"Arise and Slash!"

(See front cover)

In toppling European monarchs off their thrones, inspiring oppressed peoples to rebel, and in twisting world public opinion around until it cried for Democracy there has never been anything like the original French Revolution. Last week in many lands grave heads were wondering what plain Jean Frenchman, a million strong, may now be starting with his spontaneous and uncontrolled strikes (TIME, June 8, et seq.), his gay singing of Red songs in the anxious streets of Paris, his candid nose-thumbing, half amused and half contemptuous, at new Premier Blum of the Third Republic.

Somewhat over one million French proletarians continued on strike as last week opened, despite frantic efforts by Socialist Blum to give them all they said they wanted and get them back to work. Even the French Communist Party, which at first had encouraged and sought to foment strikes, grew appalled by the extent to which they had got beyond what anyone could imagine was Communist Party control. In a speech which the Socialist Premier himself might have made, apple-cheeked Maurice Thorez, head man of French Communism, sought to stem the spontaneous, nationwide strikes, declared: "Strikers must know how to end their strike. They must even know how to consent to a compromise so as not to lose any of their force and especially so as not to facilitate any campaign of reaction."

Unheeding, 8,000 Paris slaughterhouse employes walked out. Clerks of all Paris' great department stores continued their "stayin strikes." The world-famed dressmaking houses had to close. Guests made their own beds in hostelries as various as the ultra-conservative Grand Hotel and the swanksters' Hotel Georges V. Outside Paris, for every strike settled when the week opened, another was declared. French trade union leaders were frantic, their supposed authority flouted and slipping everywhere.

Most vexed was paunchy old Leon Jouhaux, longtime French trade union superboss. On paper his Confederation Generale du Travail (General Labor Confederation) "represents without political leanings all workers aware of the struggle to make final the distinction between the employer and his employes," to quote its grandiose Charter. Strictly speaking, "Papa" Jouhaux had been supposed to represent the great bulk of employes in French large-scale industry. Soon after the new Cabinet took office fortnight ago he met French employers' representatives at a conference presided over by nervous Premier Blum, signed a pact promising to end the nationwide strikes in return for the granting of virtually all demands known to have been made by strikers. Boomed joyous Jouhaux as his fat fingers signed, "not merely a success but the greatest victory for workers which the history of trade unions has ever recorded!"

By last week this boast had proved empty. It was clear that the French proletariat were not being led by "Papa" Jouhaux and he petulantly left Paris. Arriving in Geneva, M. Jouhaux sought to bury his chagrin in the stodgy duties of a delegate to the annual session of the League of Nations affiliated International Labor Organization. At once he found himself bickering with the French employers' Geneva representative and with Senator Justin Godart who represented Premier Blum. After a violent, three-cornered quarrel about what was supposed to have been agreed in Paris, pontifical Leon Jouhaux refused to bicker further, sealed his heavy lips with the remark, "Here in Geneva is not the place to settle this."

There was no one place but instead there were something like 1,500 places in which French employes were busy at that moment imposing moderate but inflexible demands upon individual employers, most of whom knuckled under. One who did not, and he seemed to be the only exception in all France, was the spunky owner of a cafe in Versailles. Rather than yield to his waiters he sought to shoo them out of his place by firing his revolver, was promptly arrested.

The "stayin strikes" and "folded arms strikes" which continued to make Jean Frenchman idle by the million were strictly against French law, but new Premier Blum showed his nervousness last week and strengthened the strikers' hands (much to his own chagrin) by announcing that Minister of Interior Roger Salengro would not instruct French police to oust employes from the property of their employers. In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies 16 days after stayin strikes had become general, Leon Blum wailed, "Do you want me to use the police and then the Army and risk provoking a repetition of the days of June?"

Since the new Premier is voluminously read and prone to pad his speeches with abstruse allusions, no one knew precisely which "days of June" he feared might return. Possibly the June of 1848 in which proletarian strife at Paris was put down by whiffs of grapeshot and opened the way for the brief Second Empire under Louis Napoleon.

"Give them what they want!" In the Chamber the only policy of the Blum Cabinet remained, "Give them what they want!'' and in fact last week Le Peuple Souverain of France were advancing without visible national leadership in broad proletarian gains which French Capital and its representatives had no stomach to oppose. While Communists sought to coax the ending of strikes, while Fascists sought to flatter the workers by editorials in which their orderliness and the moderation of their demands were praised, steadily day by day Le Peuple Souverain saw one measure after another to their liking hastily passed by the Chamber of Deputies.

