Road to Glory

They used to call Edouard Daladier, in public, the "Bull of Vaucluse," while behind his back they muttered: "that cow of vacillation." They used to draw cartoons of Leon Blum shaking with fright at the gusty leftism released when his Popular Front swept the 1936 elections. But last week, at the "war guilt" trials in Riom, ex-Premier Daladier was no flabby trimmer, ex-Premier Blum no weakling.

His neck muscles bulging, Daladier bellowed at the pettiness of the Vichy charges. He absolved his codefendant, Pierre Jacomet, of falsifying arms-production figures. He harked back to 1934 "when they [Army officials] ordered altogether seven tanks at the time when Germany was turning them out by mass production." He admitted mistakes, delays and errors common to all democracies, but in a fury charged once again that reactionary militarists, typified by Marshal Henri Philippe Petain himself, were responsible for the defeat of France's Armies.

Fully as fierce were Socialist Blum's answers to charges that he sold out France to sit-down strikers and Communist intriguers. He had dealt with Communists, he said, because it was "impossible to defend republican ideals by excluding a large mass of the people." With a daring that made the courtroom gasp, he spoke of a Communist, recently a saboteur, "who often bitterly attacked me."

"He was shot," said Blum, "but he died singing the Marseillaise--the Marseillaise the Popular Front taught him to sing."

The 40-hour week, Blum declared, had not cut production but had actually in creased it. The delays were due to armament firms, such as Schneider (guns and projectiles) and Renault (tanks), who resisted curbs on profiteering and monopoly.

"Before the war," Blum said, "private industries sold material to Italy, so that when the war came enemies shot at us with French-manufactured cannon shells.

"You may convict me," he told the court. "Indeed you must. . . . But you cannot deprive me of the satisfaction of having personified, for a moment at least, French faith in our civic liberty."

The same faith shone in the closing speech of Daladier.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, "you know that for myself I am indifferent. . . . What I am thinking about is France, which has been eliminated while this great world struggle is going on. But we know that one day she will again find the road to glory."

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