Pillars at Peace

Frowning in his southern garden, fatherly little Premier Gaston Doumergue gathered last week that his command to his Cabinet ("Tell the boys to be good") had not appeased the catfight that broke out fortnight ago in his "Government of Appeasement" (TIME, July 30). "Liars! Forgers!" hissed ambitious Conservative Minister Andre Tardieu, charging the Radical Socialists with complicity in the Stavisky Scandal. "Liar! Cabinet-wrecker!" snarled Radical Socialist Minister Edouard Herriot. "Retract! Resign!" howled both.

Back to Paris to the rescue of his shaky cabinet hastened "Gastounet," carrying with him all the sympathy and affection of the French people. Once again he used that affection to club politicians out of purely partisan stands. Calmly he ruled: "Tardieu was replying to calumnies of which he had been made the object. The vehement ardor with which he sought to defend himself led him to exceed the limits within which, in my opinion, he should have remained. . . . But I never thought ... he was acting with the premeditated purpose of putting in danger my truce and the appeasement Ministry in which Herriot and he had stood at my side for six months as two pillars of the house. No one can replace them with equal authority."

Ominously the Premier concluded: "Either the Cabinet as at present constituted must be maintained or else I must offer its collective resignation and accept the consequences, namely, the formation of another Cabinet with another Premier than myself."

Faced with political ruin if they shouldered the responsibility of forcing Gaston Doumergue out, Mm. Tardieu and Herriot muttered a temporary grudging "Quits." Premier Doumergue kissed them both on the cheek and his Cabinet seemed safe until a vengeful party congress of Radical Socialists meets in October.

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