Five major bills were voted by the Chamber in two exhausting sessions by such colossal majorities as 528-to-7 and 563-to-1. A stand was made by Capital against Labor only on the most drastic measure, that intended to make 40 hours the maximum working week hereafter in French industry. Standard in France since 1919 has been the 48-hour week. The 40-hour week passed the Chamber last week 385-to-175, went to the Senate along with the four other bills which seek to compel two-week vacations with pay for all French workers, collective labor contracts to protect their rights, higher wages and reduction of some taxes paid by War veterans.

Since the French Senate consists mostly of wealthy greybeards, their rage at being sent five such bills by the Chamber of Deputies showed itself in rudeness to whomever they could snub. Normally a Premier entering the Senate through its lobby is handshaken by dozens of greybeards. Last week Senators pointedly cut M. Blum, greeted in silence his appeals to pass the bills, refused so much as to debate them until the following week.

Soon French workers singing the Internationale were sedately parading around with figures of capitalists whom they had hanged in effigy and a great scare shot through bourgeois Frenchmen, including their spat-wearing new Premier who is a Socialist by party but no revolutionist at heart. In his new fear Premier Blum finally announced that, although French police would not arrest occupiers of factories, they would suppress any disorder in the streets. That night jumpy Socialist Salengro, Minister of Interior, called to Paris steel-helmeted gardes mobiles with rifles in their hands, bade them keep gimlet eyes on his own Socialist followers and the Communists in the radical "Red Ring" districts around Paris.

This was so definitely risky, so likely to turn the workers against the Jewish and Socialist Premier, that he hastily announced that "foreign agents provocateurs" were fomenting strikes. He cited one Greek agitator, hinted strongly that others were Nazis who had slipped in from Germany.

"Collaborate With England!" Prone is Leon Blum to surround himself with yes-men and of these the most modest is Radical Socialist Yvon Delbos. When offered the Foreign Ministry he cried, "Oh, that is far too great an office for me!" and last week was frankly floundering at the Quai d'Orsay. Since the new Premier, too, has no experience in foreign affairs, M. Blum and M. Delbos hit on the idea of calling to Paris last week all the principal European envoys of France, to ask each of them how things were in the country to which he is accredited.

Sardonic Alexis Leger, permanent Undersecretary and for long years actual boss of the French Foreign Ministry, permitted this comedy to unroll, with Blum and Delbos at times physically laying their heads together last week with such Radical Socialist colleagues as gruff, bald Edouard Daladier, Minister of Defense and famed friend of "The Red Marquise". Meanwhile the brilliant London counterpart of M. Leger, the British Foreign Office's saturnine Sir Robert Gilbert Vansittart, was said at the Quai d'Orsay to have sent over a proposal at which Blum, Delbos & Co. should have protested with every ounce of their Socialism but which in fact they received quietly. This, according to the Quai, was nothing less than a dry little suggestion that Fascism had best be humored, Sanctions against Italy withdrawn, the League of Nations "reformed"--whatever that might prove to mean. In sources close to timid Yvon Delbos it was said, "His foreign policy seems to be to collaborate with England."

Devalue the Franc? Only matter except the wants of Le Peuple Souverain to engage Premier Blum actively last week was the question whether to unpeg the franc from gold. This had become something which almost every French political group--but not of course Le Peuple-- wanted done at once by some other group, so that the doers would get the blame, France the benefit.

French parties of the Right, champions of the gold franc so long as they were in power, last week were for scuttling the franc under an attractive new formula called "I'alignement des monnaies." In other words, the franc should again be cheapened in value and thus "aligned" with the cheapened pound and dollar.

In the Chamber and Senate last week, President Roosevelt was hailed as the Great Devaluator and benefactor of high finance by both forthright Deputy Paul Reynaud and insidious old Senator Joseph Caillaux, the same who was nearly shot in France for alleged treason with Germany during the War. "Monetary alignment will bring financial and monetary peace!" declared Senator Caillaux and with him chimed in a great former vice governor of the Bank of France, famed Professor Charles Rist. In the Chamber dynamic Devaluationist Reynaud hammered at M. Blum until the harassed Premier, who knows that soon the franc may be forced off gold anyhow, blurted: "But who dares bring in a bill for such a purpose?"

