THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for transmission through the Post as a Newspaper. SATURDAY DECEMBER 14. 1946. M. Leon Blum Comes Back

Northern Advocate, 14 December 1946, Page 6

THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for transmission through the Post as a Newspaper. SATURDAY DECEMBER 14. 1946. M. Leon Blum Comes Back

The history of French politics is marked by many strange happenings.

The coming and going of Governments in rapid succession has suggested discovery of the secret of perpetual motion.

Today there is recorded another of the happenings which have made the outside world wonder.

M. Leon Blum has again become Prime Minister of France, an appointment which brings into prominence a figure who, it was thought, had disappeared from French political life.

A victim of Nazi brutality, and the machinations of the Men of Vichy, M. Blum, whose imprint or, modern French politics is clear and distinct, was thrown into no less than eight German concentration camps, some of dread character, and in one ri which it was reported that he had died.

The defeat of Germany and the freeing of France secured the release of M. Blum, a Jewish Socialist, who had led the Government during a critical period of France's pre-war history, and who has now been chosen almost unanimously as Prime Minister, all parties agreeing that he seems to be the cnlv leader likely to obtain decisive support in the National Assembly.

Who is M. Blum, and what does he stand for?

The question can best be answered by recalling what he was in lhs earlier years, before he had become a leading figure in French political life.

He was at that time the editor of i Socialist newspaper and. as a Social-ist-Facilist, he had been a marked man for a number of years, it being declared confidently by Socialists, as far back as 1831. that he would be the first Socialist Prime Minister of France.

This prediction was fulfilled in 1986. and lost little time in introducing legislation which he and his party had urged for many years, the measures including prevision of a 40-hour week, recognition of industrial unions and the establishment of relief works as a means of overcoming unemployment in times of depression.

In spite of the influence wielded in his own country by this impressive personality, little is known ci' hint by the world at large, and his return to the leadership of what is regarded as a caretaker Government of France pending the stabilisation of the Upper House, in order to make possible the election of a President, will inevitably arouse public interest in the man and his mission.

It may be that experience of the Second World War and the ignominy and ruin suffered by France at the hands of the Germans as a result of the deplorably ineffective condition into which the nation had fallen prior to the outbreak of war, has changed M. Blum's outlook in some directions.

In spite of this the 74-year-old Socialist statesman will no doubt proclaim a doctrine which will receive the approval of a large section of world opinion.

This doctrine may be gathered from a statement made by M. Blum in 1931. when discussing France’s relationship to Germany in particular and Europe in general, his views being in line with those now being discussed by the United Nations Organisation. In the course of his statement he said: “If the minds of men are to he finally free from the pre-war and wartime psychosis, and if the belief in the inevitability, and even in the possibility of war is to be killed, the whole of Europe must unite in one great coordinated effort to disarm.

“If Germany is to be made to respect her treaty obligations, and is to submit her illicit manufacture of armaments to an effective method of control. France must also progress-

ively disarm and induce the rest of Europe to do likewise.” While M. Blum will n 0 doubt have realised from sad experience that disarmament cannot be safely practised by an individual nation unless neighbours do likewise, his lifelong advocacy of universal disarmament may be expected to play an important role in the United Nations' efforts to promote world peace if his occupancy of the Prime Ministership of France continues sufficiently long to allow him to participate in UNO'S activities.