Briand, Parliament & Fist fights

Briand, Parliament & Fistfights

When a Frenchman is sick he keeps close indoors, with all his windows tight shut night & day. This shaggy old Foreign Minister Aristide Briand has done for more than a month. His bachelor bedroom is in the Foreign Office. He could slip down for the hour or two of work a day permitted by his doctors without breathing a single sniff of possibly deadly fresh air. In this manner the greatest living Frenchman fought bronchitis and won, emerged in palpably good health last week to face his enemies as the Chamber of Deputies convened for its short, pre-Christmas session.

Briand & Stresemann Grafters? Foulest charge hurled at M. Briand during his illness by a bitter opposition press was that he and his late, great German friend, Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann were a pair of "colossal grafters."

The charge originated with one Dr. Diehl of Krefeld in Germany, a leader in Adolf Hitler's Fascist movement. Dr. Diehl charged that "international bankers" paid Dr. Stresemann $240,000 and M. Briand $720,000 "for putting the Young Plan across."

Publicly Dr. Diehl challenged Dr. Stresemann's widow, once the "Queen Kathe" of diplomatic Berlin, to disprove his charge. When weeks passed and she did not reply, Dr. Diehl called her silence "significant" in a naming article which he wrote for the Neiderrheinische Zeitung.

Instantly Frau Stresemann's lawyers petitioned the German Ministry of Justice to prosecute Dr. Diehl under the Law for the Protection of the Republic. Declared her son Wolfgang:

"My mother, of course, had never seen Dr. Diehl's so-called challenge which probably appeared in some obscure local newspaper. But his insinuation that she was afraid did come to our attention, whereupon we promptly reported him to the Ministry of Justice.

"A private suit would not do much good as German law permits a defendant to contend that he acted in good faith and had reason to believe the truth of the charges.

"Under the Law for the Protection of the Republic, since father was a Federal Minister, it may be possible to prosecute. That is up to the Ministry of Justice to decide."

Up to last week both Widow Stresemann and Invalid Briand preserved dignified personal silence, while the German Ministry of Justice continued to cogitate.

Sudden Awakening: "Flat Tire!" In the Palais-Bourbon, imposing seat of French Deputies, foes of sly old Br'er Briand thought they had sufficiently prepared to roast him when the Chamber convened last week.

Four opposition Deputies had registered to "interpellate" (cross-examine for heckling purposes) the Foreign Minister. One of these was adder-tongued M. Henri Franklin-Bouillon whose savage philippic a year ago was a contributory cause of the upset of the last cabinet in which M. Briand was Prime Minister.

M. Franklin-Bouillon seemed to be not only ready but fairly spoiling to flay M. Briand. The night before, addressing a banquet of Briand foes, he had shouted:

"The German elections revealed the true character of the Reich, and as a resuit France has awakened in fright from the sleep into which her statesmen [meaning Briand] had lulled her. The Frenchman sees that if the Germans no longer wish to pay reparations or honor the Young plan obligations and that if they wish to change their eastern or western boundaries and revise the Treaty of Versailles, it means only one thing, and that is war!

"There is only one way to avoid war, and that is for all Frenchmen to unite and declare firmly that we have a military alliance with Poland and whoever touches Poland touches France. When we begin talking in that manner the danger will vanish."

Eagerly Orator Franklin-Bouillon sought the chance to make an even stronger speech in the Chamber. M. Briand sat, head slumped forward on his breast, upon the Government Bench. There had been a burst of cheering when he entered but now the Chamber was expectant. It was thought that after a fight of perhaps three days at most the interpellators would get the floor. Into the fight plunged young Prime Minister Andre Tardieu.

With unexpected suddenness the matter reached a vote. A motion to interpellate M. Briand at once passed with the dramatic suddenness of a pistol shot. The President of the Chamber announced that Interpolator Franklin-Bouillon had the floor. Dumbfounded he stammered, "B'but I have had no time to prepare my speech! I expected the interpellations to come tomorrow."

"Flat tire!" yelled Briand supporters at Franklin-Bouillon. "Flat tire! Oooo Vooosh! Punctured!"

It was found that not one of the four Deputies registered to interpellate was ready. Had Br'er Briand guessed this? Had the old fox told his Deputies to vote for interpellation? As usual Europe's master parliamentarian remained unmoved, inscrutable, his big head still nodding on his disordered tie and slightly spotted waistcoat. The scene closed with an extemporaneous speech by one of the four interpellators who began, "I am not prepared . . .", trailed off harmlessly.

Bullets for Blum! On the day of M. Briand's neat finesse another Chamber situation, particularly French, was simmering to a boil.

Deputy Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist Party (which considers M. Briand's policies not Pacifist enough) was being roasted by Editor Camille Aymard of La Liberte (a nationalist paper which thinks M. Briand too Pacifist, M. Blum unspeakably so). Wrote Editor Aymard venomously:

"Blum! Blum! Blum! Is not his very name like the sound of twelve bullets entering a traitor's breast?"

As well they might these words were held by M. Blum and friends to be mortal insults. When Editor Aymard, an elderly man, appeared in the lobbies of the Chamber of Deputies he was met by Socialist menaces, warned not to return.

"I shall return at exactly 3:15 tomorrow afternoon and I defy that coward, that traitor to meet me here!" cried Editor Aymard, and strode off to write an even more savage editorial against M. Blum, told the cartoonist of La Liberte to endeavor to surpass himself.

Cartoonist Sennep did something to Socialist Blum which caused French par-ents to keep the particular copy of La Liberte in which his masterpiece appeared from the eyes of their unmarried daughters.

At 3:15 punctually Editor Aymard and Cartoonist Sennep turned up arm-in-arm in La Salle des Pas-Perdus (the hall of lost footsteps) in which journalists and deputies pace. They were set upon by a pack of Socialist statesmen. Elderly Editor Aymard jerked a dog whip from his pocket, laid about him. Deputy Barthe, a questor of the Chamber, rushed up in an attempt to preserve order as was his duty, caught the whip full across his face.

A Socialist grabbed the Nationalist dog whip. Struggling and writhing the mass of embattled Deputies and journalists bore down upon a large plate glass door, shat tered the glass, broke through the wood work and spilled the entire scrimmage out onto the lawn of the Palais-Bourbon.

Only one thing could stop the battle now: La Garde Republicaine. Summoned on the double, these elaborately uniformed guardsmen, many of them youths of France's first families, dashed in to sepa rate their elders, restored order in five minutes. Result of the fight: nil, since all important combatants walked off substantially unhurt.

Franklin-Bouillon and the Issues. The interpellation of M. Briand by M. Franklin-Bouillon, when finally made last week, rose to this climax:

"Eleven million Germans [Hitler's Fascists] have openly declared that their goal is the moral destruction of Europe! . . . Germany is spending this year on munitions 100,000,000 marks more than France. ... Germany is conspiring to obtain a moratorium of her Reparations payments. The reply of France must be:

"No moratorium for a debtor of bad faith!"

As he left the Tribune, excited M. Franklin-Bouillon fairly snarled at still slumbrous M. Briand: "FRANCE WILL NO LONGER BE DUPED!" .

Business. As the Foreign Minister did not choose to reply until next week, the Chamber adjourned over Armistice Day, leaving all major issues except foreign policy untouched. There were no inter-pellations scheduled, 250 proposals or bills carried forward from the last session and 1,400 new proposals or bills.

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