June and September

(See Cover)

The hour was 1 :28 a. m., September 30. Out of the great double doors of the conference room of the palatial Fuehrerhaus, in Munich, walked four European statesmen. The expressions on their faces told the story of what had happened.

Adolf Hitler, triumphant, tried to conceal his jubilation. By threats he had cracked the tough little nut of Czechoslovakia and already could feel its meat crunching between his teeth.

Benito Mussolini was ogreishly saturnine. He had bet on the winner.

Neville Chamberlain tried to look like a statesman--imperturbable--but inwardly he was rubbing his hands; he was sure that he had avoided a war which would have been bad business, had got gracefully out of an embarrassing moral obligation to the Czechs, had thrown a cheap sop that would convert a troublesome fellow into a reasonable man with whom Chamberlain could henceforth make profitable connections in this best of all possible worlds.

The fourth man of the party had an entirely different outlook on the world. He, the son of a maker of French bread and pastry, had gone in to sit in conference with Europe's biggest three statesmen. The occasion should have crowned his career. But he came out morosely. He knew he had taken a terrific licking.

He was still Edouard Daladier, but he had grave doubts how much longer he would remain Premier of France. At that conference he had written off, as a total loss, the strong alliances which since the World War had kept France the biggest power in Europe. He had been caught in a corner, trapped because he had not dared break the first rule of modern French politics--never antagonize England. The French people might forgive Edouard Daladier for breaking his Government's word, pledged until only a fortnight before, that France would fight before yielding Czechoslovakia, but he could not expect them to forgive him for what he had allowed to happen to France.

After a few hours' sleep in Munich, Edouard Daladier flew back to Paris a worn, tired, nervous, scared man. In the plane he stiffened his courage by downing a few more pastis (a legal absinthe drink) than usual. As he alighted from the plane at Le Bourget, Paris airport, and saw a big crowd waiting, he grabbed the arm of an aide, exclaimed in apprehension: "My God, where are the Mobile Guards?"

But he needed no protection. The crowd, including many women and children, began to yell "Vive Daladier! Vive la Paix!" Flowers were strewn in his path. An impromptu parade was organized for him. France had expected war at any hour. Few men bothered then to inquire what price had been paid for peace. Daladier struck while the emotion was hot, called the French Parliament to a short, 23-hour session to ratify what he had done. Presented thus with an accomplished fact, the realistic deputies voted approval 535-to-75, almost lone objectors being the intransigent Communists. So Edouard Daladier stayed on as Premier of the France that had lost two cubits from her stature.

All that took place last September. Now it is June and Daladier is still Premier of France by reason of turning a prodigious political somersault. Neville Chamberlain went home after Munich talking of "peace in our time" and feeling fine. Edouard Daladier mouthed no nebulous platitudes. For the most part he kept his mouth shut, and it stayed mostly shut through the crisis of last March.

But Mr. Chamberlain is squirming in Tory discomfort. At Munich, Daladier had to dance to a British tune, the policy of appeasement, but now Mr. Chamberlain finds himself dancing to a French tune, a policy of ironclad alliances. Last week found Mr. Chamberlain uncomfortably negotiating an alliance with Communist. Russia (see p. 21). It was not a sunny day for him.

But last week in Paris at the Ministry of War, where M. Daladier, Minister of National Defense as well as Premier, keeps his office, there was an atmosphere of glowing confidence. He went last week to Neuilly, Paris suburb (with his old & good friend U. S. Ambassador William Bullitt), to speak at an American Legion memorial and with that overflowing confidence declared, "Any attempt at hegemony or domination would find them [the French] ready to defend with their liberty the liberty of the world." Symptoms of that confidence:

> The General Staff surrounding the Premier has been heard to brag that the French Army is now at its greatest efficiency since Napoleon, could lick the German Army with one hand tied behind its back.

> The French Air Ministry claim is that France and Britain built in April 80 to 100 more warplanes than the dictator countries (whose production is not advertised) and that the margin for May will be 120 to 150.

> The French Naval Ministry has reported that the Mediterranean could be sealed at both ends the day Britain and France went to war against Italy and Germany, that Germany could not get a single submarine into the Mediterranean to help Italy, that Ethiopia would be cut off and taken in the first week of a war, that the Italian-owned Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Mediterranean would be invaded by Turks and Greeks. ^ Minister of Finance Paul Reynaud boasted of France's improved financial condition (TIME, May 29). Not to be outdone by his ministers, M. Daladier claimed that there were 6,000 French factories working on war orders now, as compared to some 2,500 a year ago, and that France had become a vast, contented beehive--ready to fight with potent stings when necessary.

