"If You Want Liberty. . . ."

In Geneva the 100th session of the Council of the League of Nations which had been about to open was suddenly postponed. In London Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hastily conferred with Anthony Eden, called home from Monte Carlo to duty : . the Foreign Office. For European statesmen felt that it was not just another French Cabinet which fell last week, that a crisis was at hand not only for France but for Europe.

In recent months French political police have discovered grave armed plots against the State. But the Popular Front Cabinet of Premier Camille Chautemps, supported by a coalition of Communists, Socialists and Radical Socialists, kept the French public in the dark. A score of Rightists, few prominent, were arrested, but their loud demands to be accused of treason and given their day in court were ignored. Fortnight ago, with the evident consent of the General Staff, a general on active duty declared that there was to have been a Communist coup d'etat on November 16, but that word of it reached the Staff in time for the coup to be nipped (TIME, Jan. 17). After this startling development, suggesting that French Army leaders knew a great deal more than the Chautemps Cabinet was eager for the public to learn, trouble was bound to pop-- and last week it popped.

Camille Chautemps, France's moderate and middle-class Premier, had struggled for months with his Communist and Socialist bedfellows to give France a "pause" from the New Deal measures inaugurated 19 months ago under France's first Socialist Premier, Leon Blum. Early this winter the "pause" was giving French businessmen a moderate return of confidence, and the treasury situation was improving under Finance Minister Georges Bonnet although the franc was weak. In the last few weeks, this recovery was halted by a new wave of strikes.

In Paris last week President C. J. Gignoux of the French Employers' Association was taunted with cries of "Gig-noux to the gallows!" In the Chamber soon afterward Premier Chautemps, who had been having trouble with both Capital's Gignoux and Leon Jouhaux, leader of some 5,000,000 French trade unionists, was denounced by Comrade Arthur Ramette, Communist leader. "If you want your liberty,-I will give it to you!" cried the Premier, weary after weeks of strife. "I will not let the Communists spit in my face!"

At that point, Vice Premier Leon Blum's Socialists asked time out to consider whether they would stick with the Communists or with the moderate, misnamed Radical Socialist Party of Chautemps, the second largest party in the Chamber. Out of the Socialist huddle came Blum to hand Chautemps his own resignation and that of the other eight Socialist ministers. This automatically wrecked the Cabinet. The hour was 4:30 a. m. Premier Chautemps bundled his Cabinet into a motorcade which brought them before cockcrow to hand all their resignations to sad-eyed President Albert Lebrun. "Blum will be the next Premier!" exulted his Socialist henchmen and Communist friends.

In the hectic days which followed it became clear that even the most embittered French political leaders sensed that France was sitting on a powder-keg. The President called in quick succession Radical Socialist Georges Bonnet, Socialist Leon Blum--both of whom quickly failed to form a Cabinet. A valiant attempt was made to arrange a "National Government" in which Right & Left would collaborate to spare France possible armed strife. The franc meanwhile sank on international exchange to its lowest in eleven years.

At week's end, sleepless and haggard, President Lebrun sent once more for Camille Chautemps, asked him to try to form a Cabinet. "We have been around in a circle," declared the Premier-Designate with an exhausted attempt at humor, "and we are back where we started!"

This was putting the case optimistically. It was evident that the Popular Front had been so cracked, patched up and cracked again, that this coalition, which has been the base on which French Cabinets have rested since the last election (TIME, June 15, 1936), is unlikely to stand up much longer. Logical next move would be dissolution of the Chamber with an immediate election. First party to come out with what could easily become an electioneering broadside were the Communists: "Formation of the Cabinet which M. Blum had envisioned was rendered impossible by the demands of Paul Reynaud who wanted to impose the presence in the Cabinet of elements linked with terror and Fascism!"

M. Reynaud was immediately asked by M. Chautemps to enter the Cabinet as Finance Minister, as it was thought his presence would steady the franc and impress England. At the Coronation of King George VI dapper little Paul Reynaud, although only a private citizen, was accorded by His Majesty's Government, among whom he has many friends, one of the very best seats in Westminster Abbey. It was really he who last week gained most in France, if only in kudos.

Paul Reynaud is often called "The Most Traveled French Statesman." He makes frequent trips to Mexico to look after property he inherited from his grandfather. Before he took up politics he practiced law. In Indo-China, where Communists have had notable success in fomenting native unrest, M. Reynaud helped restore order when he was Minister of the Colonies (TIME, Nov. 2, 1931). Aged 58, he looks younger, annoys the earnest Left with his barbed Gallic wit, his habitually ironic mien. The Moderate Left acknowledged him the leading exponent of the moderate Right. Excepting Bonnet, no Premier cared to form a Cabinet without him, and because the Communists opposed him, it seemed that no Cabinet could be formed with him.

Nevertheless, Chautemps continued trying to set up a Cabinet which would "group a maximum of goodwill around the essential principles approved by the electors." After pondering this subtle formula, at length, the Socialists in an all-night session of their National Council at first voted-- in effect reversing their previous stand-- to participate in any Government, even one lacking Communists, committed to a Popular Front program. Later the Socialists changed their minds, promised Chautemps only their votes in the Chamber of Deputies. Despite the tenuousness of this support, he made it this week the basis of a projected all-Radical Socialist cabinet.

*I.e., liberty from the Popular Front coalition supporting Chautemps, of which the Communists were part.

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