Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1938. FRANCE'S POLITICAL BROKER

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 87, 13 April 1938, Page 12

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1938.

FRANCE'S POLITICAL BROKER

"Germany," writes John Gunther, "is Hitler; but France is a whole lot of people." That was a fact when he recorded it in 1935, and it is still a fact today, as it has been throughout the intervening years. No fact in European politics is more important. Germany has remained Hitler; Austria has become Hitler; but France has been Blum, and Chautemps and Daladier, and a whole lot of other people who go in and out with these ephemeral leaders —or who,1 still more potently, move behind the; scenes. Today M. Daladier (who was Premier twice in. 1933-34, but the second time for four days only) again heads a Government and seems to be acting as a sort of broker, whose business it is to sell.to the conservative Senate a truce in labour disputes and to thus buy from the Senate financial accommodation and certain tirnelimited powers. If the transaction succeeds, the broker's brokerage will be a rather longer, tenure of office than he enjoyed in February 3-7,1 1934, a hectic period which included the notorious February 6. That was the date when a big public demonstration in Paris led^to shooting, the starting of which is denied both by Government forces and by rioters, but which ended in seventeen deaths, and won for M. Daladier and other Ministers of the day the title of "the Fusiliers." The dead of February 6 included veterans who had fought for France in the Great War, and personal responsibility for their deaths is placed on the head of M. Daladier and his friends by certain members of the French Extreme Right._ These memories do not help the broker today, nor the truce it is his mission to achieve.

Gunther gives Daladier the credit that on February 6 he "genuinely feared a Fascist coup" in Paris. Much time has been devoted by some f writers to the contention that the Fascist coup had then (and has now) no real existence as a practical possibility in France; but, whether they are right or wrong, it is .not fair to assume that M. Daladier used the Garde Mobile in' Paris on February 6, 1934, without regarding the Fascist threat as a real one. From these antecedents he steps now into the position of seeking to quell the French strikes in the interests of national defence, and of using peace on the labour front (not yet attained), to secure terms from the Senate that has'twice overthrown M. Blum. If this aim is achievable at all, it seems that the situation requires a man who is sufficiently trusted by Right and Left to command orderly work from the latter, and^accommodation from the former. Is M. Daladier the man? That any one person should command complete confidence in both camps seems to be impossible, as the gap between them is too wide. And men who are loved in one camp and hated jn another are numerous, and useless for this occasion. Can M. Daladier, the Fusilier of' February 6, hope to be a successful mediator where men like M. Blum have failed?

Though of the Left, both M. Blum and M. Daladier are credited with being rich men, either in their own way or by marriage. Daladier "married a wealthy woman, but he has no . gift for luxury or display." Daladier belongs to the RadicalSocialists, which is the party at the Right end of the Left or Popular Front; reading from Right to Left, this Front consists of (or consisted of) Radical-Socialists (with Daladier), Socialists (with Blum), and Communists. Daladier has been classed as a Radical-Socialist leaning strongly to the Left, and therefore well fitted (as Radical-Socialists like. Herriot were not) to join actively in a Popular Front. The Front, indeed, would have been impossible, even in 1936, without Radical-Socialists of the Daladier type. Daladier has been described as "blunt; a clumsy but effective orator, simple, a man of the people, slow-witted." But Blum has been called "a Jew of almost intolerable cultivation, prccieux, sophisticated to his slim, elegant finger-lips ... a rich and fastidious recluse." What curious differences! These arc two of llie "whole lot of people" who constitute I France. And, over the border, the

Germany which is Hitler watches them come and go. While French affairs move melodramatically on the public political stage, behind the scenes in Austria more melodrama is incubating, and a source of it may be what is called Dr. Schuschnigg's secret dossier, allegedly smuggled out of Austria and containing matter which may' embarrass Herr Hitler with Italy and Czechoslovakia. It is clear that one of the first German concerns in Austria was to clamp on the censorship; hence, no doubt, the trouble with Mr. G. E. R. Gedye, who wrote from Vienna for the London "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post" and for the "New York Times." It is alleged that in January, in.Vienna, a Nazi was found to be in possession of a plan to overthrow the Schuschnigg Government, _ signed R.H., believed to be the initials of Rudolf Hess, for many years Herr Hitler's "left-hand man." Quoting Mr. Gedye, Mr. Robert Dell writes lin the "Nation":

According to this plan ... the Austrian and German Nazis in cooperation were to promote frontier incidents, and at the same time the Austrian Nazis were to start terrorist activities in the, interior. As soon as the Austrian police took action, the German army was to cross the frontier to prevent "Germans from shedding the blood of Germans." For this purpose German troops were to be massed, on the frontier under the pretext of manoeuvres.

And in due course they were so massed on the frontier. Dr. Schuschnigg knew this' when he visited Herr Hitler, and, according to Mr. Gedye, he also knew of the alleged plan signed R.H. j Through Mr. Geyde and Mr. Gunther, both of whom lived for years in Vienna, a great many statements equally sensational have found print during the last four years, and'there is some indication that Nazis will issue denials. It is even cabled that an-attempt will be made to charge Major Fey (who recently committed suicide) with the murder of Dr. Dollfuss in 1934. Round the "secret dossier" may therefore gather a fame challenging that of the dossier Dreyfus.