FRENCH PREMIER

Grey River Argus, 13 March 1940, Page 4

FRENCH PREMIER

What is Daladier ? Edouard Daladier, Premier of France, who rules the country with full powers of a sort unparalleled in recent French history, lives in a modest four-room apartment on the Rue Anatoles des Forges. The neighbourhood is divided sharply between a fashionable, sector and one not so fashionable. M. Daladier lives on the non-fashionable side (writes John Gunther).

M. Daladier is an average man. This is a central point for understanding his character. And he lives in an average French neighbourhood on a street'lined with small shops: a big “cafe-tabac,” advertising beer on its orange awning; the “Boucherie de I’Etoile,” selling meat; the “cremerie,” a truck loaded with empty milk bottles before it; a “boulangeriepatisserie,” its windows stacked with yard-long loaves of bread; a “pharmacie” full of cheap medicines. M. Daladier could live his whole life within a few yards of his apartment, and never lack anything. His office is at the Ministry of War, in the heart of the Faubourg St. Germain—the citadel of old France, the France of literature, aristocracy, massive social tradition, and superb taste and cultivation. This is the gamut that Daladier represents: the typical burgeois smallFrenchman, a self-sufficient individualist, transnorted by the pressure of events to the arena of politics and military affairs in a world of mass conflicts.

Daladier is short and stocky, with big houlders and heavy hands. His eyes are bright blue below uncombed eyebrows that dart upward. He smiles almost continually when he talks: a quick, perceptive smile, punctuated by short bursts of rather hard laughter. His conversation is to the point. He likes badinage, but doesn’t waste much time on it; and he loses temper easily. Born of Peasant Stock. I. asked one of Daladier’s close collaborators what aspect of France the Premier most clearly represented. The answer came that Daladier, a peasant born of peasant stock, above all represented the land—the sail—the good earth—of France. As a peasan Daladier believes unalterably in private properly, in personal ownership of land. As a peasant, too, he stands for hard work, for tenacious cultivation of his soil. He wants to hold an individualist and a democrat, hold what he has. Again as a peasant he is both an individualist and a democrat. He stands for himself; he stands also for equality with his fellow men. Finally, like most peasants, Daladier is a bit ingrown, a bit suspicious. He buttons his collar close, as the French say.

He worked a hard day as a child; he works a hard day now. He arrives at his office early. He goes home to lunch, returning to the office in midafternoon and staying at his desk till perhaps nine o’clock in the evening. He is not always easy to work with; when fatigued he may ride his associates hard. Daladier has no social life at all. He isolates himself at home or in his office. Diplomats find it difficult to see him, except the American Ambassador, 'William C. Bullitt, whom he likes and trusts deeply. Few people know him well.

He. has no interest in money. He

lives on his salary, and has never been touched by financial or other scandal. He likes to walk, ride and swim. Even during his first term as Premier in 1933, he would leave the office, get his bicycle, and pedal across Paris or out into the country. His chief intellectual exercise is reading, especially on military affairs and on the history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. His wife was Mademoiselle Laffont, daughter of a scientist, who had been his “Marianne” while he was in the trenches, “Marianne” being the name given to girls back home who regularly corresponded with a soldier. Immediately after demobilisation Daladier looked up this girl whose letters had helped carry him through four brutal years of war but whom he had never met. He fell in love with her and married her. Her death about eight years ago was a terrible blow, and he has been a lonely man ever since.

Edouard Daladier was born in southern France, at Carpentras in the department of Vaucluse, in 1884. ‘Not only was his father the village baker and his grandfather before that, his mother, too, was the daughter of a baker in a neighbouring village and one of his brothers still carries on the family business.

Daladier has no false pride concerning his background. He is still a frequent visitor to Vaucluse and his native village, and knows every stick stone and person by heart. As a young man he set out to be a teacher and was later a professor of history at the University of Grenoble and at the Lycee Condorcet in Paris. Then came 1914. Daladier was called up, and became a sergeant of “tirailleurs,” later a captain. He won the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre with three citations. .His interest in politics dates from his youth. A few yards from the ancestral bakery was the headquarters of the local Radical-Socialist partv, and there he heard political talk which determined his political faith and his career. While still teaching at Grenoble he was elected Mayor of Carpentras. A Radical-Socialist in France, be it noted, is often not a .radical and seldom a socialist. Rather the Radical-Socialist party normally the most powerful in France, corresponds roughly to English Liberals, or American Democrats.

Political Career.

The war over, Daladier turned seriously to a political career, though for some years he kept his teaching job, too. He is one of the few notables in French politics who are not lawyers or journalists by profession. In 1919 aged 35, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Vaucluse constituency and has been its Deputy ever since. He was a good wheel horse; not brilliant, not eccentric, not dangerous, not " ambitious enough to arouse jealousy in his superiors. He worked hard and was dependable for almost any kind of job. Daladier has never been ?. great parliamentarian. His speeches in the Chamber are seldom as effective as those he gives in the country at large, and his popularity is much greater in the country than in Parliament. Therefore, when he became Premier in April, 1938, it was not surprising that he soon asked for full powers. Recently he postponed the general election from 1940 to 1942. It would be unfair, however, to call Daladier a dictator. He is still, even in war time, the servant of the Chamber. and can at any time be dismissed by an adverse vote. He has made no attempt to build up a totalitarian machine, nor are the full powers

granted him really exceptional. In emergencies France almost always calls for a strong hand. He may be a dictator in the sense that Clemenceau was a dictator in the World War not in the sense of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini.

