"Abominable Triumph"

(See front cover)

So to contrive that Bolshevik Russia and Republican France should somehow be linked in close mutual accord has become a ruling passion with the wealthy No. 1 Socialist of France, that exquisitely cultivated Jew and famed rabble-rouser, M. Leon Blum. From rostrums as various as the curbstone of a Paris slum and the tribune of the Chamber, long-nosed, stringy-haired M. Blum has clarioned: "Socialism is my religion!" Last week he lay in bandages, "put to bed for his religion" by Royalist youths, who thus brazenly described the outrageous beating they gave Socialist Blum when his appearance as a bystander at a Royalist funeral procession incensed them (TIME, Feb. 24). This attack--and enemies of Leon Blum charged he was not really hurt but is dramatically "exploiting a few scratches"-- threatens to figure largely in the coming French Chamber and Senate elections for which Parliament will adjourn Friday, March 13.

Last week, although Blum's body had been bedded, the spirit of Blum was the strongest personal force in the Chamber of Deputies, thrusting for ratification of a military pact of mutual assistance between Russia and France. In fact Socialist Blum was so much in the hair of Premier Albert Sarraut that the Paris topical weekly Aux Ecoutes cartooned the Premier as a dog covered with fleas, each flea having the face of Leon Blum (see cut, p. 19). Exclaimed Aux Ecoutes, accurately reflecting the dilemma in which French politicians found themselves last week: "Abominable though the Soviet regime is--so abominable that only the Hitler regime appears equally abominable--we think the pact must be ratified. ... In 1914, but for our alliance with Russia, we should have been vanquished."

"Dirty Dog." Nineteen months old was the still unratified Franco-Soviet Pact last week, but its every aspect became freshly vivid in one of the Chamber of Deputies' stormiest fortnights of debate before the issue narrowed to a vote.

The pact dates from the "Save-France Cabinet" formed after the Stavisky bloodshed by beloved onetime President Gaston ("Papa Gastounet") Doumergue. Suddenly recalled by duty from retirement to the dirty job of Premier, "Papa" Doumergue chose as his Foreign Minister, venerable Louis Barthou, who proceeded to surprise all Europe by showing even more energy than such young sprigs as Anthony Eden.

It was M. Barthou's theory that to try to please everyone was nonsense and that the enemy of France is always going to be Germany. Launching swift efforts to strengthen old French alliances against the Reich and forge new ones, venerable but vivacious Louis Barthou had a glorious time dashing from capital to capital. In Geneva he sat down with Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovitch Litvinoff and negotiated the terms of an Eastern Pact of Mutual Assistance between France and Russia to which Germany and Poland were invited to adhere (TIME, Sept. 24, 1934) The pact amounted to an agreement that, if any Eastern European State burst out of its frontiers, the others would join in squelching it. Adolf Hitler refused to have anything to do with such a pact, and Berlin's influence in Warsaw made Poland turn it down.

Every German still sees the pact as tending to chain Germany within her frontiers. It is a grim fact that most Frenchmen believe Nazi secret agents were behind the Mauser pistol which, in the hands of a Macedonian terrorist at Marseille, killed not only France's royal ally King Alexander of Yugoslavia but also the maker of pacts against Germany, old Louis Barthou (TIME, Oct. 15, 1934).

The Marseille killings, as if they had occurred only yesterday, boiled up afresh in the current French Chamber debate. Police precautions at Marseille were scandalously lax, and officially to blame was the then Minister of Interior who is now Premier Albert Sarraut. The brand new scandal of the Royalist attack in the open streets of Paris on No. 1 Socialist Blum was dextrously flung at the stodgy Premier by ebullient Deputy Henry Franklin-Bouillon of the Right, who roared: "You are head of the Government which claims to have assured order in the streets, but don't forget that you are also responsible for what happened at Marseille!"

Thus taunted. Premier Sarraut utterly lost his head and flung back at M. Franklin-Bouillon the unparliamentary epithet, "Salami! Salaud!"--i. e., "You dirty dog!" As the Chamber became a bedlam of confused shouts, the Right seemed to forget that it backed M. Barthou at the time of the Franco-Soviet Pact's creation, and its present defender Premier Sarraut of the Left was reviled with cries of "Kerensky! You are heading France for Bolshevism!" Tired of being screamed at, the Premier, who is a misnamed Radical-Socialist of the moderate Left, sharply demanded a snap vote of confidence and to him rallied the Socialists of bedded Leon Blum plus their Communist allies.

Premier Sarraut won "confidence" by the handsome count of 380-to-151 and immediately ducked out of the Chamber. In ducked his parliamentary secretary M. Jean Zay to explain that M. Sarraut had no recollection of what he had shouted at Deputy Franklin-Bouillon and certainly did not recall having uttered the epithet "salaud." Huffed & puffed Orator Franklin-Bouillon, "Well! I consider that my honor has been satisfied."

