Changed Times

Basic doctrines of European Socialism up until a few years ago were internationalism, disarmament, pacifism. Last week a vote at the Socialist Party Congress of France at Montrouge, suburb of Paris, showed dramatically how the rise of European dictatorships has changed those doctrines.

Former Premier Leon Blum, the party's leader, presented resolutions endorsing French rearmament against the Fascist "menace." He wanted the U. S., Great Britain, France, Poland and Soviet Russia to form a democratic front against the dictatorships so that they would have to concede no more to threats of war. M. Blum also wanted France to revive the now moribund French-Soviet alliance.

Opposed to M. Blum was his old friend Paul Faure, the party's secretary general, an old-line Socialist. M. Faure said he believed peace should be kept at all costs, no "entangling alliances" with either democracies or dictatorships should be made. Bad as the peace of Munich might have been, M. Faure believed it was better than war. At the end of long debate the new Socialism won: Leon Blum's resolution was endorsed, 4,322-to-2,837, with 1,004 abstaining.

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