Dauphin into Premier?

As members of the French parliament streamed blithely back to Paris last week, after the holidays, they joked and then talked seriously of Le Dauphin.

Since France is no longer a monarchy, the present dauphin or "crown prince" is--in political jargon--the man most likely to succeed stern, grizzled Raymond Poincare as Prime Minister of France.* Just now Le Dauphin is by nearly unanimous consent M. Andre Pierre Gabriel Amedee Tardieu, called the "Most American of Frenchmen," brilliant, egotistical, dynamic, and holding the portfolio of Minister of Interior.

Point and significance was lent to Parliamentary gossip about Le Dauphin, last week, by the fact that M. Poincare again let it be known, during the holidays, that he plans to resign as soon as he is satisfied that his Cabinet--in which he now holds no active portfolio--can carry on under another leader. After two and a half years of incessant and supremely successful work in stabilizing the franc (TIME, Aug. 2, 1926 et seq.), the Prime Minister and former President of France is anxious for release from arduous and poorly paying public duties.

"I have sold my automobile," he admitted not long ago. "Also I avoid many invitations. Mme. Poincare and myself can no longer entertain, in return, on the scale expected of my office."

Admittedly the grizzled "Lion of Lorraine" may find it necessary to delay his retirement, perhaps for months; but last week, as the Chamber and Senate convened, rumor insisted that M. Poincare would shortly groom Le Dauphin for promotion by appearing with him in the Chamber and sponsoring a vast new project, which M. Tardieu has devised and which is called "The Program of Realization."

Just what is brewing in the Chamber and Senate pot could not be known with certainty, last week, but Correspondent Arno Dosch-Fleurot of the New York World thought that he had ferreted out truth. According to his long explicit cable the Tardieu "Program of Realization" will be put through by flaunting the "American" slogan "Prosperity!", and will feature creation of a National Economic Council with extraordinary power to act in stimulating French production and commerce. Hitherto the notorious bickering of French politicians has hamstrung many important measures of a purely economic sort. According to M. Dosch-Fleurot, the proposed National Economic Council would have right of way over Parliamentary bickerers in many important respects.

Naturally the "Most American of Frenchmen" kept as mum about his plans, last week, as did a typical U. S. tycoon. (See INTERNATIONAL.) Interviewed, he admitted only that during the holidays he had kept up his golf.-- To questions about "The Program of Realization" he curtly and characteristically replied, without attempting humor or evasion, "Rien, maintenant, messieurs!" (Nothing to say, at present, gentlemen!)

Expectant scribes could only remain certain that when Andre Tardieu does choose to speak, he will step briskly up the stair leading to the Chamber's Tribune, open his remarks with accustomed arrogance, and drive straight on to his conclusions with merciless, go-getting logic, always presenting his thesis as simply ban sens (common sense), and implying that his opponents must be visionary scatter-brains.

Especially successful were these tactics, when High Commissioner Andre Tardieu came to the U. S. in 1917 and did not de sist until he had borrowed and spent three and a half billion dollars on munitions and supplies for France. Later he spent more billions (francs, this time) as Minister of Liberated Regions. Remembering the driving acumen with which Le Dauphin put through such titanic projects, Frenchmen suspect that even the epochal "Program of Realization" lies within the compass of his powers.

Specific goals to be achieved under "The Program of Realization" are, according to the World's Dosch-Fleurot: i) Decentralization of much national authority now bureaucratically held by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry; 2) National re building and repair of public buildings and utilities, especially seaports; 3) Sweeping electrification by development of water power; 4) Railway across Sahara desert; 5) "Modernization of Paris"; new streets, extension of boulevards, newer, faster subways.

*In social parlance Le Dauphin de France is of course Prince Henri, only son of the Due de Guise, pretender to the vanished throne.

*No mean admission for a French politician, since most of the electorate consider it undignified, unintellectual, and detestably "foreign" for a Cabinet Minister to be seen waving a little stick and panting after a rubber ball.