The Premiership

The heads of political wiseacres were wagging over the approaching doom of Premier Herriot and the probable accession to the premiership of ex-Premier Aristide Briand, or the possible advent to that dignity of industrialist Louis Loucheur.

This reasoning was based in theory upon the fact that French Premiers rarely remain long in office. In fact, three problems were stated as likely to cause the "chute":

1) Red agitation.

2) Alsace and Lorraine.

3) Anticlericalism.

The first is a question of failing to deal drastically enough with the Communists. The Premier is criticized for organizing vast forces of police to curb the turbulent Bolshies and failing to achieve anything thereby. M. Briand, hoped the critics, would be more firm.

The other two questions are of a religious nature. A Chamber of Deputies Commission, formed to study means of transferring the administration of Alsace and Lorraine (TIME, Sept. 8) from Strasbourg to Paris and thereby ending the power of the clergy in matters of education, was rudely deserted by Alsace-Lorraine members because, as a spokesman put it, the other Deputies were so ignorant of conditions in those provinces and because they would listen neither to advice nor to reasoning. The action of the Alsace-Lorraine Deputies caused lively comment in the corridors of the Chamber; it was evident that they had many friends.

Concerning anticlericalism in general, a question over which the whole of France is split, matters became graver when the Commission on Foreign Affairs protested because it had not been consulted by the Chamber's Finance Commission about the suppression of credits for the Embassy at the Vatican. On the advice of M. Louis Loucheur, who favors France maintaining diplomatic relations with the Pope, the commission decided to close discussion, preferring to wait until the question should come before the Chamber when everybody would express himself publicly on his own responsibility.