FRENCH CRISIS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 11

FRENCH CRISIS

Socialist Blum Agrees To Form Cabinet CHAUTEMPS OUT No Thought Of Returning To Power By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. Paris, March 10. The Socialist leader, M. Blum, has agreed to form a Cabinet after the resignation of the Premier, M. Chau temps, because the Socialists and Communists refused to grant special powers to ensure the success of the national defence loan. M. Chautemps said: “I have abandoned power without thinking of returning.” “You see, we have looped the loop and come back to where we left off,” remarked M. Chautemps, when he was asked by the President, M. Lebrun, to form a Government on January IS, after M Blum had abandoned his intention to form one. M. Chautemps’s Government was formed on January IS, and comprised eighteen Radicals and two Re-publican-Socialists. On March 4 a crisis was averted by the Socialist Party allowing the passage of M. Chautemps’s Labour Code Bill, on which the Government staked its existence, and it was reported that the debate on the Bill had intensified the antagonism of the Popular Front majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Conservative Senate.

This week it was announced that M. Chautemps proposed to ask the Chamber of Deputies for the full financial powers which had been refused M. Blum, and that he was prepared to resign if they were not granted him. On June 21, 1937, M. Leon Blum’s Popular Front Ministry resigned because the Senate refused him the full financial powers he desired, and M. Chautemps formed a Government with M. Blum as Vice-Premier. This Government remained in office until January 14. 1938, when it fell as a result of the resignation of the Socialist Ministers from the Cabinet. It was the second Government since the Popular Front came into"office on May 6, 1936. M. Chautemps had then twice previously been Prime Minister, first in 1930, when bi-’ tenure of office lasted only 24 hours, and again in 1934, when his Government was overthrown by the Stavisky scandal. .M. Bonnet, Radical Minister of Finance in M. Chautemps’s Government, and M. Blum, each failed to form a Government, and the President then asked the recentlyresigned M. Chautemps to form a Government, which he did, on January 18.