"I dare!" retorted M. Reynaud, but his offer was not taken up. The two Frenchmen in fact were soon displaying their respective eruditions in elliptical sallies of great culture, Premier Blum coming off the victor when he caught Devaluator Reynaud quoting from Montaigne when he had obviously meant to quote La Bruyere. This got matters nowhere but the franc was partly brought down from cultural clouds by new Finance Minister Vincent Auriol, a dumpily determined figure with a wagging forefinger in debate. Although not ten men in Europe know at any time what foxy German Reichsbank Director Dr. Hjalmar Schacht is doing with the mark, Minister Auriol made a fairly good impression by bellowing that he is NOT going to do the same with the franc. Mum and ready to obey the Finance Minister was the Bank of France's new Governor, mild M. Emile Labeyrue, who is as different as possible from domineering Schacht.

Friends of the new Finance Minister said that his mind seemed fastened last week on the notion that, since some 45 billion paper and gold francs are supposed to have been tucked away by French "hoarders," somehow or other the Blum Cabinet can get these billions back into circulation "partly by threats" and thus avoid the necessity for devaluation--all this sounding last week to most of the world's fiscal experts like gibberish clear to no one except M. Vincent Auriol.

Especially nervous was The City, London's fiscal nerve center. There British businessmen arriving from Paris last week told their colleagues that France was in a state of bloodless revolution; that a violent and possibly Fascist reaction might be just around the corner; that French Fascism might soon turn upon the Jews, beginning with Premier Blum. Although such reports as these duly perturbed The City, Gentile British financiers remarked that the chief alarmists seemed to be British Jews.

"Peace in Principle," Very slowly meanwhile in France last week Le Peuple Souverain in numberless factories and shops were making what they called peace "in principle" with their employers. In the big Paris hotels guests found that, although the hotel workers' strike had been settled in principle, the hotel workers were in most cases still playing cards or dominoes while exact details of the terms on which they fully intended to resume work were being drawn up, much as the families of a French bride and groom haggle over the marriage settlement while the engaged couple are only too anxious to wed.

Proprietors tore their hair, hissed at their staffs that "formidable damage" had been done to the French tourist trade, that the higher wages the staffs had won in principle would bring bankruptcies galore.

This precisely was the rub, not only in French hotels but throughout all French industry. Jean Frenchman, something like 1,000,000 strong, had won from his employer by the week's end wage increases of 7% to 15%, but how real was that victory?

Coming back from Geneva to Paris, as soon as he heard that "in principle" the great majority of strikes seemed to have been settled locally, Trade Union Boss Leon Jouhaux estimated that the wage increases, the shortening of the worker's week to 40 hours and the enforced improvement of working conditions must increase French production costs by at least 35%--and they are already among the highest in the world, most other countries having cheapened their prices by cheapening their money. Unquestionably this week Le Peuple Souverain thought they had won higher wages in gold standard francs, but every fiscal authority agreed that such wages simply cannot be paid in France, unless the franc is cheapened, devalued and Le Peuple Souverain thus duped. Alternatives would be drastic reorganization of French economy by a Bolshevist or Fascist dictatorship set up in the Third Republic.

In ferment today, the French people showed last week their typical moderation, dislike of smashing things and love of striking shrewd bargains. Thirty thousand strong workers of the great Renault motor car, aviation and armament works, having settled their strike, piled joyously onto flower bedecked Renault trucks, drove about singing "Arise and slash your thralldom chains! Let power be wielded by the Masses!" and other good bits from the Internationale. On the other hand 20,000 Citroen motor workers, having settled their strike, slipped off home by twos and threes, singing not at all and saying little.

"Pay Something Sometime." With so much mass individualism on his hands, Premier Blum could only grope rather than grapple. In his head this week, according to his entourage, buzzed the idea that he may be able to arrange something with U. S. Ambassador Jesse Isidor Straus. Not only the Ambassador but also the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, hopeful friends of the Premier recalled, is of the same race as Leon Blum. If France could raise a suitable Wall Street loan, much might be tided over. Last week on instructions from the Blum Cabinet, French Charge d'Affaires in Washington Jules Henry handed to Secretary of State Cordell Hull a most cordial note on the subject of France's war debt default to the U. S., now totaling $325,080,018.75.

While not offering to pay anything, since France's position this week is rather that of a hopeful seeker of further funds, M. Henry declared that his country wants to make it "absolutely plain" that it "hopes" in the "near future" to make "a settlement of its debt on bases acceptable to both countries."

This was by far the nearest thing to a suggestion that somebody might pay something someday which the U. S. has received in several years from any of the twelve nations, now in default by a grand total of $1,159,958,451.15. The note represented, according to Premier Blum's friends, the turning over of a new leaf, for he said last month, immediately before becoming Premier and perhaps before realizing on how hot a seat he was about to sit: "In France we have a tendency to think of the question of debts as effaced and abolished--that it has ceased to exist."

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