"Scarcely a Cabinet"

Most people think of the Third or Communist International as the avatar of wickedness, an octopus projecting its tentacles from Russia into the politics of other countries (TIME, Feb. 3). Wrathfully last week reactionary Paris news organs reminded the world that there is also a Second or Socialist International of which a leading member is James Ramsay MacDonald.

The charge was hurled--with the typical recklessness of the Paris pamphleteer--that the fall last fortnight of the moderate French Cabinet of Andre Tardieu was the result of an international Socialist "plot." The British Socialists and their leader Scot MacDonald were imagined to have feared that M. Tardieu with his stiff naval demands (TIME, Feb. 24) might wreck the London Conference. It was represented that Socialist MacDonald, through the Second International, secured the aid of Socialist groups in France, and the assistance of French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, with the result that the Tardieu Cabinet was upset.

Pretty though this story is--spiced with the romance and intrigue in which Frenchmen revel--it is a bit too melodramatic, has great significance only as an emphatic reminder of something too often forgotten: that Socialism no less than Communism is an international movement, and that among Socialists throughout the world there is kindred feeling if not solidarity.

But if the MacDonald-Briand "plot" seemed highly improbable, nevertheless nearly everyone in Paris did believe that sly old B'rer Briand was the man who set afoot a national (not international) intrigue among the French Left Parties which resulted in the Cabinet's fall.

M. Tardieu, an upstart compared to M. Briand who has been twelve times Prime Minister, had taken the risky course of forcing the astute old man to play second fiddle to his first, both at the second Hague Conference and at London (TIME, Jan. 13, et seq.). Briand, perhaps the greatest statesman and certainly the master politician of his time in France, would have been less than human had he not done something to stop the remark, often heard in Paris fortnight ago: "Tardieu has obliterated Briand."

Certainly the tables were turned last week. President Gaston Doumergue of France called to the Prime Ministry a man who thereafter made not a single move without consulting Briand--Camille Chautemps.

No more "typical" Frenchman was ever born. Owner of a small estate and vineyard in Touraine, son of a mediocre politician who once was Vice-President of the Senate, onetime mayor of Tours, and thrice holder for brief periods of the Ministry of Interior, once of the Ministry of Justice, it may be said of M. Chautemps that nothing can be said of him which would not apply as well to a score of other Deputies. His rise to leadership of the Radical Socialists resulted primarily from the fall of Edouard Daladier, after the latter's ignominious failure to form a cabinet (TIME, Nov. 11). Not a few were prophesies last week that Prime Minister Chautemps' first Cabinet would fall as soon as it went before the Chamber.

But the fact that every member had been hand picked by Aristide Briand made many give credence to M. Chautemps' boast that he would get a majority of at least 30. His Cabinet, except in one minor post, is of the Left, and completely at the mercy of the 101 French Socialist Deputies, all of whom must lend their support or it will fall. If the Second International is indeed of any great potency, now is certainly the time for all good Socialists to pull together. Cabinet:

Prime Minister and Interior--Camille Chautemps.

Vice President and Justice--Theodore Steeg.

Foreign Affairs--Aristide Briand.

Finance--Charles Dumont.

Budget--Maurice Palmade.

War--Rene Besnard.

Marine--Albert Sarraut.

Merchant Marine--Charles Danielou.

Public Works--Edouard Daladier.

Education--Jean Durand.

Commerce--Georges Bonnet.

Labor--Louis Loucheur.

Pensions--Dr. Charles Gallet.

Air--Laurent Eynac.

Posts and Telegraphs--Julien Durand

Agriculture--Dr. Henri Queuille.

Colonies--Lucien Lamoureux.

Since in France the men of the Left are, with a few notable exceptions, relatively less experienced in Government and famed than the Poincares and Tardieus of the Centre, some contemptuous critics of the new Government called it "scarcely a Cabinet." Certain it was that ousted Tar dieu and colleagues would launch and continue one of the hottest fights in French parliamentary history in an effort to oust Briand's yesmanly Chautemps.

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