"Labor, Family, Country"

Out of the chaos of the Franco-Prussian War emerged the French Constitution of 1875, a fragmentary, disharmonious conglomeration of laws that passed the National Assembly by a majority of one vote. It contained no provision for the judiciary organization of the country, virtually no legislation governing finance, not even a definition of citizens' rights. The only point upon which the quarreling Royalists and Republicans could agree was specific legislation to protect the nation against a personal dictatorship. The late reign of Napoleon III still fresh in mind, the Assembly invested the Chamber of Deputies with extensive powers, enabling it to overturn the Government. Interpreting their Constitution broadly, leaving much to precedent, and ignoring certain parts of it (e.g., the law which gave the President, with the Senate approval, the right to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies), Frenchmen made it work for 65 years, based on it their proverb: Only the provisional is lasting.

Again under the German heel, the French Government was ready last week to scrap the Constitution. Premier Henri Philippe Petain empowered Vice Premier Pierre Laval to draw up a "new kind of constitution" giving France an "ultramodern version of democracy." The Constitution of ultramodern democracy would, it was declared, junk the old ideals of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" for the near-Fascist principles of "Labor, Family and Country."

It would do what the old Constitution sought to prevent--invest supreme authority in a single dictator. It would probably abolish both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, substituting for them a single assembly of powerful yes-men. Dispatches from Vichy forecast the establishment of a "corporative" state in which, under Marshal Petain as titular Chief of State, Vice Premier Laval, General Weygand and Minister of the Interior Marquet would form a power-wielding triumvirate. A regime similar to that of Generalissimo Franco, with whom 84-year-old Marshal Petain was "tremendously impressed," was generally predicted. While Berlin applauded approvingly, French Cabinet members denounced "unwieldy democratic procedure," demanded the reduction of "party strife and intrigues to a minimum," proclaimed the return of "authority, sovereignty and prestige" to the Government. France was well on the way to becoming Hitler's Gallic Gau.

Gauleiter Prospects. Meanwhile 40,000,000 Frenchmen locked in Hitler's embrace might, for all the rest of the earth knew of their feelings and their fate, have been swept off the civilized world. The Gestapo doubtless had thousands of them in concentration camps. Mystery surrounded France's democratic leaders. Ex-Premier Paul Reynaud was suffering at an unrevealed hospital from severe head injuries resulting from a "motor accident"; former Premier Edouard Daladier, former Ministers Georges Mandel and Yvon Delbos were "at sea" on a ship long overdue and missing--according to Berlin. The only Frenchmen heard from were those willing to play Hitler's game, for Hitler's Gauleiter of Gaul was practical, nonliberal, Italophile Constitution-Maker Laval himself.

Assistant constitution-maker and close aspirant for the leader's job was Minister of the Interior Adrien Marquet, onetime mayor of Bordeaux, jingoist politician and career man. He broke with the Socialist Party in 1933, formed a "NeoSocialist" group which advocated a Hitlerian state. He wears a Hitlerian mustache, apes his model in bearing and thinking. Convinced that he is France's man of destiny, he once declared: "I have made a special study of the statures of Bonaparte, Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler.* I find that I top them all by at least ten centimetres" (four inches).

Not in the Petain Cabinet but forceful in his claim to the headman's post was Jacques Doriot, onetime Communist turned pro-Nazi and leader of the French Popular Party. A fiery, bull-sized, flag-waving man of the people with a long record of political deviation, Doriot could possibly make the French like Naziism just as he persuaded the Red suburb of St. Denis to elect him mayor even though he had been evicted from the Communist Party.

The son of a blacksmith, he formed his Parti Populaire to oppose the Popular Front and when the Blum Government suddenly dissolved the "Fascist Leagues" in June 1936, Fascists of every shade flocked to him. He preached reconciliation with Hitler, a Paris-Berlin-Rome triangle to replace a Paris-Moscow alliance. Utilizing the Franco-Soviet Pact to paint the horizon red with war, he proclaimed that only a German rapprochement could save France. Called "L'Hitlerien," he was ousted from the mayoralty in 1937, and in 1938 became an ardent champion of Generalissimo Franco. "You have shown the way," he declared at the Bilbao City Hall. "We Frenchmen will follow you." Last week his followers launched with German permission a new newspaper, National Life, declared that Doriot would assist in the political and moral remaking of France.

The appearance in Paris last week of an anti-Semitic daily, France at Work, recalled Fuehrer Franc,ois de La Rocque of the anti-Semitic Fascist French Social Party (ex-Croix de Feu), a sharp-featured, retired Army officer whose ambition was the union of 2,000,000 French war veterans into a militant, pro-Fascist organization. In the Petit Journal, reportedly bought with funds advanced by Laval, he advocated a Franco-German front against Communism, Jews, plutocrats.

Still another behind-the-scene Fascist and Gauleiter prospect was onetime Premier Pierre-Etienne Flandin. who, while Laval talked turkey with Mussolini, is alleged to have been in communication with Nazi Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels.

*Napoleon Bonaparte, 5 ft. 2 in.; Lenin, 5 ft. 3 in.; Mussolini, 5 ft. 6 in.; Hitler, 5 ft. 6 in.; Stalin, 5 ft. 5 in.

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