FRANCE: Cabinet of Premiers
(4 of 5)
"Frenchmen of all parties and of every class! The hour has come to rally to the Monarchist principles on which was founded and conserved during centuries the greatness of France, and which alone can assure peace, order, justice and continuity of purpose and deeds. Given in exile. . . . JEAN III."
Whatever may become of the Government, there is little likelihood that Jean III, or even his pale handsome aviator son the Comte de Paris, will ever sit on the throne of France. Despite their noise, there are not many more than 50,000 convinced Royalists in all France. Most of them are old ladies with lorgnets and an
Air, old gentlemen with wasp waists and Ascot ties. There remain perhaps 10,000 Camelots du Roi who fight in the streets for a sentimental ideal and to express their disgust at all politicians in office. Jean, Due de Guise, became pretender to the throne because he is a great-grandson of the very bourgeois Monarch Louis Philippe. He is an excellent gentleman farmer.
Politically even his name is unfortunate. Louis XIX. Henry V, even Philippe VII might be a name to conjure with, but John III leaves even French romantics cold. John II (1319-64) was an ineffective monarch who suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the English at Poitiers, spent years of comfortable but embarrassing captivity in London and when released returned voluntarily to Britain to die because he was unable to raise the ransom he had promised Edward III. Even in France there are few who could recognize the flag of the Bourbon monarchy: a white banner with golden fleur-de-lis. Causes. As an example of civic corruption the Stavisky scandal pales into in significance beside the disclosures of the Teapot Dome and Seabury investigations in the U. S. The $30,000,000 worth of Bayonne pawnshop bonds involved was less than one-tenth of the amount involved in the failure of New York's S. W. Strauss & Co. (TIME, March 27. et seq.) Yet in neither case did Aldermen stand cheering on the barricades, or cavalry trample bondholders or waiters carry the dying into Childs'. Fundamentally last week's riots were the relief of a long-suffered national nausea induced by the Chamber of Deputies. Depression, the unbalanced budget, Stavisky. high taxation, fears over the Nazi menace all contributed. Deputies are elected only once every four years. They represent some 14 different parties, no one of which can form a government without bickering and bargaining. But they can upset any government on a simple vote of nonconfidence. Since the present Chamber was elected in May 1932 France has had seven Cabinets. All the most important domestic problems have been postponed time & time again. A small-minded Chamber has throttled the executive branch of government. The prospect of two more years of the same tactics from the same men was more than Frenchmen could bear.
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