Foreign News: Great Little Gaston

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Only one statesman is able to take the microphone in France and talk successfully to the entire nation as "My dear fellow citizens and friends." The people call him affectionately Gastounet ("Little Gaston"). They sympathized when he was a lonely bachelor and President of France. They appreciated his delicacy in waiting until his next to last week in office before marrying a lady of wealth with a chateau in southern France. When President Gaston Doumergue retired his popularity remained such as utterly to eclipse his two successors. There was no one else whom sad-eyed, colorless President Albert Lebrun could call to the Premiership in the bloody days of last winter when le peuple seemed rising against a Government hopelessly corrupt. Last week beloved Gaston Doumergue went to the microphone and gave an accounting of his stewardship as Premier in the last six fateful months.

"Dear fellow citizens and friends," came the calm, reassuring voice from every radio in France. "Tonight I ask you a question which you must take to your hearts. Is the general situation in France today better than it was on Feb. 8 when, despite my advanced years, I responded to President Lebrun's summons?*

"God protect me from vanity and pride which dull the reason! But I believe—without pride—that my Cabinet colleagues and I have improved the situation of France which previously was comparable to that of a house of cards.

"Inevitably I cannot please everyone. I am not a dictator. I am a simple citizen who loves Liberty and who has the utmost confidence in your wisdom and your love of France. When I began my labors last February interior and exterior peace was threatened. To avert immediate danger we were forced to the recourse of extraordinary parliamentary procedure. [Gastounet forced Chamber and Senate to vote him power to put through the budget by decree] Thanks to Parliament we have balanced the budget; effected fiscal reforms; so improved our trade position that since March 1 500 million francs in gold have entered France. We have averted the danger of inflation and consequent bank closings. Because we have restored the health of the State's finances we have been enabled to extend important credits to the farmers. Finally we have reduced unemployment which endangered France socially and morally. . . ."

Political Rupture. Thus Premier Doumergue went before the people on the general record of his stewardship, which is undeniably good. He left up in the air the specific failure of his Cabinet to clear up the Stavisky scandal which is still in the dawdling hands of its Parliamentary Committee. Convinced that le peuple blame chiefly the Committee and not himself, Gastounet left the microphone to begin his summer vacation. Next evening as he was about to catch the sleeping car for his wife's estate near Toulouse the Stavisky scandal blew up in Committee and excited Cabinet Ministers came tearing to the station.

The blowup had been touched off by smart, ruthless onetime Premier André Tardieu, now a Minister of State (without portfolio), who thought he saw his chance to stage a political comeback by posing as the one Cabinet Minister who would "speak the truth about Stavisky" and tear the veil of official discretion.