Double Cross? After his assassination, Louis Barthou was succeeded as French Foreign Minister by dextrous Pierre Laval, whose policy of trying to be friends with everyone included a call in Moscow upon Comrade Litvinoff fortnight after the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact had been hastily signed at Paris. This furtive attitude the French Foreign Office maintained so long as Pierre Laval remained Premier, the Pact lying on the shelf unratified while he wrestled with the Ethiopian Crisis (TIME, June 8 et seq.). Last week the French suspicions which have kept the treaty on the shelf were explosively aired in the Chamber, and this week they are to detonate in the French Senate.

A Frenchman who ought to know much about Moscow's Comintern is Deputy Jacques Doriot, mayor of Paris' reddest district, St. Denis. Fiery Comrade Doriot has just been expelled from Communist ranks because of a doctrinaire Marxist squabble, and last week he itched to spill the Soviet beans. Cried Deputy Doriot: "Although the Government run by Stalin assures France that Russia is supporting this pact to promote universal peace, Stalin at the same time, as Secretary of the Communist Party, tells the World Proletariat that this treaty will lead to another war and that this war will be the prelude to World Revolution!

"Just a few years ago," continued Deputy Doriot, ''the Communist leaders of Russia who now profess to be making this pact as defenders of the existing order in Europe were encouraging the Communists of Germany to denounce the Treaty of Versailles as an instrument of Capitalist exploitation. German National Socialism has inflicted a grave defeat on Communism. Therefore the Soviets, to make up for this setback, are now trying to utilize the Capitalist powers by means of this treaty against Germany--for Naziism is the fundamental enemy of Bolshevism!"

Thus spoke an ousted Communist who is frankly sore at Stalin. In good standing with Moscow is earnest French Communist Deputy Gabriel Peri. His speech last week was not brilliant, but it was candid to the point of Communist stupidity. "I hold firmly," roared Red Peri, "to the [Communist Party] decisions which have laid down that in case of war our duty will be to use the crisis which arises out of the conflict to hasten the fall of Capitalistic governments!"

Serpentine Twist, After such spilling of Red beans the dilemma of the French Parliament, to ratify or not to ratify its pact with the Soviet Government, became an issue which made the Chamber and its lobbies fairly seethe as Deputies racked their brains, each trying to decide whether he personally would win more or less votes from his constituents next April by voting for or against ratification of the pact.

Pudgy Premier Sarraut and his bean-pole of a Foreign Minister Pierre Etienne Flandin supplied little real leadership. Adolf Hitler had them anxiously guessing last week as the German Government's official press bureau pumped Nazi news-organs full of hints that, if the Franco-Soviet Pact was ratified, Germany would consider it a violation of the Locarno Pact.

Although tarnished by the years, the Locarno Pact is still a binding British-French-German-Italian-Belgian mutual guarantee to preserve, protect and defend both France and Germanv from aggression by the other. Most French legal experts last week considered it "sheer impudence" for Germans to threaten to tear up Locarno as a "scrap of paper" because they happen not to like the new Pact.

Obviously with a feeling in the pit of his stomach, Foreign Minister Flandin sought to appease the Wilhelmstrasse by offering to submit the Franco-Soviet Pact to The Hague Court to discover whether it violates the Locarno Pact. In the Chamber he urged ratification halfheartedly, almost apologetically. Bleating that the object of the Pact is "not to encircle Germany," he added with a French twist, "It is only the spirit of aggression which is to be encircled by this pact! It has been signed in the absence of Germany with regret for her absence and in the hope of her eventual adherence. France has never ceased to desire to draw Germany into the general work of guaranteeing peace. Our most ardent wish is to see the Reich retake her place at Geneva on a footing of absolute equality as a member of the League of Nations."

Blum for Premier? To Leon Blum there was never any question but that the Franco-Soviet Pact must be ratified--even with the dangers of touching off hair-trigger Nazis, incurring possible rupture of the Locarno Pact, and entering the bear-like embrace of Bolshevik Russians. His Socialist spirit is fixed with religious fanaticism; he hates Nazis as they can only be hated by one who is a Socialist, a Frenchman and a Jew; and he hopes with something like passionate prophecy that French voters next April will for the first time give French Socialism a clear mandate to form a Cabinet. Such a result at the polls might backfire into a French Fascist coup d'etat, but bandaged and prostrate Leon Blum was not worrying about that. To a question popped at him over the sheets last week he answered eagerly, "After the elections, with the approval of my party, I should willingly undertake the task of forming a Cabinet!" "

As far as I am concerned, I am a French Jew and I can conscientiously say that I am a good Frenchman." Leon Blum has written in his exceedingly painstaking Marxist style. "I find that my ancestors were Alsatians, which means that they were French. I was brought up as a Frenchman. I attended French schools, my friends were French, I have held official positions. ... I speak French perfectly and without a trace of foreign accent; even my facial features are free of particularly conspicuous racial traits. I am entitled to consider myself assimilated, and I feel sure that there is no element, however subtle, of the French spirit, French honor or French culture which is alien to me. Yet, though I feel myself to be genuinely French, I do, at the same time, feel that I am a Jew. ... I have always known that a Jew can be nothing but a Jew."

