In Again, Out Again?

As one so often must, a new Cabinet came last week to France, her 20th since the War.*

Cabinet No. 19, formed fortnight ago by Camille ("Briand's Yes-Man") Chautemps, faced the Chamber of Deputies last week with a short and simple declaration of policy, promising if sustained to hold an unchanged course at the London Naval Parley and, although M. Chautemps is a Radical-Socialist of the Left, proposing no internal measure which could possibly offend the Right, to which the Cabinet looked feverishly for the dozen votes or so which would mean everything.

Began one of the quietest debates in which a Cabinet was ever buried. Andre Tardieu, who had been Prime Minister of Cabinet No. 18, and was leading the attack on No. 19, merely sat with a pad and pencil in his hand, jotting little notes while his friends talked. Even Aristide Briand, whose intrigue was supposed to have brought down No. 18, and who told Chautemps whom to pick as Ministers for No. 19, did not speak. The leaders seemed to want the Chamber itself to speak decisively, if it could. Perhaps they knew it could not. By the meaningless vote of 277 to 292 the Cabinet, a Government of the Left-Center fell. Only a fortnight earlier No. 18, a Government of the Right-Center fell by the equally inscrutable vote of 286 to 281.

Right out, Left out, what remained but to dissolve Parliament and hold a fresh election? In any other European country this would have been done last week in similar circumstances. In France, however, it is not the custom to hold an election of Deputies between the fixed periods of four years. "Let the politicians patch things up as best they can," is Jean Frenchman's thrifty motto, for an election is costly, and the French as a race would always rather mend a broken flower pot with infinite trouble than buy a new one for 50 centimes (2-c-).

As a courteous gesture President Gaston Doumergue asked former President and Prime Minister Raymond Poincare, "Savior of the Franc," to form a cabinet. He replied that, although recovered from his prostate trouble (TIME, Dec. 23), he has not the strength to re-enter politics just yet. As a matter of course the President's next play in the old fashioned game of Parliamentary euchre was to call on M. Tardieu to form Cabinet No. 20. It took him all the rest of the week to do it, and there was no guarantee that 20 would not go the way of 19; but such as it was, the new Cabinet, enabling grandiloquent friends of M. Tardieu to style him "twice Prime Minister of France!", was: Prime Minister and Minister of Interior: Andre Tardieu-

Foreign Affairs: Aristide Briand* Justice: Raoul Peret* Finance: Paul Reynaud* Budget: Louis Germain-Martin * War: Andre Maginot* Marine: J. L. Dumesnil* Merchant Marine: Louis Rollin* Air: Laurent Eynac* Public Instruction: Pierre Marraud* Public Works: Georges Pernot* Commerce: Pierre Etienne Flandin* Agriculture: Fernand David* Colonies: Franc,ois Pietri* Telegraphs: Andre Mallarme* Labor: Pierre Laval* Pensions: Champetier de Ribes*

Like No. 18, No. 20 is a Right-Center Cabinet, and M. Tardieu was seen to have failed to entice into 20 a member of the Radical-Socialist group which upset 18. Indeed the only "theory" on which No. 20 can be called more likely to live than No. 18 is that it does not contain M. Henri Cheron, a bon Bourgeois who as. 18's Finance Minister enraged the Left. If the suave new Finance Minister in No. 20, M. Paul Reynaud, can make himself inconspicuous, that may help.

*Average life of these Cabinets seven months; shortest lived, the Herriot Cabinet of 1926 which lasted two days; longest lived, the Poincare Cabinet of 1926-28 which saved the franc. *Same as in No. 18.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.