During his early career, Daladier travelled a good deal, something that most Frenchmen don’t do. In the 20’s he visited the Soviet Union. Great Britain and Germany, always with an eye open for army matters. In 1933-34, when Minister of War for 13 months, he grasped a real opportunity to overhaul the army, revitalise it, and above all mechanise it. He is called France’s best War Minister since Maginot. Maginot built the fortified line; Daladier built the tanks, the armoured cars, the caterpillar trucks behind it. ’ That the French army is to-day the best in Europe is partly Daladier’s work. In his political life, there.have been two supreme crises. The first came in February, 1934, when he had been Premier only a few days, and when bloody rioting forced him out.

Stavisky Case.

The background of this affair was the Stavisky case, the biggest scandal of the century. Sacha Stavisky was a confidence man who knew important politicians, and who killed himself (or possibly was murdered by the police) when he was found out Various Radical politicians, not Daladier were linked with fraudulent Stavisky enterprises. The Rightists used the scandal as a stick to beat the Government with. Premier Chautemps resigned. Daladier took over, but before he had warmed his office chair mobs were gathering to attack the Chamber. Daladier called out the “Gardes Mobiles.” They fired on the crowd and 17 were killed.

Daladier’s justification was that if he had not dispersed the rioters by force there might have been a Fascist “coup d’etat.” He was bearing the burden of mistakes that Chautemps and others had made. But he resigned at once and it seemed that his career was over.

Yet in 1935 he rose to influence again when he brought Left-wing Radicals into a newlv-formed “Front Populaire.” In the July 14 demonstration that summer Daladier marched to the Bastille with Leon Blum,-the leader of the Socialists, and Marcel Thorez, the Communist chieftain. In the general election the following year, the Leftist coalition won handsomely. Leon Blum became Premier, with Daladier as Minister of War. The Chamber then elected rules France still.

In 22 months of power the Popular Front attempted to put liberalism into politics on a forceful scale. The Blum-Daladier Government redu'ced the power of the financial oligarchy and the Bank of France, nationalised the aviation industry, co-ordinated the railways, established the 40-hour week, workers holidays with pay. Above all, it checked the growth of Fascism, and give France a muchneeded respite from incessant turbulence and agitation by Rightist plotters.

Popular Front Collapses.

But the Popular Front collapsed because its failures also were formidable. It had to face one of the most difficult of all questions: Can a Left Government reform capitalism without abolishing it? Can a Left Government function efficiently inside a capitalist structure? Blum, as Premier, was constantly perplexed by the problem of how far to go. The Communists pushed him to the Left; Daladier and the radicals held hjm to the

Right; therefore Blum wobbled in the middle. He outlined a tremendous programme of social reform. But ultimately the budgeteers and bankers had him at their mercy; he had to have money. Moreover, his own Left let him down. He gave the trade unionists such privileges and concessions that work almost stopped. The industrial structure all but disintegrated. Blum and Daladier were, moreover, unceasingly harried by the mounting international crisis. France needed airplanes and munitions, yet the Government was shortening hours tacitly encouraging strikes, which made efficient production on a big scale impossible. During the last six weeks of the Blum Government, not a single airplane was manufactured in France.

Daladier succeeded Blum as Premier in April, 1938 and began a marked turn to tlie Right. Soon after he took office the 40-hour week was, in actual practice, dropped. He began to attack the Communists fiercely, and in November, 1938, he crushed a ' general strike. In September, 1939, after the Russian pact with Germany and Russian invasion of Poland, Communist Deputies were arrested and the party suppressed. He made national defence the basic desideratum in every field, preaching national unity, national integrity, national solidarity. He said that France to survive must be strong; to be strong it must be united; to unite it became his task. And—Communists aside—he has united France.

Munich Crisis.

The other supreme crisis in Daladier’s career was Munich. When that crisis came, in September, 1938, Daladier followed Chamberlain’s lead. He went to Munich, met Hitler and Mussolini, and helped to sell Czechoslovakia out. Indeed, Daladier’s behaviour might be called worse than Chamberlain’s. The British were not pledged to defend Czechoslovakia; the French were. Daladier himself said, on July 12: “The solemn undertakings, we have given to Czechoslovakia are sacred and cannot be evaded.” The betrayal that came in September is one of the harshest in history. The French have three major excuses for the Munich episode. First, that France was not in any. position to face a showdown. The country was pervaded with defeatism; the air force was inefficient; the national muscles were flabby from lack of exercise. Second, French public opinion would not have supported a war, a settlement at any price was what the people wanted. They were not willing to fight, even though Czechoslovakia was the heart of their security system. Third, the French of necessity had to follow England.

Daladier flew back to Paris after Munich, glum, despondent and worried over France’s reaction. His plane circled the airport; he saw a big crowd. He was terrified. He thought that he and his advisers might be mobbed. Memories of the February sixth riots came to mind. He braced himself, wondered if the “Gardes Mobiles” would be there to protect him, and stepped off the plane. To his amazement he was greeted with a wild ovation and led in triumph to the Chamber.

It is difficult to sum up the sources of Daladier’s power. He is no genius. He is no demagogue. He lacks magnetism or political “oomph.” He is no titan, no born leader of men. But he speaks the language of the average Frenchman; that is his secret. Like the average Frenchman, he is resilient, an individualist, shrewd, not particularly ambitious, • packed with

common sense, rational, and moderate. He has the incomparable advantage of being arch-typical of the people he represents. Therefore the people like and trust, him. He is one of themselves. I asked one of his best friends what Daladier’s central faith was, what he believed in most. The answer came, “Three things. France. The small man. And himself,”