This emphatic Jewishness makes the No. 1 French Socialist thoroughly at home in Moscow, where it is Stalin's boast that Communism is equally hospitable to Jews, Gentiles, Moslems, Buddhists and persons of all colors. Yet M. Blum draws the distinction that, although he is a Socialist and his French henchmen are locked in a "united front" with the Communists, he is not a Communist.

Blum's family were rich silk merchants. In a youthful volume, Du Mariage, he urged the Government to recognize that "man is polygamous" and adapt French law more fully to this circumstance. After penning sentimental poems, then literary and artistic criticism, and becoming some-what preciously overeducated, Leon Blum saw these things were getting him nowhere, became a lawyer and began regularly attending Europe's annual conferences of the Second (Socialist) International. Among seedy and impoverished Socialist delegates the brilliant and wealthy young French Jew began to group around himself in something like intellectual hero-worship what has gradually become the Socialist bloc of some 100 Deputies who now not only follow him in the Chamber but even ape him. When he claps his hands they all clap their hands; when he is amused they are all amused ; when Leon Blum stalks to the tribune to hurl tor rents of sarcasm and scathing innuendo at the Cabinet -- any Cabinet -- they are all ecstatic, then uproarious with cheers. Temperamentally a destructive critic, Socialist Blum, who has refused numerous invitations to enter the French Cabinet of the moment, is credited with having been indispensable to bringing about the fall of several of his country's recent Cabinets.

Chuckle in Bandages. Should ballots make Leon Blum Premier and bullets not turn him out of office,*he and his Socialist Party are pledged first gradually to transform the "Capitalist society" of France into a "Collectivist society." Next they would strive to create for the world an international currency of constant and unfluctuating value with international bonds paying a modest rate of interest secured by all the world's governments. The lucrative armament industry would be made a State monopoly and its profits secured in toto by the State.

Since Messieurs les Ronds-de-Cuir ("Gentlemen of the Leather Pads," functionaries of the French State who sit on leather pads) are the class of voters perhaps most devoted to M. Blum, they would expect to get even better jobs and more of them in the Socialist Bureaucracy his new French deal would create. With approval Orator Blum has hailed what he calls the "bold grandeur" of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "sound ideas."

In an unguarded speech which has cost Leon Blum some votes and perhaps won him others, the No. 1 French Socialist pledged that the Republic's first Socialist Cabinet will give France a vacance de legalite or "lapse from legality" resembling the NRA and AAA honeymoons.

To a great many Frenchmen the person and program of Leon Blum are so "abominable" that they can think of no other in France equally abominable. Nevertheless the "popular Front" of the Radical Socialists, the Socialists and the Communists last week finally steamrollered through the Chamber of Deputies the Franco-Soviet Pact by a triumphant majority of 353-to-164. Among his bandages Jew Leon Blum chuckled as this harsh stroke immediately moved Nazi Adolf Hitler to make the most fawning and friendly gestures he has ever made toward France (see p. 21).

London Loan. Once more gathering over France like an angry storm cloud is the issue of whether the franc must soon be devaluated. Because thrifty French citizens are about to vote, Deputies dare not up taxes now. Yet the Sarraut Cabinet cannot spend the cheers of its Communist, Socialist and assorted Left supporters. Therefore it has turned unobtrusively around to borrow $200,000,000 in London from a private syndicate headed by Lazard Brothers & Co.--a significant name.

London's Banking Brothers Lazard are of the same international fiscal family as Lazard Freres of Paris. Normally French Communists and Socialists are accustomed to raise some of their loudest screams against the Regents of the Bank of France as the country's "real rulers and merciless exploiters"--and one of the Lazard partners is a Regent. Thus in France it was as if in Washington on the eve of an election President Roosevelt should turn to a potent private Wall Street firm for a $200,000,000 loan to which strings could be attached. In Paris the Communist Deputies and the Socialist cohorts of Leon Blum might have been expected to shriek "Lazard Money!" Instead they kept mouse-mum.

To many observers the French economic spiral seemed to be scraping such anxious lows this week that once the election is out of the way--or even sooner--the shot-in-the-arm of "devaluation" may have to be resorted to. Rather than debate this crucial issue last week the highly-sexed French Chamber found time to work up a lather of excitement over "Hitler's Secret Loves" (see p. 21).

Into the teeth of Frenchmen who call rising Leon Blum "abominable"' his friends never tire of flinging the words with which France's late, great Wartime President Raymond Poincare once greeted him when Deputy Blum re-entered the Chamber after a long absence. "You are very welcome here, Monsieur," said Raymond Poincare, himself deeply learned and broadly cultured. "We have need of your light and your council, M. Blum. It is well for France that men like you should sit in the Chamber."

*In a passionate editorial last year Royalist Editor Charles Maurras proclaimed: "I make myself personally responsible for the assassination of Blum!" (TIME, Dec. 16).

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