> The beginning of summer finds Premier Daladier's popularity riding high, his strength increased with the electorate, his often dissension-ridden people at times seeming unified, his Government ruling by decree.

Although Premier Daladier does not admit that his capitulation at Munich very nearly reduced France to a second-rate power, he has in eight months restored to France at least one of the two cubits which she lost at Munich. And Politician Daladier does not allow France to forget that fact--if Frenchmen forget that, they might pay too much attention to his main political somersault.

Elusive Promotion. Not many men get into politics as Edouard Daladier did, not many stay in by such shifts as he has made. He got in via the schoolroom door. His father was a baker in the town of Carpentras and he went to public schools. At the Lycee Duparc in Lyon one of his teachers was Edouard Herriot. By winning first in a history competition at the University of Nimes in 1909, young Daladier obtained an appointment as professor of history at Nimes and a fellowship to study in Rome. Professor Daladier, according to his pupils, ran his classes "seriously but without solemnity," had a "horror of sterile academicism." Occasionally he even had a fit of classroom temper and heaved a book at a numskull.

His promotion was rapid. First he taught at Grenoble, then at Marseille, then at Lyon, where his master Herriot was also mayor. Then Daladier got a promotion to the Lycee Condorcet in Paris. At that moment the World War broke out. He entered the Army as a sergeant, fought (Arras, Champagne, Verdun, Flanders), became an infantry captain, earned a Legion of Honor medal, the Croix de Guerre, three citations for bravery. In the autumn of 1919 he went back to take his job at the Lycee Condorcet. Again it eluded him. He stayed just two weeks before his old teacher Herriot persuaded him to run for Parliament as a Radical Socialist candidate from his native Vaucluse district.

M. Herriot (later to be three times Premier, now president of the French Chamber of Deputies) was the leading figure of the growing Radical Socialist Party. From him Daladier took his first political color. Neither very radical nor very socialist, the Party represents a conservative group, the great peasant and small trader class of France. As a Radical Socialist, Daladier was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and has been regularly re-elected for 20 years.

Pedagogue Daladier was one of the most silent members of the talkative Chamber of Deputies. He did condemn the French occupation of the German Ruhr in 1921-24. He did advocate friendship with the post-War Weimar Republic. He favored, however vaguely, an economic reorganization of Europe. Once he said: "France is now in the hands of a financial oligarchy, from whom power must be wrested and given back to the people."

Not until 1927 did M. Daladier begin to acquire political stature as a forceful (some thought irresponsible) leader of left-wing Radical Socialists. In 1928, as president of the Radical Socialist Party, backed by aging Senator Joseph Caillaux (one of the pre-War Radical Socialist leaders), Daladier broke up the Rightist Government of Raymond Poincaire by forcing its Radical Socialist ministers to resign. In 1929 he himself first tried to form a Government, but the old veteran statesman, Aristide Briand, prevented that. In 1933 for the first time he got the big job. He lasted nine months as Premier.

In January 1934 he formed another government only a few days before the Stavisky scandal flared into bloody riots. Serge Alexandre Stavisky, a Russian Jew who emigrated as a boy to France, had long been mixed up with shady financial deals. In 1932 he had gained control of the semi-official pawnshop ("Credit Municipal") of Bayonne. By arranging to have the shop's jewels overvalued, by getting a letter of endorsement from the Minister of Labor, by persuading even the Mayor and Deputy of Bayonne to "cooperate," Stavisky was able to sell quantities of Credit Municipal bonds many times greater than the assets of his pawnshop. Furthermore, he sold them mostly to big businesses.

When the bubble burst, Stavisky was found in Chamonix, a bullet through his head. The suspicion was that the police had killed him because he knew too much. Rightist newsorgans (particularly the Royalist Action Franc,aise) played up the scandal as typical Leftist corruption. Rightists began to demonstrate in Paris, and Police Chief Jean Chiappe seemed overly lenient in dealing with the demonstrators. The Chautemps Government fell and M. Daladier, Chautemps' successor, fired M. Chiappe. It was then--February 6, 1934--that a mob gathered at the Place de la Concorde and started over a bridge across the Seine to rush the Chamber of Deputies on the opposite bank. Mobile Guards, assembled by the Daladier Government, fired into the crowd: 24 were killed, hundreds injured. Next day, without waiting for a vote from the Chamber, the Premier resigned, a thoroughly discredited, despised politician. The Right nicknamed him Le Fusilleur ("The Rifleman"). The Left accused him of cowardice.

