Foreign News: Reparations Cabinet

In the Elysee Palace a small golden clock tinkled ten. Jovial, florid Gaston Doumergue was settling contentedly to the digestion of his late presidential dinner. From the clock a low, rapid tik-tik-tik. From the President of France a contented, sleepy sigh. Felicity! Then a door yawned and in strode busy, kinetic M. Raymond Poincaré, the man who saved and stabilized the franc, the grizzled "Lion of Lorraine."

Wide awake in an instant, M. le President sprang up with beaming face. For a whole week he had tried to get M. Poincaré to form a new ministry in succession to the Poincaré Cabinet of Sacred Union, torpedoed last fortnight (TIME, Nov. 12).* At first the "Lion of Lorraine" had sulked and growled resentment at the torpedoing—the growls and sulks abating slowly. His sudden appearance now at ten p.m. meant unquestionably that he had succeeded in arranging a new and workable group of parties and ministries. Soon President Gaston Doumergue formally approved the following cabinet:

Prime Minister without portfolio—Raymond Poincaré.

Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Justice—Louis Barthou.†

Foreign Affairs—Aristide Briand.†

Interior—Andre Tardieu.

Finance—Henri Cheron.†

War—Paul Painleve.†

Public Instruction—Pierre Marraud.

Marine—Georges Leygues.†

Public Works—Pierre Forgeot.

Commerce—Louis Bonnefous.

Agriculture—Jean Hennessy.

Labor—Louis Loucheru.†

Colonies—Andre Maginot.

Pensions—Louis Anteriou.

Air—Laurent Eynac.†

Momentous is Prime Minister Pomcaré's decision not to hold the portfolio of Finance himself as heretofore but to entrust it to Senator Henri Cheron, Chairman of the Senate's Finance Committee and Minister of Commerce since the death of Maurice Bokanowski (TIME, Sept. 10). The Prime Minister significantly intimated last week that he will now have time to visit Berlin in connection with the momentous work of revising the Dawes Plan (TIME, Sept. 24, et seq.). When asked if he would also visit Washington to seek revision of the French debt, Lion Poincaré growled irritably but did not say no. French observers hailed suave, expert, experienced Senator Cheron as just the man to wangle the budget through Parliament by Christmas in the absence of his chief.

Second in significance only to the Cheron appointment is the promotion of smart, indispensable Andre Tardieu from his previous portfolio of Public Works to the vastly more important Ministry of Interior. Destiny will yet make him Prime Minister of France.

Dopesters figure that the new cabinet will be supported by 320 deputies of the Right and Centre in a Parliament of 612. The Sacred Union (nominally of all parties) commanded 427 votes.