Cabinet Pick-Ups

In course of falling down and picking themselves up last week were three European. Cabinets:

In France where new millions of gold are piling up every day (see p. 16) and where the unemployment question does not exist, everything was going so well last week that the sudden fall of Prime Minister Andre Tardieu's Cabinet by the Senate could best be attributed to legislative pique.

Only thrice before has the French Senate felled a Cabinet: Herriot's in 1925, Briand's in 1913, Bourgeois' in 1896. Last week M. Tardieu faced MM. Les Senateurs backed by the prestige of a vote of confidence he had just won in the Chamber of Deputies by a majority of 64. The worst that could fairly be said against his Government was that he recently accepted the resignation of Minister of Justice Raoul Peret when it appeared that many years ago M. Peret was the attorney of M. Albert Oustric, French swindler jailed last month. Senator Rene Hery of the Democratic Left who led the attack on M. Tardieu adroitly made the most of this:

"We want no scapegoats," he cried. "This whole Cabinet must go. M. Tardieu has been compared with Napoleon. The comparison will be complete when he meets his Waterloo."

Just before the Senate voted seasoned observers thought that the French Cabinet would win through, for its members were not in fact tarred with the Oustric scandal. However go-getting "Napoleon Tardieu" has long seemed too much of "a young man in a hurry" to many an aged Senator. Wire-pulling forces worked against him. His Cabinet fell by the close vote of 147 to 139.

The rest of last week was spent by M. Le Senateur Louis Barthou, 68, one-time Prime Minister (1913), author of The Prodigious Lover, a biography of Richard Wagner, in discovering that he could not form a cabinet.

Since great Raymond Poincare had already refused President Gaston Doumergue's request that he again take the helm, no candidate seemed outstanding. Chances were even that M. Tardieu might again succeed himself as Prime Minister, as he did when his first Cabinet fell (TIME, March 10).

In Austria the Fascist party (Heim-wehr) of Prince Ernst Rudiger von Star-hernberg, trounced at the last election (TIME, Nov. 17), failed last week to make good their threat to seize the State by armed power. Amid perfect calm Dr. Otto Ender, one more henchman of Austrian boss-politician Monsignor Ignaz Seipel, assumed the Chancellorship. He did not reappoint sword-rattling Prince von Starhemberg to His Highness' former post of Minister of Interior, appointed no Fascist whatever.

The last two Austrian chancellors are in the new Cabinet: 1) Dr. Karl Vaugoin (Seipel disciple. Chancellor during October & November) as Minister of War; 2) Dr. Johann Schober (no Seipel disciple, creator of the Austrian Republic's efficient

State Police, Chancellor from October 1929 to October 1930 and once before: 1921-22) as Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister.

In Poland the new Prime Minister, Colonel Walery Slawek (TIME, Dec. 8), henchman of Marshal Josef Pilsudski, picked his Cabinet last week, popped the old Marshal back into the office from which he dictates to Poland, the War Office.

Nimble-witted August Zaleski was retained in his Foreign Office, a choice impossible to better; but there was one most ominous appointment.

Under whom has Poland's commerce and industry prospered exceedingly during the past five years? Who has held this helm steady amid the fantastic political gasconade of Marshal Pilsudski and his "pack of Colonels"? The name is Eugene Kwiatkowski, "Hoover of Poland."

Colonel Slawek terminated last week the five year regime of M. Kwiatkowski as Minister of Commerce & Industry, appointed as his successor one of Marshal Pilsudski's closest military cronies, Colonel Alexander Prystor.

The new Minister of Justice is notorious Czeslaw Michalowski, the prosecuting attorney who won Poland's last election for Dictator Pilsudski by obtaining batches of indictments which were used to herd Opposition candidates into jail in droves, thus silencing their campaign oratory.

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