Fiery Cross at Crisis

"Send for Colonel de la Roque," ordered Premier Gaston Doumergue last week as his Cabinet seemed about to fall. The Colonel is France's No. 1 Fascist, grim-jawed leader of the Cross of Fire league of some 200,000 war veterans. Last winter they were in the vanguard of the riots against "rotten Parliamentarianism" in the Place de la Concorde when 28 Frenchmen were shot down (TIME, Feb. 19). Last week Paris tingled with electric rumors that the "Cross of Fire" was ready to rise and attempt a coup d'etat, should Premier Doumergue be overthrown.

Marshal Petain, testy old War Minister and close to the "Cross of Fire," had made a scene at the next to last meeting of the Cabinet. When the six Radical Socialist Ministers, headed by M. Edouard Herriot, announced that they would resign, rather than support a three-month emergency credit to give Premier Doumergue time to put through his proposed reform of the Constitution (TIME, Nov. 12), lean, grizzled Marshal Petain marched up to paunchy, pipe-sucking M. Herriot and hissed "Monsieur, you have committed a crime against France!"

When hard, fortyish Colonel Robert de la Roque marched with his quick, springy stride into the Premier's office anything was possible, including -- as some jittery Paris papers pointed out -- civil war. Gold was in panicky flight from France, citadel of the Gold Standard. Nearly $50,000,000 worth had been drawn by frightened capitalists from the Bank of France within 48 hours to be rushed abroad. Moreover Premier Doumergue had every reason to believe that he had the nation with him and against the politicians on his project of reforming the Constitution. For days delegations had been arriving to tell Great Little Gaston how right he had been in his radio appeals a la Roosevelt. Wrote that hard-boiled Paris political observer "Pertinax" (Andre Geraud): "By his broadcast appeal Doumergue has deeply moved France."

At 71, however, Gaston Doumergue is no Georges Clemenceau, no tiger. He never was of the calibre of Poincare, Foch and Clemenceau--but he survived them. Last winter, when blood spattered the Place de la Concorde, only ex-President Doumergue, as Premier, had prestige enough to save France by organizing a truce which last week had lasted nine long months. Now that his truce must end, how would he end it? With all the fervor of a sterling bourgeois and a passionate Republican, M. Doumergue exhorted Colonel de la Roque not to attempt a Fascist solution of the crisis.

"Will you do as I ask?" cried Republican Doumergue at last. Fascist de la Roque drew himself up and saluted the little man in civilian grey. "Oui, monsieur le President," he said. "To you the 'Cross of Fire' can only answer yes."

Soon after this, the last move of M. Doumergue as Premier, he placed the resignations of himself and Cabinet in the hands of President Albert Lebrun. There was no disorder near any Government building--except for a few hundred citizens who got out of hand in front of the Paris Opera, jeering police and shouting "Down with Parliament! Down with the Staviskys!"

In an open letter to Citizen Doumergue, soon read by all Paris, No. 1 Fascist de la Roque declared: "

You alienated the politicians because you tried to reconstruct the state, because you tried to extirpate the unhealthy parties in which these factions found nourishment. You possessed and still possess the national confidence. Our only regret is that you did not perhaps realize its depth and test its worth and use its resources."

Paradoxically nothing so infuriated the politicians and alienated them from M. Doumergue as their feeling that his appeals over their heads to the people of France by radio were having an effect which might eventually spoil their Parliamentary game. According to its rules, the Premier is responsible to Parliament, not to France.

New Cabinet. Furtive, ingratiating M. Pierre Laval, who in 1931 was President Hoover's most unpopular White Houseguest, has been lying low since his fall as Premier (TIME, Feb. 22, 1932). A windfall to him was the assassination of Foreign Minister Louis Barthou with King Alexander at Marseille, for M. Laval was then able to move into the Quai d'Orsay. In France there is a secret fund at the disposal of the Foreign Minister for "propaganda," and Foreign Minister Pierre Laval has been making the most of it. Last week he had so many friends that President Lebrun was constrained to offer him the Premiership.

