Patience, Patience, Patience

"France is more revolutionary now than on the eve of the 1789 revolution. The economic crisis is becoming worse, and the peasants especially are being hit.

"The Fascists are forming an army for civil war. They must be dissolved!"

With a red-hot speech of which this was the climax beefy Edouard Daladier challenged the leadership of beefier Edouard Herriot last week at the annual caucus of France's great balance-of-power party, the Radical Socialists.

M. Daladier and his so-called "Young Turk's" of Socialist and Communist leanings are out this year to stampede their party and the Government into strong-arm anti-Fascist measures. They threaten that unless French Fascist Leader Colonel Franc,ois de La Rocque and his "Cross of Fire" movement are suppressed the Young Turks will organize fighting squads with bases in the "Red Zones" of Paris where Communists are reported already to have caches of arms.

It was M. Herriot's task last week to win re-election as Party Leader with nothing to offer but his traditional platform of Patience. Such a keynote can be sounded with effect only by a great orator and Edouard Herriot is of the greatest. When Orator Herriot had done with PATIENCE it glowed mellow and desired by all. Without a dissenting voice he was re-elected Leader for the fourth consecutive year by acclamation.

Meanwhile the Party agreed to leave the suppression of the Fascists to their Deputies in Parliament which reconvenes next month. To this triumph of PATIENCE no small contribution was made by Fascist de La Rocque himself last week. In a letter to Pierre Laval which was made public at the crucial moment, the No. 1 French Fascist declared: "We have no other intention than to defend the Republic. We will obey the new laws and hold our demonstrations on private property."

The new laws, hastily decreed by Premier Laval as his Contribution to PATIENCE a few days earlier, deprive Frenchmen of the right to carry firearms without a permit and aim, somewhat feebly, to end the recent series of "surprise Fascist mobilizations" by making prior notice and police consent necessary for public assemblies. Since the Fascists can easily find private property on which to meet and a hay-wagon from which Leader de La Rocque likes to speak (see cut, p. 26), Paris' Fascist Echo de Paris could clarion last week: "The mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse-- the decree laws. This formality does not present many difficulties. How is the private citizen going to be prevented from receiving in his home, in his garden or in his fields a dozen, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 guests?

"What legislator would dare strike this blow against property rights? In what adventure would a truly Republican government become involved which dared violate the most essential liberty of all!"

Significance: Premier Laval was left free to continue his difficult "Honest Broker" activities between Fascist Italy and Parliamentary Britain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.