was wounded and then a distraught officer placed the tourniquet below instead of above the wound."

Obviously Astrologer Privat's account of his warning to Statesman Barthou can neither be confirmed nor denied by the dead man, but Statesman Mussolini last week was very much alive. Said M. Privat boldly: "I consider Mussolini a man fatally stricken. The 27th of January 1936 is ominous for him. From that day on he will fall rapidly. I wrote to him at the beginning of 1934 to undertake nothing during the year, because the conjunction of the stars was sinister for him. And I am sure that he was answering me in his speech of last October when he declared: 'We are strong enough to defy Destiny.' And he has defied it, with a bad astral conjunction."

As to Premier Laval, Astrologer Privat merely exhibited the Laval horoscope, exclaiming, "You see that is a marvelous horoscope!"

"Laval is a strange man," continued Privat. "He never says anything, but he always does what I tell him. His feelings are entirely in accord with mine. The year 1935 was an exceptionally good year for him. This year 1936 will be less good for him. He will shortly suffer a setback. Thereafter his comeback will be tremendous. He will live a long time and die a great statesman."

All ready to set back Pierre Laval last week was the potent cabal inside the Radical Socialist Party which is violently hostile to the Premier. As a party the Radical Socialists, who hold a balance of power in the French Chamber, are supposed to be anti-Laval, but as individuals enough of them favor him to have made possible his Cabinet's dance on the tightrope of Power all these months. Last week the anti-Laval cabal forced a showdown within the party, demanding that hereafter Radical Socialists vote as a unit in the Chamber. At this showdown it was first decided by a party majority of one to do as the cabal demanded. Then the decision was reversed by a party majority of one. By this last of innumerable flukes Pierre Laval remained Premier of France.

He immediately faced another possible setback, as he nearly always has during his tenure as Premier.

For internal Radical Socialist Party reasons, great and moderate Edouard Herriot ("Edouard I") was succeeded as President of the party this week by harsh and extremist Edouard Daladier ("Edouard II"). Six members of the Laval Cabinet were Radical Socialists. Of these M. Herriot resigned from the Cabinet in which he held the honorary portfolio Minister of State. The other five gloomily read a nonmandatory order of the day from the Executive Committee of the Radical Socialist Party implying that they should also resign from the Cabinet and excoriating M. Laval in complicated verbiage, saying that the Radical Socialist Party is "resolved to crush this crisis by substituting the rights of labor for the privileges of money."

This created a snarl which most Paris commentators considered impossible of disentanglement by Pierre Laval. It appeared that after years of spiteful and ill-tempered intrigue "Edouard II" Daladier had gained at least a temporary whip hand against "Edouard I" Herriot, and that when Premier Laval returns this week from Geneva, where he is wrestling with the octopus-like Ethiopian Question, he will face the most disastrous French political muddle of his long and dexterous career.

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