Guillotine Dawn No. 2

When a Frenchman's well-worn leather purse is threatened his thoughts turn forcibly to Justice, he begins to talk louder & louder, may end by erupting with other Frenchmen into unseemly acts. Last week 10,000 solid citizens from various parts of France, members of the National Federation of Taxpayers, met in Paris, clamored for Justice until suddenly, shouting "On to the Chamber!", they started a rush for the Chamber of Deputies, grappled with Paris police, had to be beaten back by ornate cavalry of the Garde Republicaine.

"We will not pay higher taxes!" boomed a fervent spokesman for the prosperous, bourgeois mobsters. "Let the State abandon its multiple functions!* Taxes must be lowered, not raised. If need be let the State raise money by a lottery!"

President Albert Lebrun of France was up most of the night, before the riot because the Cabinet of that stylish Paris Lawyer Maitre Paul-Boncour was falling --on the issue of this year's budget which French Deputies have threshed with increasing futility for two weeks (TIME, Jan. 30). Final debate dragged through 22 hours. When famed Papa Henri Cheron, stubborn old Norman Finance Minister, demanded an "absolute [balanced] budget" at the cost of drastic tax uppings and salary slashes, he was met by arguments for what was called a "relative budget."

Deputy Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist Party whose votes had been vital in keeping the Paul-Boncour Cabinet in power, attacked Papa Cheron thus: "In a crisis like this all estimates need to be modified from one minute to the next. . . . The pursuit of a rigorous balance is the pursuit of a mirage. . . . If the violence of the remedy aggravates the ill, what will become of your rigid balance? There is nothing to do but approach a balance, and certainly meanwhile one must borrow."

Such reasoning had so obvious an appeal to the Chamber that Premier Paul-Boncour threw overboard some of Papa Cheron's most onerous taxes and economies. For a time the Cabinet seemed to have been saved. It won a vote of confidence 348 to 243. The Chamber voted 400 to 181 to sit all night and began to vote sections of the budget, voted 65 of the 150 sections. Suddenly up popped an item of 5% reduction in the pay of civil servants. Socialist objections touched off pandemonium. "My heart is torn," cried stringy-haired Socialist Blum, "but I am unable to vote with my friends!" In an incoherent scramble all sorts of Deputies, eager to curry favor with civil service constituents, followed the Socialist bolt. The Paul-Boncour Cabinet fell at 6 a. m. by a vote of 193 to 390, "guillotined at dawn" like the last (Herriot) Cabinet (TIME, Dec. 26). The Ministers promptly delivered their resignations at the Elysee Palace to President Lebrun.

Elected last May the present Chamber has patently not "found itself." Its Deputies are so assorted that they should (French wiseacres agree) support a Cabinet of the moderate Left. But two such Cabinets have been capriciously kicked out at moments of national crisis. Last week President Albert Lebrun wondered with profound puzzlement whom to pick as the next premier.

"Draft Doumergue!" urged many of the President's advisers. Seemingly, popular ex-President Gaston ("Gastounet") Doumergue was not unwilling to be drafted. Writing coyly from retirement in L'lntransigeant last week he said: "I repeat only what I hear repeated by good folk as they labor in our countryside. . . . Our good people believe--and they are right--that there is a sufficient number of talented men in Parliament to carry the nation through the present, and even through more difficult times. But these talented men must first come to an understanding."

With the ex-President available, in case France's crisis should become so grave as to demand formation of a "National Government" above party, President Lebrun tentatively picked another politician of the moderate Left, told pugnacious Edouard Deladier, son of a baker, once protege of Edouard Herriot and War Minister, under Paul-Boncour, to try to form a Cabinet.

* By this euphemism the National Federated Taxpayers mean: "Let the State stop dole payments."

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