1931
Pierre Laval
FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE
Jan. 4, 1932
On the last day of 1931, who loomed calm, masterful and popular as Man of
the Year?
"It has been a lean year for everyone," said Prime Minister James Ramsay
MacDonald with suppressed emotion. Then, faced by the conference that is to
meet Jan. 18 to do something about Reparations, he burst out, "For God's sake
let us meet now!"
"From this terrifying spectacle which the world presents we must raise our
eyes to Heaven!" cried Pope Pius XI in his Christmas message. "It is to be
feared that God will leave men to themselves and that would be most terrible
ruin."
The year 1931 pitched even Colonel Lindbergh into heathen waters; sent
Mahatma Gandhi disgruntled back to India; faced Josef Stalin with ragged gaps
in the Five-Year Plan; failed to produce a Fascist government under Adolf
Hitler (potential Man of 1932). But who rose from obscurity to world
prominence, steered a Great Power safely through 1931, closed the year on a
peak of popularity among his countrymen?
Only one man did these things and at the height of his sudden greatness
wagged an explanatory finger at President Hoover. The keynote of 1931 was
sounded by Man-of-the-Year Pierre Laval as he sailed for Washington: "A severe
correctional and disciplinary period is indicated."
French Coolidge. Twelve months ago Pierre Laval was as obscure—even in
France—as Governor Calvin Coolidge before the Boston police strike.
Swart as a Greek, this compact little Auvergnat (son of a village butcher
in Auvergnat (son of a village butcher in Auvergne, south-central France) was a
Senator of no party, an Independent. The public neither knew that he always
wears a white wash tie (cheapest and unfading) nor cared to figure out that his
name spells itself backward as well as forward. Addicted to scowling, didactic
(he once taught school), possessed of mellow but unexciting voice, identified
with no conspicuous cause or movement, Senator Laval was also too young to be
noticeable in France in January 1931. He was only 47 and France likes its
Premiers to be over 60. The extreme youth of Pierre Laval was made glaring by
the fact that France had just dispensed with a Premier whom many considered
"much too young," brilliant Andre Tardieu, 54, whose Cabinet was brought down
by the Oustric scandal.
Worst of all, a good many Frenchmen who had vaguely heard of "The Man in
the White Tie" understood that during the War he was a slacker and afterwards a
Communist. In 1914, being already Mayor of the proletarian Paris suburb of
Aubervilliers, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by his old
constituents as a Socialist. he did not enlist in the Army. When drafted he
served briefly at the front as a common poilu. His Socialist views caused him
to orate directly after the War against the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919 he
lost his seat as Deputy, quarreled with some of his Socialist colleagues,
remained friendly with others and is said to have been briefly enrolled at one
time as both a Socialist and a Communist, not being sure which way the cat of
popular sentiment would jump.
Aubervilliers was the irresolute young statesman's salvation. He was and
he remains today Mayor of Aubervilliers. Unshakably rooted in this Paris suburb
he cultivated the friends he had made as a Deputy, notably that bald, enigmatic
millionaire Joseph Caillaux, onetime Premier. In 1924 Mayor Laval again sought
and won election as a Deputy, not as a Socialist this time but as a moderate
Republican.
Shrewd Aubervilliers understood. Her beloved Pierre was doffing his
radical cap and putting on a moderate political coat to match those of his
moneyed friends. Why not? Great Aristide Briand had made exactly the same
switch; so had Alexandre Millerand, President of the Republic.
Less than a year later the Auvergnat, diligent in his attendance upon both
M. Caillaux and M. Briand, was rewarded by the minor portfolio of Public Works
in a Painleve Cabinet which starred Foreign Minister Briand and Finance
Minister Caillaux. When Patron Briand shortly came in as Premier he took
Protege Laval under his wing, gave him a course in Chamber intrigue as
secretary general of the Prime Minister's office, graduated him prematurely in
1926 as Minister of Justice.
Unfortunately Premier Briand had no head for finance. The collapse of the
franc drove him back to his favorite post of Foreign Minister. In came great
Premier Raymond Poincare to save the franc, and incidentally to blight the
careers of several Briand satellites. Ousted Pierre Laval contrived to get
himself elected a Senator from the Department of the Seine (which he has since
represented). He dropped back for several years into obscurity as a quiet
Independent. Still close to Old Brer Briand, he also made himself close to
Young Andre Tardieu.
In 1929-30 the Tardieu skyrocket went up, twice. In the first Tardieu
Cabinet there was no Pierre Laval; in the second he was unobtrusively Minister
of Labor; and when this Cabinet fell his chance almost came. Briand and Tardieu
both insisted that Laval be asked to form a Cabinet. He tried and he failed,
because by a typical quirk of "loyalty to my friend Andre" (Tardieu) he
insisted that in a Cabinet of which he was Premier his friend must be a
Minister. To form a cabinet including Friend Andre at that moment proved
impossible. Again M. Laval slipped into obscurity; but 1931 was just around the
corner. Briefly Theodore Steeg, former French Resident General of Morocco,
headed a shaky, stop-gap Cabinet.
