Reynaud the Frenchman

(See Cover) Into the grey Elysee Palace-home in other historic times of Madame de Pompadour, Napoleon I, Tsar Alexander I, the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon III; home now of gentle President Albert Le-brun-strode a onetime Premier of France one morning last week: Pierre Laval, fresh from Rome. M. Laval was grave. He reported to President Lebrun that there was nothing to be hoped for from the hungry Italians. If anyone could wring concessions from Rome, it should have been the realistic co-author of the ill-fated Hoare-Laval Ethiopian Deal; but he might as well have tried to wring wine from a Parmesan cheese.

The President called a Cabinet meeting.

According to Scoopster Wythe Williams, M. Laval repeated his report. Suddenly, like a Nazi delayed bomb, Edouard Daladier, who had for some weeks lain quiet as a dud, exploded. It was all the fault of this disgraceful rout in Flanders, he raged.

Instantly most of the Cabinet put the blame squarely back on Daladier's own round shoulders: he had run the country two years, he had run the war seven months-why was France unprepared? Daladier angrily countered that France was unprepared because of the crackpot mismanagement of his predecessors, the Front Populaire; because of their 4O-hour week, their love of defense tactics, their coddling of labor. He added that one more military disaster would force France to sue for a separate peace.

Georges Mandel, terrifying Minister of the Interior who had set about ruthlessly suppressing dissension in the land, then roared that he would order a lettre de cachet (imprisonment without trial) of anyone advocating separate peace-including Cabinet Ministers. The argument crackled and burned. Suddenly heavy-faced Edouard Daladier stormed out of the room. Sarraut and de Monzie, spaniel-like Ministers of Education and Public Works, followed him.

Half an hour later Premier Paul Reynaud, who had sadly sat through all this, handed President Lebrun his resignation.

The President, in a panic, told M. Reynaud he could not do this thing. France was beside the abyss, the danger was immediate and deathly. If Reynaud resigned, democracy in France would be finished; the only alternative was military dictatorship under Weygand or Petain. In the end Reynaud agreed to stay-providing he could purge the Cabinet.

Out went Daladier and all his spaniels.

Out went not only five Ministers, but out, too, went an epoch. At long last and after many shifts, the supine time was over. In the days after this historic meeting, France might easily be beaten down by unbeatable force, but not again by lack of determination.

Chamberlain Too? So final was the break in France, so final the obliteration of the "Munichois" and all they represented, that Great Britain at once reacted.

Tardily, last week, Neville Chamberlain moved from No. 10 to No. n Downing Street. Winston Churchill prepared to move into the Prime Minister's residence.

There was some speculation in Whitehall as to how Winnie's cat, Nelson, would get along with a cat named Munich who for some time has lived at No. 10. Betting favored Nelson to chase Munich out.

Thus, lightheartedly, Britons symbolized the purge which seemed certain to come soon. The general grumbling against Chamberlain was last week crystallized by the no longer escapable realization that the Allies are badly short of munitions, planes, tanks. In pubs voices blurted out: "Chamberlain ought to shoot himself" words much stronger than "Incompetent" were used to describe the former Prime Minister. A New Statesman and Nation editorial said: "[Daladier] has a more personal responsibility for the initial military failure than any single British statesman. . . . There is little doubt that his going will influence political developments in Britain. Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Caldecote, Lord Simon and Sir Kingsley Wood . . . are tarred with the same brush. . . .

M. Reynaud has given Mr. Churchill a clear lead." If & when this was accomplished, the Era of Appeasement would be finally dead, buried and forgotten, if unforgiven. If defeat could be postponed, what would be the nature of the new Allied phase? Best clue to the answer was to be found in what followed last week's French purge.

It looked like the beginning (if it was not too late to begin) of an Era of Dynamism -not of Dynamism's unscrupulous principles but its desperate institutions. How else to meet the thoroughgoing Dynamism of Hitler?

Reynaud's Hands. The communique announcing the fall of Daladier said: "The Premier becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs at the same time as Minister of National Defense, these two Ministries assuring the conduct of the war." Thus Paul Reynaud gave himself the authority of virtual dictator on the conduct of the war. But far more important was the strength and nimbleness of the helping hands he gathered around him. Four appointments in particular were striking: >As his Chief Assistant in the War

Ministry he chose General Charles de Gaulle, 50, a lanky, pale, mustached mili tary innovator who for 20 years has pounded home one point in theses, con ferences, articles, reports: if France was to meet Germany on equal terms she must have the motors of offense -tanks, trucks, motorcycles, airplanes. Charles de Gaulle had not long graduated from elite St.-Cyr when he matriculated into a tougher school -World War I. He served actively in Poland in 1920, inactively as a post war staff officer under Petain, then in Syria, then in Paris. Only three years ago he became a colonel; only three weeks ago -with the advent of Weygand, who knows his worth -he became a general.

