Peasants; Dodge; Arabs

With the franc high & dry on the gold standard, French costs have risen so high that French goods in quantity cannot now compete in the world market. Premier Flandin's solution is to say that France is a quality-producer (TIME, Feb. 4). France's solution is to produce less. Last week there were nearly half a million Frenchmen on relief (alltime high), many times that number living out of the sacred family stocking. Also last week the leader of the Peasant Front, Henry Dorgeres, was telling the farmers of Normandy and Brittany:

''You must follow us and use every weapon. We shall ask mainly a taxpayers' strike and withdrawal of money from State savings banks. We shall have to go very far--so far that we will have to face worse things than prison. We must take our guns and fire into the mass."

Irritable, stubble-haired Finance Minister Louis Germain-Martin's reply to this was to ask for summary legal action against M. Dorgeres for "impairing the credit of France."

Meanwhile Premier Flandin last week offered the unemployed of France a relief dodge based on the U. S. New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps. If the Chamber of Deputies supplies the funds, Flandin's CCC camps will be set up in 13 of France's 90 departments to put French unemployed to work at reforestation and roadbuilding, the men to get food, lodging, clothes and a wine ration, their families to get their wage.

To help the folks at home, France has tried to squeeze the last sou out of its colonies. Such subject races as the Tahitians squeeze with docility. Not so the Arabs of French African Tunisia and Algeria. Nearly two years ago Tunisia's Resident General Marcel Peyrouton warned: "If Tunisia is to be saved, France must help. The protectorate must have the power to export wines, wheat and oils. . . . If we lose Tunisia our whole establishment in North Africa will be imperiled."

Last week in the port of Algiers 3,000 Arabs backed up Resident General Peyrouton by attacking the tanker Bacchus, breaking her portholes, throwing 60 barrels of wine and a loading crane into the harbor. Day before 200 miles to the west at Mostaganem, Algeria, 300 stoned the City Hall. From Paris last week Minister of the Interior Marcel Regnier, glad for a holiday junket away from France's internal problems, set out for Algeria "to investigate the situation."

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