PRIME MINISTER OF FRANCE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25377, 27 December 1947, Page 7

PRIME MINISTER OF FRANCE

MR ROBERT SCHUMAN’S CAREER

“ COUNTERPART OF SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS ” (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 13. Sixth Prime Minister of France Since the liberation, Mr Robert Schuman is the French counterpart of Sir Stafford Cripps. This statesman who has been called to take over power at the height of his country’s economic crisis is a 61-year-old lawyer from Metz, in Lorraine. He

is rated as an expert on finance ai local administration.

Like Britain’s new Chancellor, IV Schuman believes that unremittir austerity is the way back to prosperit He wants to “increase production”Britain’s great present-day war-cry-

to declare war on rising prices and inflation while remaining fair to private enterprise, and to accept American economic aid “without strings.” He is expected to cut public expenditure, oppose wage increases, and abolish subsidies.

His party is the M.R.P. (Progressive Catholics), which grew out of various resistance movements. He is devout and ascetic, and does not drink or smoke. He takes almost all his meals in the Assembly canteen, often sleeps on a camp bed in the Ministry of Finance, and is unmarried. His “home” is a frugally-furnished bachelor room. In 1926, Mr Schuman was a close collaborator of Mr Poincare, the man who “saved the franc” in that year. After the first world war. he entered Parliament as deputy for the Moselle, but remained almost unknown until 1940, when he was made Minister for Refugees. He continued in that office for four weeks after Marshal Petain had set up his Government. But the Gestapo decided he was dangerous. He had practised law in Metz while it was still German (it returned to France only after the First World War). Therefore, he knew too much about Germany. In Solitary Confinement In September, 1940, Mr Schuman was arrested at Gestapo orders, and placed in solitary confinement. He escaped from Neustadt in 1942 with the aid of the underground organisation. Carrying forged papers, he got first across the Vosges frontier, then over the demarcation line into Vichy France. But he had to flee again, and soon emerged as a leader of the French resistance^—hiding in Alsace under the very nose of the Gestapo. After the liberation, he was again returned to the Assembly for his old constituency, and in June. 1946, he became Finance Minister in Mr Bidault’s Cabinet. He secured the same post in Mr Ramadier’s Cabinet last January. Now, “this man no one had ever heard of” is to save the franc and try to walk the precarious tight-rope between Right and Left as the “middle-path” premier of France. Mr Schuman is sometimes confused with Mr Maurice Schuman, who is

also one of the leaders of the Catholic Party, and who was spokesman for General de Gaulle on the French service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. •