Amend the Constitution

Multiply a Vermonter by ten and you have the rugged individualism of a normal Frenchman. Such sweeping powers as are now held by President Roosevelt, the French people will grant to no President or Premier. To them last week it seemed a bold challenge when Premier Gaston Doumergue announced that this week--so help him--he will demand that the Constitution be changed to give a Premier of France roughly the powers of a Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Any day of the week James Ramsay MacDonald can step out of No. 10 Downing St., stroll across the greensward to Buckingham Palace and "advise" King George to dissolve the House of Commons. In France power to block such dissolution is held by the Senate. In practice this joker has produced a tribe of Deputies 'and Senators in open conspiracy to keep their lucrative seats as long as possible.

If the Government can find no stable majority, if the only logical move is to order dissolution and an election on the issue at stake--then the Government can go hang. It has, amid a mounting welter of corruption that produced the Stavisky Scandal (TIME, Jan. 15), the bloody riots in the Place de la Concorde (TIME, Feb. 12) and the reluctant emergence from retirement of ex-President Doumergue as Premier (TIME, Feb. 19) to "save France."

Said M. Doumergue last week in a broadcast to Frenchmen a la Roosevelt: "The Constitution must be revised to avert a dictatorship, a foreign invasion and another war. The situation in Europe is such that instability of our Government might prove fatal. Many able statesmen sit in our Senate and Chamber but they are scattered among the numerous groups which make Parliament look like a kaleidoscope. They pass their time fighting among themselves to achieve a power [as Premier] which it is impossible for them to use well or usefully when they have obtained it. Is not all this to the great detriment of public welfare? I ask you and I leave you to judge."

Thousands of Frenchmen sat down then and there, wrote to their Deputies and Senators, demanded support for M. Doumergue. His prestige was at its zenith--but the politicians in his Cabinet remained politicians. When he asked their unanimous support last week they agreed 11-to-8 that the Cabinet should "submit" his demands to Chamber and Senate. Ominously the potent bloc of six Radical Socialist Cabinet Ministers under paunchy Edouard Herriot served notice that they retain "liberty of action" to oppose their own Premier in debate if they choose.

With only the nation behind him, Great Little Gaston pushed on against the politicians. This week he will ask Chamber and Senate to go to Versailles and there in joint session as the National Assembly amend the Constitution to: 1) raise the Premier who is now primus inter pares ("first among equals") to explicit leadership of his Ministers; 2) empower the President, one year or more after election of the Chamber, to dissolve it without the consent of the Senate; 3) empower the Government to punish strikes within the career ranks of French civil servants by dismissal; 4) provide that in case the Chamber fails to pass the new budget by Jan. 1, a chronic failure in France, the Government may carry on for three months under an automatic extension of the old budget.

In Paris palpitating politicians pooh-poohed rumors that if Great Little Gaston is defeated and makes good his threat to retire to his estate, outraged citizens will again bloody the Place de la Concorde.

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