Confiture de Poincare

Statesmen, be they never so great, must bow before the electorate--the sovereign mob--and thus, last week, so great a statesman as Premier Raymond Poincare, Wartime President of France, journeyed out to Bar-le-Duc and made before constituents his annual kotow. . . . He told them with a little unguent flattery that they and the electorate at large have returned such excellent deputies and senators that his own task--that of restoring financial and political stability to France out of chaos within ten months--has been comparatively simple. (A wink went round, for most of the audience know well how very great is the achievement of M. Raymond Poincare). He continued: "You are aware that the budget for 1928 is about to be finally presented for Parliamentary approval. ... It will depend upon the two chambers whether the results of ten months of labor are to be consolidated in the budget, or whether all the work which we have accomplished will be rendered useless. . . . Should that occur we will fall back again into the abyss from which we have climbed,* and we will never be able to climb out a second time. . . ."

Bainville Interprets. Though the Premier went on to speak largely of budgetary and other purely national matters, he made one closely guarded statement which attracted large attention because it was expanded and interpreted next day by a close personal friend of M. Poincare, pontifical Editor Jacques Bainville of La Liberte. The Premier said: "The reserves of foreign currency which have been accumulated by the Treasury place us in a position to meet our foreign liabilities so that we will not have to accept blindly for a long period, engagements which we would not be sure ; about being able to keep, or to submit to any constraint from abroad."

Editor Bainville declared positively next day, that these words are an expression of Premier Poincares determination to pay the U. S. $409,000,000 which will be due some months hence, upon U. S. Army stocks purchased by France in 1919. Editor Bainville, a discreet mouthpiece, barely hinted that if Parliament can be induced to make this payment, M. Poincare will next attempt to lead the deputies and Senators by easy stages down the hard road of general debt repayment to the U. S.

Observers, cogitating the news from Bar-le-Duc last week, deemed the speech of Premier Poincare as surely and sweetly blended as Confiture de Bar-le-Duc, famed immemorial jam, exported hugely from the town to mingle on crackers with the cheeses of the world.

*From a national panic with the franc at 50 to the dollar, back to present tranquility with the franc at 25 (TIME, Aug. 2 to Feb. 7).