The basis of the elastic defense-in-depth which was France's last hope last week was laid down in de Gaulle's Vers I'Annee de Metier.

>To help sweep the dust out of the Foreign Ministry, Paul Reynaud chose a brand-new broom: Paul Baudouin, 45, second from left on TIME'S cover. After a brilliant flying career in World War I, Baudouin picked up some political point ers as private secretary to Finance Minis ters de Monzie, Caillaux, Painleve, Lou-cheur, Doumer. Having married a Ma demoiselle Angoulvant whose father was a high muck-a-muck in Indo-China, he went to work for the Bank of Indo-China, made a beeline for the East. In five years he became general manager. Recently he had been back in France working with Reynaud in the Council of Ministers.

> In picking a new Minister of Information, Reynaud went Winston Churchill's naming of Publisher Lord Beaverbrook to a nonjournalistic ministry one better. He chose Jean Prouvost, 55, owner-editor of Paris-soir (Europe's biggest evening paper; circulation: 1,399,950), its noon edition Paris-Midi (circulation: 64,999), Marie-Claire (weekly woman's magazine), Match (highly successful French imitation of LIFE), and Pour Vous (cinema magazine).

Colossally energetic, widely traveled, so often on the wire that a British journalist once said "He must have a telephone in his pocket," Prouvost has a special knack for personnel. Into the Information Ministry personnel he prepared to inject four of his best men from Paris-soir. Louis Oscar Frossard, the Reynaud appointee whom Prouvost replaced, was moved to the important Ministry of Public Works in place of Anatole de Monzie, a Daladier man.

> A real technician went into the Finance Ministry. Marcel Bouthillier, a youngster of 39, was Reynaud's Man Friday in the Finance Ministry, and knows more about the job than most Ministers since 1918.

"Vite! Vite!" But of far greater importance than these subalterns, of course, was France's war Premier, Paul Reynaud.

His importance was not one of personality.

France's extremity was so bitter last week that the outstanding superficial factor of democracy, leaders' personalities, was as nothing. What France needed last week was speed from its leaders, courage from its people. Collapse of either meant collapse of France. Reynaud invoked both.

The Reynaud personality was vital last week only in so far as France's Premier is the incarnation of speed. Like most men of tiny stature-he stands only 5 ft. 3 in.

he does not move; he darts. His face is always active, and his steel eyes move behind their Oriental shutters like little automatic rangefinders. His metabolism is such that he can sit at his desk for 48 hours on end without ever slowing down in mind or body.

In debate his speed of expression is so dazzling that he is rarely interrupted, never heckled; his hearers are too busy intercepting facts. His repartee is almost a ricochet. His memory is fast as camera film, but he is forever flashing out a pencil and jotting down notes under headings-1, 2, 3, a, b, c. As he sits at his desk directing aides, he barks: "Vite! Vite!" He loves locomotion. He has tried everything from airplane to canoe, and his favorite sport is cycling with the wind on his face. In his 61 years he claims he has traveled five times into each of the world's five continents.

But Reynaud's haste is not a mere rushing. He is fast, but only as a fox is fast.

His haste embodies caution and a hardhearted realism. He was never in such a hurry for high office that he would abandon his lonely, negative, middle-of-the-road liberalism for the sake of a band wagon.

Whenever he raised his eyes in the office which he used to occupy as Finance Minister, he would see on the opposite wall an admonition to speed-a map of Greater Germany, and a chart of working hours under the Reich Labor Front; but he would also see, on his desk, an admonition to caution-a pair of German banknotes of the inflationary period.

As a theoretician of war. he knew the need for speed. "Our Army," he wrote several years ago, "is strong in numbers but it has the character of defensive armies, slowness and rigidity. I may add"-and this proved tragically true last week-"that it has not the technical means for rapid and decisive counter-attack." He urgently demanded "an Army of shock troops with lightning-like speed and formidable power in artillery . . . modern tanks which will go 40 kilometres an hour in flat country." But those defenders of the realm, Blum, Daladier, Gamelin, would not listen.

"Time is limited." Well might Reynaud and his hands hurry last week. The peril was immediate, for as this week began, not only was France at war with Nazi Germany, but with Fascist Italy. Perhaps France had a millennium of freedom ahead-but it looked more like a mere thousand hours, perhaps less. The length of French resistance, the rigid odds of mechanization being what they were, depended directly on morale-of the troops and of the populace. Over the radio, Premier Reynaud addressed himself to this intangible factor. The enemy, he said, had embarked on three enterprises.

