"STRATFORD EVENING POST” THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1930. ANDRE TARDIEU..

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 9, 6 March 1930, Page 4

"STRATFORD EVENING POST” THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1930. ANDRE TARDIEU..

THE Tiatus in tlie proceedings al the London Naval Conference and tlie deadlock in French politics has drawn pointed attention to M. Tardien, whose Government was defeated 'by one vote on what was apparently a catch division. It seems, however, that no other party will be able to carry on and M. Tardieu has been requested by the President Co again essay the task of forming a Ministry. Seeing that so much depends upon his success the following] character sketch will be of interest : “Andre Tardien had just entered the Chamber of Deputies for the first time when the outbreak of the conflict took him to the front. There, as a captain, lie shared the fortunes of the fighting men. Wounded, gassed, at last rendered unfit by bard service, .for more combat, he came back to- the Chamber to become, aim sot overnight, the first lieutenant of ' Clemenceau. When Clemenceau was refused the Presidency because of the failure charged against him by the French critics ofjthe Treaty of Versailles, Tardien shared his , fall. He was the almost unique defender of the Treaty and the Tiger in the first postwar Chamber., He was among the victims of the election of 1924; oven his. newspaper languished and failed. Tardien seemed to have disappeared. But in 1026, standing for a constituency fin the East, he was triumphantly elected in a campaign in which his speeches electrified France. It was the moment when the franc had almost collapsed, when the nation was turning to Poincare, when the country was for tlie moment clone with. parochial politics and eager to tind leadership. Returning to tlie Palais Tardien became almost overnight the lieutenant of Poincare as he had been of Clemenceau. Minister of Public Works, Minister of the Interior, the latter the most important post from the viewpoint of domestic politics, in barely three years he made lor himself a new reputation, -faidieu is of the_ generation which was just coming on when the war broke, the generation which fought and won, the war, which has*already recovered hope anti confidence. His is the generation which is in the real sense modem. Himself. Tardien does not belong to any political party, is not the heir to any of the old controversies. _ His platform is progress, national reorgamsat-i ion He believes in France as a great power for the future as well as the past.”