Cabinet's Week

Last week the new "Business Government' of tall, kinetic, 45-year-old Pierre Etienne Flandin, youngest Premier in French history:

P:Bestowed 60,000 francs ($4,000) upon the now hard-pressed and almost deserted American Library of Paris. Said M. Flandin: "The library is useful to French writers, newspapers and institutions of learning which concern themselves with America."

P:Sent police and Mobile Guards against 20,000 furious French farmers who gathered at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and sang the Marseillaise in protest against Premier Flandin's decision to unpeg the French internal price of wheat. After the farmers had dispersed grumbling, the Government announced that within three months the price of wheat will be gradually unpegged, and French farmers will be obliged to report the area they intend to sow in wheat to the State which may curb any farmer who seems likely to raise over 100 quintals (367 bushels).

P:Reached a tentative accord with Germany on procedure to be followed IF the Saar Territory votes on Jan. 13 to rejoin the Fatherland. Meeting in Rome last week under League of Nations auspices, French Ambassador Count de Chambrun and German Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell signed a text which they did not disclose. It was supposed to provide, if and when Realmleader Hitler bags the Saar, that 1) Germany will buy the Saar mines owned by the French Government for 900,000,000 francs (approximately $59,400,000) plus large payments in coal; and 2) Saar citizens will enjoy "equal rights" regardless of race, language or religion. Since the Germans have always known that they would have to buy the mines to get them, and since France has always maintained that she would protect Saar citizens from wanton oppression, the "agreement" amounted to a facing of facts.

P:Won a fresh vote of confidence in the Chamber, 457 to 120, defeating a Socialist motion to take away from Foreign Minister Pierre Laval the treasured "secret funds" of the Quai d'Orsay, traditionally used to sweeten the French Press. In effect the Chamber thus endorsed a double-barreled speech by M. Laval last week in which he fired blandishments and menaces at Adolf Hitler: "We shall ask of other countries that they assure conjointly with us a police mission for the eventual re-establishment of order. . . . Chancellor Hitler affirms his wish for peace. We ask him by associating in the policy which we are pursuing in Eastern Europe to translate his words into acts! . . . We have no intention of inclining before the factual situation created for us by the rearmament of Germany!"

Thus all in one breath France pressed Germany again to sign the Eastern Locarno Pact, under which Nazis would have to renounce their "Rosenberg Plan" to expand into Baltic territory (TIME, May 28), and associated Paris with London's rebuke to Berlin last week for rearming in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

P:Slammed through the Chamber the expenditure clauses of next year's budget, totaling 46,983,718,365 francs ($3,100,925,412), preparatory to debating this week the receipts clauses or "Where shall we get all that money?"

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