Swing Left. For nearly 18 months, Daladier laid low. Then in 1935, the French Popular Front of Leftist parties was formed. Herriot balked at the Radical Socialists going far enough Left to join with Communists; Leftist Daladier, swinging further Left, plunged in. Said he, "I represent the petite bourgeoisie and I declare that the middle class and the working class are natural allies." He marched in the big Popular Front demonstration of July 14, 1935, between Communists Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duclos, gave the clenched-fist Communist salute, swore fidelity to the Popular Front at the Bastille.

What M. Daladier wanted, he said, was a "blend of nationalism and democracy" in France: "It is our aim to reconcile the spirits which stormed the Bastille and defended Verdun." When the Popular Front won the elections of 1936, Edouard Daladier became War Minister, under Leon Blum, serving as part of France's New Deal which ousted the 200 families from control of the Bank of France, which established the , 40-hour week, which refused to crack down on sit-down strikers. When reaction to these measures finally forced out Socialist Blum for good, a less radical leader came to power: Radical Socialist Edouard Daladier. Socialists and Communists gave him day-by-day support, but it was easy to see that the Popular Front's days were numbered. Edouard Daladier became Premier on the day that Fiihrer Hitler was holding his plebiscite in newly conquered Austria. It was Daladier's third Cabinet, the iO3rd Cabinet that the Third Republic of France had had in 68 years of existence.

Right Somersault. Few French Cabinets have survived such troublous periods as the last 14 months. Daladier's Cabinet survived by a steady process of swinging Right--a right swing so sharp that he virtually performed a political cartwheel. In general, the French Right favored appeasement. The British Cabinet, bent on handouts for the dictators, pressed Leftist Daladier to give way. He sealed tight the Spanish border, an action which also sealed the fate of the Spanish Loyalists. French finances groaned, the franc wavered, the country rapidly lost its gold. At Munich he gave way completely and brought France to a new low ebb.

Daladier solved his problem in opportunistic fashion by swinging still further Right. Because of the international crisis, Parliament twice granted him temporary power to rule by decree. He appeased the Right by doing away with the 40-hour week--by stages both before and after Munich. There were many small strikes and one big attempt at a general strike, all defeated. The nation wanted unity and strength and was willing to back him. The extreme Left felt betrayed but the Right (except for a few strong-headed nationalists) forgave him all. Even so, he had many narrow escapes from being overthrown. Late last December he staved off defeat by only seven votes.

Benito's Aid. Many suspected that the Premier itched to become a dictator, but Daladier roared theatrically: "Am I no longer a Republican because I insist upon respect for Republican law and order?" But words could probably not have saved him had not Benito Mussolini unwittingly come to his aid. By staging anti-French demonstrations demanding Tunisia, Corsica arid a few other choice bits of French territory, Il Duce gave the Premier his big chance to regain his fast-dwindling popularity. The Premier answered the Italian campaign with a triumphal tour of Corsica and North Africa. Returning, he declared categorically that France would not cede one inch of her territory. The French people slapped their chests with satisfaction.

When Adolf Hitler openly marched into Czecho-Slovakia last March, taking physical possession of the country he had morally conquered in September, loud words emanated from London in protest, few from Paris. Months before, the Premier had said, "The role of Don Quixote does not suit me." His answers to Herr Hitler's moves this time were to be not words but alliances and pacts. Three days after CzechoSlovakia's conquest, with another crisis rapidly developing, the Premier again asked for and got his third set of decree powers, valid for eight months more. Thus M. Daladier at the end of his somersault landed right side up.

Sitting Pretty. Edouard Daladier is what the French call an homme serieux. A terrific worker, he leads a modest family life, living with his sister (he is a widower) and his two schoolboy sons. Even as Minister of National Defense he used frequently to bicycle to his office (now he sometimes rides a horse in the Bois de Boulogne). He does not even occupy the Premier's office; he prefers to work in the Ministry of War, of which he is still head.

This is not a bad idea. He does not trust his Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, arch-exponent of appeasement, who helped the British get him into a corner at Munich. On all important matters he is now his own Foreign Minister although he keeps Bonnet on, they say in Paris, as a sort of lightning rod for criticism. But it is important for Premier Daladier to be on good terms with his generals.

He works so closely with them that he has become known as "the soldiers' Premier." He knows that he may need them in case of war. But they also keep him sitting pretty politically. Military might is the basis for the British-French alliances now being forged with Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Greece and Russia to recover what was lost at Munich. Military might also gives Frenchmen a feeling of security. For the sake of that feeling of security, France forgives M. Daladier for having ditched the French New Deal.

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