M. Laval declined: "My work as Foreign Minister is of such importance that I cannot attempt to form a Government." This was taken to mean that the support of Laval & friends was at the disposal of any Premier who would leave him with his snout in the Quai d'Orsay. With a shrug of his shoulders, President Lebrun then sent for M. Pierre Etienne Flandin, 6 ft. 6 in. tall and aged 45--the biggest and the youngest man ever to become Premier of France.

Flandin for years has been a "comer." Rich, one of the best grouse shots in Europe, sportsman, pilot and financier, he has cornered for himself leadership of a small but highly strategic group at the centre of the Chamber of Deputies, the so-called "Left Republicans." As Finance Minister on two occasions -- in the undistinguished Laval and Tardieu Cabinets in 1931 and 1932 -- M. Flandin earned the solid reputation of being a "conservative progressive." Ambitiously coiled for his big chance like a tempered spring, M. Flandin consented last winter to serve as Minister of Public Works under Premier Doumergue but took good care to be al ways saying or doing something that would keep him in the papers. Last September he rushed over to Canada for the Jacques Cartier Celebration, dropped in on President Roosevelt at Hyde Park be fore sailing for home with his strapping young wife.

When his big chance finally came last week Comer Flandin seemed such a happy choice to Paris financiers that government bonds bounded up two francs, the gold drain stopped and word went round "with Flandin, the gold standard will be safe."

As he bustled about, trying to form a cabinet, the youngest Premier met remarkably few rebuffs. French politicians realized that a prolonged crisis would surely lead to riots. M. Laval, of course, was already in the Foreign Office and Premier Flandin was glad enough to leave his old chief there. His other old chief, M. Andre Tardieu, had just had an operation. 'T go into retirement with M. Doumergue," he observed dramatically when M. Flandin offered him a portfolio. But M. Tardieu hinted that he will be all right in a few weeks, by which time there may be another Cabinet crisis.

The new Premier tried hardest to get Marshal Petain, but the Marshal refused to stay on as War Minister. "I am old, I am tired, and I am no parliamentarian," said Petain. But he approved Premier Flandin's second choice of brilliant General Louis Felix Thomas Maurin as War Minister.

When that fanatical gold standardist, M. Louis Germain-Martin, agreed to stay on as Finance Minister, government bonds and the franc upped again. The rest of M. Flandin's new Cabinet was composed largely of other holdovers from the Doumergue Cabinet, but he was able to spring one major surprise--Georges Mandel.

Nobody has ever before been able to get M. Mandel into a Cabinet, yet no French politician has a name more magical among his Chamber peers. Mandel was Clemenceau's greatest henchman, the lynx who did the Tiger's undercover work, much of it dirty. That Georges Mandel accepted last week the obscure post of Minister of Communications was characteristic. Any other portfolio would have suited him as well. With Georges Mandel working for Pierre Etienne Flandin, dopesters conceded him a safe majority when Parliament meets this week. His program, crisp-sounding but sufficiently vague, struck a note of concentration upon economic issues, a note of youth in France, where aged statesmen love to play that politics is pure politics--to them, an art. Said Premier Flandin:

"I have succeeded in joining around me men who, I am certain, will work arduously for France and the Republic, forgetting party differences.

"We have but one goal--to fight against misery and unemployment; to restore the national economy; to maintain strong public finances; to rejuvenate and reform the State.

"I hope the nation will receive the Cabinet sympathetically, recalling that I was forced to build my Government in a minimum of time."

Over Armistice Day police were busy quelling sporadic riots in Paris, Lille and Narbonne between Socialists, Communists and Nationalists, the latter shouting "Long live Doumergue." Outside M. Herriot's hotel in Paris an irate mob, not knowing that the No. 1 Radical Socialist was out of town, shouted "Hang Herriot to a lamp post!" and "Down with the radical Socialists!" until police arrested five mobsters.

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