Sacred Union Out

The sooty raven of hard luck creaked again, last week, at poor Edouard Herriot. His toboggan from power has been likened to that of David Lloyd George. Both men are time servers, gambling on the turn of the mob. The undoing of M. Herriot began when he dared to duel politically for the Prime Ministry of France (TIME, July 26, 1926), with wily Aristide Briand, who has held that office nine times. When Briand and the mob were done with Edouard Herriot he had been turned out of the Prime Ministry, after an incumbency of two days, and skinned out of his previous lucrative post as President (Speaker) of the Chamber of Deputies. Since then he has eaten humble crow by accepting the portfolio of Public Instruction and Fine Arts in the present Cabinet of Sacred Union, wherein Raymond Poincare is Prime Minister and Aristide Briand retains his pet post of Foreign Minister. Thus it came about that Edouard Herriot had to go out to Pons, last week, as Minister of Fine Arts, and there dedicate a statue of such controversial and inflammatory sort that it plunged him headlong into the gummiest kind of political mess.

The Bishop of La Rochelle had denounced the erection of this monument as "a public sin." Reason: the statue represented the most famed and also infamous son of Pons, the late Prime Minister Justin Louis Emile Combes 1903-1905. Due to his efforts the Roman Catholic Church was disestablished in France, and ever since Combes has been a hero to the parties of the Left and to the Clericals a dastard. As Edouard Herriot prepared to pull the unveiling cord, he was conscious that a crowd by no means wholly friendly surged around him. Raising his deep timbred voice in sonorous appeal the Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts cried: "After a lifetime of bitter struggle, Emile Combes declared: 'I never expect justice from my adversaries!' May this monument assuage those bitter words. May it be said that the enemies of Emile Combes did not pursue their grudge beyond his grave!"

Seemingly the Minister's words and his fine, lionesque presence had their effect. The crowd quieted. After pulling the cord, M. Herriot departed amid an escort of police. But before the cavalcade was out of sight some 20 youths raggedly clad surrounded the statue, and one with a sledge hammer knocked off the nose and ears and smashed the face in.

At such moments policemen should be calm. One of the Pons policemen, said to be a relative of Emile Combes, lost his head utterly. Drawing his revolver he trained it on the clerical iconoclast with the sledge hammer, pulled trigger, shot the youth dead. Cooler policemen rounded up the tattered mob men and then discovered to their horror that they were disguised Royalist followers of famed Leon Daudet, son of the great novelist Alphonse Daudet, stubborn and wrongheaded champion of Roman Catholicism and the Royal House of France. The Pope has excommunicated Leon Daudet and his followers (TIME, April 9). Their cause is irretrievably lost on all counts; but still they struggle quixotically on--and are covertly approved and supported by many a rich and Roman Catholic royalist.

A smashed statue and a murder were only the prelude to Edouard Herriot's hard luck of the week. Passions flamed so high that Edouard Daladier the Leader of M. Herriot's party (Radical) was moved to intemperately declare at Pons that after this the Minister of Education and Fine Arts could not and would not support Prime Minister Poincare's recent budgetary law (TIME, Oct. 29) restoring certain rights and privileges to French clerical orders. Unfortunately poor Minister Herriot had already pledged his support to the Prime Minister. The whole Sacred Union Cabinet considered the measure vital. But for that cursed statue the Radicals would not have been aroused over the clerical laws.

Followed several of the longest, gravest and finally most acrimonious sessions ever held by the Sacred Union Cabinet.

Finally Luckless Minister Herriot had to take the revised measure over to a plenary conference of his own party chiefs in an effort to persuade them to let him support the bill and remain in the Cabinet. When he arrived his inter-party rival Joseph Caillaux was leading a shout of "down with the sacred union cabinet!''

Harmony was impossible among the Radicals. So the next day Minister Herriot and three Radical ministers resigned from the Sacred Union Cabinet.

Prime Minister Raymond Poincare acted quickly. He had made a promise in 1926 and he kept it now. He and the remaining members of the Sacred Union Cabinet resigned. The letter of Prime Minister Poincare to President Doumergue said: "With the intent of continuing my collaboration, which I believe useful for the public good, I have long said to all members of the Cabinet that if one of them withdrew I would feel obliged to present our collective resignation. I have therefore the honor to give it to you."

Frenchmen felt certain that Raymond Poincare would organize another Sacred Union Cabinet, with or without benefit of Radicals.