"Liberal Regime"

Thirty-two new decree-laws, the most drastic in France since the War, were issued last week by Premier Edouard Daladier, explained over the radio by their author, new Finance Minister Paul Reynaud.

"I tell you without concealment and without evasion that it is a question of saving the country," said small, intense, terrier-like M. Reynaud. He explained that even if all Frenchmen now unemployed suddenly went back to work, this would raise industrial production in France only some 7%. According to M. Reynaud, it "must" be shot up 30 to 40% for "adequate" economic and military Rearmament.

This he proposed to get by forcing backward French employers to run their factories longer hours, which means forcing French workmen to work up to 50 hours per week in some cases, and M. Reynaud's decrees provided stern penalties for recalcitrant employers, employes, and for "agitators" fines, jail.

In Germany it is guns-instead-of-butter, but the French Finance Minister called last week for guns instead of public works, the dole or leaf raking. He cried: "A country which next year is going to spend 25 billions of francs for national defense cannot afford the luxury of great public works. Machine guns are more necessary today--alas--than stone fountains for villages." Paul Reynaud insisted that the 32 decrees stop just short of totalitarianism of either Left or Right, preserve in economics a "Liberal Regime" as he called it on the radio. No. 1 Trade Union Boss Leon Jouhaux promptly indicated a feeling that such measures probably are today the sole means of making France strong enough to hold her ground in Europe. Cried Boss Jouhaux: "We must take steps at least as bold as those which have been taken by President Roosevelt. . . . Organized labor in France is not of course willing to pay all the costs and make all the sacrifices." This was not asked of Labor, for M. Reynaud imposed special taxes to milk French employers of greater profits they would make by running longer hours.

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