Totalitarian Democracy

Now Bonnet is out in the alley, Now Bonnet is where he should be; And France is not singing of Bonnet, "0 bring back my Bonnet to me!"

This ditty, composed last week by New Statesman & Nation's Sagittarius * to celebrate a shuffling of France's Cabinet, was not strictly accurate. Georges Bonnet was not out in the alley; he was up the back stairs. He was out of France's Foreign Ministry, which he had occupied since April 1938, and in the relatively unimportant Ministry of Justice.

Paradox of democratic countries is that as soon as one of them begins defending democracy, it ceases to be a democracy. Last week, with the Cabinet shift, France became a full-fledged totalitarian state. And Edouard Daladier, who retained the Foreign Ministry along with the Prime and Defense Ministries which he already held, became its dictator. He gathered around him, to help him draw up emergency decree laws, a collection of brilliant World War heroes. Among the seven new men in the Cabinet were at least ten wounds, three Croix de Guerre, over a dozen citations for bravery. The men were all of Big Business color, but of technical shade: practical, juristic, masters of concrete planning rather than grandiose theorizing. Most important move aside from the shelving of Georges Bonnet was the creation of a Ministry of Armaments, and the selection of efficient, inordinately hardworking, high strung, impulsive Raoul Dautry, 59, to head it. He reorganized France's rattletrap State Railways, sinking French Line, and stalled airline Aeropostale all at once. During the last war he built military rail lines. Foch called him "my railway ace." His job this time will be to make France one great arsenal to feed Commander in Chief Maurice Gamelin bullets faster than he can pump them into guns.

Removal of Foreign Minister Bonnet, whose name has been inextricably associated with Munich, to the Justice Ministry was at once a matter for the rejoicing of foreign opponents of appeasement like Sagittarius and for the dismay of French ones like radical Author Louis Aragon (Bells of Basel, Residential Quarter). Red Author Aragon was among the first to be called up, sent to the Front. The French are civilized. Search France in vain for concentration camps full of opposition leaders. These worthies were last week given every consideration, including the privilege of fighting--and dying--for France in front-line trenches.

*A pen name used by a number of people who have clever words they would like to put in some one else's mouth.

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