First, they hoped to crush the troops' morale in Flanders. "Far from collapsing, the morale of our troops and of our country proved worthy of our ancestors. The heroism of the combats in Flanders and of the battles in Dunkirk belongs to history. The greatness of our military chiefs magnificently revealed itself in those days." The second aim was to break the morale of Paris from the air. "A few minutes after [last week's] bombing I saw on the spot the proud faces of our men and women workers of Paris who cannot tremble.

We know what the colossal raid means for the people of Paris-nothing." The third and by far the grimmest German-and Italian-enterprise was the death struggle which was instinctively named The Battle of France-aimed at the morale of a people. But even this Reynaud challenged. "The dream of German hegemony will clash with French resolution. The France resisting Hitler today is not one between two wars. It is a different France, just as England combatting Hitler is not the England of the past 20 years. We of June, 1940, shall not lose our time debating responsibilities when the country is in danger. We shall not weaken France by dividing her. We all bear responsibilities, every one of us. ...

France, like her ally, is calm and proud." As he concluded, swift Reynaud made one last plea for speed: "Immense values are at stake and time is limited."Calm and proud. Someone has said that though most human bodies are composed of oxygen (65%), carbon (18%), hydrogen (10%), nitrogen (3%), calcium (1.5%), phosphorus (1%), the body of a Frenchman is a simple compound of pepper, garlic, pate de foie gras, common bread and good red wine of the land. The French are pungent people. Little things make them gesticulate wildly and pour maledictions like a flood: a bowl of soup upset, a bus missed, a kiss refused. But big things-the Battle of France, so many of the young men spilling that precious red wine into the soil-makes them cold, determined, grim, brave, calm and proud.

All these qualities are packed into the French word I'audace. "Audacity" does not mean nearly so much. L'audace has in it both insolence and sadness, and connotes excess. Foch conceived it to mean "attack." The pronouncement of the great Danton still holds good: To conquer the enemies of the fatherland, he said, Frenchmen need "de I'audace, encore de I'audace et toujours de I'audace." There was no question of jacking morale last week. France no longer wondered whether she was fighting Britain's battles.

France rushed to the rescue of France.

The big question: to what extremity could the mass of French industrial workers (who are the key to the situation both in the Army and behind the lines) be pressed in defense of the belief that their situation before the war was infinitely superior to anything under Hitler? Is this belief worth dying for? How much defeat can 40,000,000 Frenchmen take? How far will I'audace stretch? Paul Reynaud, no social dreamer, had no bribes to offer the workers of France, firmly offered none.

The will and the decision could be influenced only by the hour.

Paris. Until the end of last week I'audace was drawn to tournament pitch.

Although the French are a peasant race, no country in the world depends so much on its metropolitan spirit. As Paris goes, so goes France. It was generally conceded that if the capital fell, French morale might fall beyond recall.

But within sorely threatened Paris this week there was an almost supernatural calm. Even after the Italian declaration, even after the guns grew loud in the northwest, evacuation proceeded quickly, without panic. Automobiles, trucks, taxis, busses threaded southward, careening under piles of furniture, suitcases, bedding.

Schools were shut, freeing 350,000 children for evacuation or death.

One after another shops and restaurants close-open one day, boarded the next.

At last the Bourse shut down and the Government began moving files south.

Said CBS's Eric Sevareid to the U. S.

early Tuesday morning:"I am going to make my last broadcast from Paris. No American after tonight will be broadcasting directly to America, unless it be under supervision of men other than the French." Cars lined up at the American Legion headquarters gasoline station, some of them with hopeful boughs of leaves on their tops. Then the Cabinet left the city.

And, as the fateful hours lengthened, M.

Reynaud was reported to have "joined the Army." "France Cannot Die."The patriotism of the French differs from that of the German for the Vaterland, the Englishman for "this little England." For the Frenchman, France is almost synonymous with civilization, and all other people are merely bad Frenchmen.

If France were to survive its millennium, most other people thought, last week was the test of it. Not even the Germans denied she was putting up a magnificent fight. But the core of the French attitude toward the struggle lay far deeper than even the profundity of French courage or hope.

For Frenchmen, the ultimate ideal of France is a transcendent thing. As this desperate week began, Paul Reynaud the Leader faced the Italian declaration of war with the sentence: "Nothing has lowered our will to struggle for our land and liberty." At the same time, Paul Reynaud the Frenchman said: "France cannot die."

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