Bull's Billion & Bonnet

The most vital French news event of last week occurred in England, where Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon quietly asked of Parliament, and very shortly was granted, leave to add a billion dollars (-L-200,000,000) to the Exchange Equalization Fund of $750,000,000 with which John Bull has been operating in the world's money markets. He revealed that last March 30 the Fund possessed 26.674,000 oz. of fine gold, or $933,590,000 worth, compared to $2,584470,000 owned by the Bank of England and $11,000,000,000 worth by the U. S., whose currency stabilizing fund is $2,000,000.000. The stabilizing fund of the French Treasury, originally $450,000,000, was recently reported virtually exhausted (TIME, June 28). Thus last week bankers had reason to think it was chiefly John Bull who was keeping the franc steady on international exchange, and that grateful French politicians of the Left were seeing to it that he got his money's worth of what sagacious John Bull values most--tranquillity.

The situation in France was an obvious setup for strife. A Premier popular with large elements of the masses, Leon Blum had resigned fortnight ago under middle-class pressure exerted by the Senate. Here & there in Paris last week groups of workers drifted about raising such plaintive cries as "Blum to Power!" Nobody of importance in France paid the least attention at this stage of the game, least of all Communist Leader Maurice Thorez and Socialist Leader Blum himself. These two had decided upon a policy of lying low for the present, letting the more moderate new Premier of France, genial Camille Chautemps, a briar-sucking Radical Socialist, find money for a busted Treasury, support for the franc, and technicians able to grapple with France's increasingly ugly adverse trade balance.

Down but far from out, Socialist Blum had reappeared in the Chautemps Cabinet as Vice Premier and Minister of State, and back with him were 21 erstwhile Blum Cabinet members, including Yvon Delbos who continues as Foreign Minister. The one Socialist thrown to the Senate wolves was Blum's droopy-eyed Finance Minister Vincent Auriol who made such an utter mess of devaluation, but even shifty Auriol was included in the Chautemps Cabinet, as Minister of Justice. To get somebody who is of the Left and yet knows something about handling the intricacies of State finance, Premier Chautemps had to reach all the way to Washington last week and pluck home to Paris his country's lynx-eyed, long-nosed Ambassador Georges Bonnet, a Radical Socialist who has several times been Finance Minister. Bonnet was sent to Washington last winter by Blum in the forlorn hope that he could wangle big money out of the New Deal. He rushed home last week aboard the Queen Alary, and immediately upon reaching Paris suspended gold payments by the Bank of France until he could go before Parliament to get plenary financial powers.

That Camille Chautemps should today be Premier of France once more proves the old Paris saw that nothing can kill a statesman's career in this interesting country.* Lawyer Chautemps was politically assassinated, so it seemed, by purported revelations and much seeming evidence linking him with French Public Scandal No. 1--I'Affaire Stavisky (TiME, Jan. 15, 1934, et seq.). Diving into complete retirement for six months, M. Chautemps, when he cautiously emerged, found many people thought the Stavisky Scandal had been so overdone that they actually regarded him as a martyr to evil tongues. Suave, tactful and poker-faced, Premier Chautemps at 52 can look back upon a career which, until he entered politics, ran with exceptional smoothness in the groove of barrister. Brilliant, he first was called to the bar at the age of 19. Son of an established Liberal political family, he became Mayor of Tours after the War, slipped into his first Cabinet post under Herriot in 1924. On two subsequent occasions he was Premier for short periods, thrust forward by more prominent statesmen as a safe Middle-of-the-Roader. now again finds himself Premier for much the same reason.

British statesmen have been increasingly impressed by Leon Blum and Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos as two Frenchmen singularly ready to hitch their foreign policy to the apron strings of Downing Street. Last week French fiscal policy had been hitched, temporarily at least, to the apron strings of the Old Lady of Thread-needle Street, pending the arrival of Finance Minister Georges Bonnet. This nimble native of Dordogne, by far the ablest player of Basque pelota in the new Cabinet, will have his work cut out for him to get French finances in shape, but he seemed certain of broad cooperation. Under one of France's new social decrees drafted by Leon Blum and published last week by the Chautemps Cabinet as one of its first acts, the 40-hour week applies to French hotels, and according to their managers this would mean hiring enough extra hotel servants to bankrupt the industry. At latest reports, tourists in France were still enjoying every hotel comfort, but the hotel operators threatened through their association to stage a nation-wide lockout of hotel workers for at least 24 hours, to emphasize their protest.

*Example: Joseph Caillaux, who was banished and barely escaped being shot during the War for relations with the enemy, today is just about France's most influential Senator. He organized the ousting of Blum as Premier.

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