Laval's Year. On the morning of Jan. 24, 1931 there was again a French
crisis. The Steeg Cabinet had fallen following charges that the Minister of
Agriculture had speculated in wheat. Importunate telegrams flashed from the
President's Palace to Brer Briand at Geneva begging him to become Premier for
the twelfth time.
Surfeited with such honors Briand wired his courteous but absolute
refusal, suggesting Pierre Laval. By this time the Oustric scandal was somewhat
cold, the constantly shifting line- up of the Chamber had altered, and sturdy
Auvergnat Laval was able not only to form a Cabinet but to smuggle into it as
Minister of Agriculture his friend Andre Tardieu.
Thoroughly befuddled were such correspondents as supposed Andre Tardieu to
be roughly ten times as big a man as Pierre Laval. One cabled: "The Tardieu
Cabinet has been reformed with Laval as Premier." Others assumed that Protege
Laval would dance inevitably to Patron Briand's tunes. Scarcely anyone realized
the tremendous will-to-rule of the Man of the Year. Perhaps Georges Mandel,
long the most intimate colleague of "Tiger" Clemenceau, had a glimmering of
what was coming. "The Laval Cabinet has nothing to fear," he wrote. "It will
last if it gives the impression that it is working.... This country likes a
Government that really governs."
Straight through 1931, while other Premiers or Presidents hesitated,
wavered and in some cases fell, Pierre Laval gave month after month the
consistent impression that he and his Government were working, are working:
February: Just getting into his stride, Premier Laval leaned on the
stooped shoulder of old Brer Briand in Chamber debate, backed him in pledging
France to observe the One-year Naval Holiday proposed by Foreign Minister Dino
Grandi of Italy.
March: Faced by Red riots in French Indo-China, the Premier convened the
High Colonial Council in Paris for the first time in three years and studied
critically the results of guillotining 700 native Communists in the past two
years—with the result that Minister of Colonies Paul Reynaud is now in the Far
East "sympathetically examining native grievances."
April: Foreign Minister Aristide Briand's conciliatory policy toward
Germany having been discredited in French eyes by the revelation that Germany
and Austria planned a zollverein (customs union), Premier Laval put tactful
pressure on his own Foreign Office, forcing Old Brer Briand to take a "stronger
line" which later forced zollverein into the World Court, where it died.
May: When the Chamber and Senate sit together as the National Assembly at
Versailles and vote for the President of France, who shall vote first is
determined by opening the dictionary at random. Last spring the dictionary
opened at L. Alphabetically no other L name in the National Assembly could beat
Laval. Having cast the first vote Premier Laval saw his shaggy old mentor
Aristide Briand heartbreakingly defeated for the Presidency, which fell to
water-drinking, penny-pinching Paul Doumer.
Opening in May the French Colonial Exposition proved phenomenally
successful in a bad year, strengthened the "impression" that the Laval Cabinet
was "working."
June: Premier Laval showed his tough Auvergnat mettle by holding up the
Hoover One-Year Moratorium single-handed, hurling his famed defy—"President
Hoover can entrench himself behind his Congress and I can entrench myself
behind the Chamber"—and hanging on doggedly until the Moratorium was modified
into a form acceptable to France.
July: M. Laval signed the Moratorium Accord after negotiations at the
French Foreign Office with Statesman Stimson and Secretary Mellon, "to which
Briand was brought in like an aged grandmother whom it is desired not to leave
out of the family festivities," as venomous "Pertinax" remarked in L'Echo de
Paris.
August: The Premier in his character of Worker, Driver, Leader recuperated
in the grand manner by taking the cure at Vichy where go so many French, U.S.
and British tycoons.
September: Taking Old Brer Briand in tow, Premier Laval junketed to
Berlin, conferred with Chancellor Bruning and Foreign Minister Curtis (since
resigned), achieved little or nothing, but boosted his fame enormously and is
said to have made a warm friend of Dr. Bruning. ("What a man!" Visitor Laval
exclaimed to beaming German newshawks. "I wish there were more such men in
France!")
October: Leaving his Foreign Minister and his wife behind and taking his
daughter Jose (Josette to him) along, Pierre Laval made the journey to
Washington. D.C. that stamped his name upon millions of U.S. minds and swelled
his fame throughout the world.
President Hoover is well known to dislike almost all Frenchmen. He and
Premier Laval had high words which they called "free and frank." Smoking U.S.
cigarets at the furious rate of 80 per day, the didactic Frenchman in striped
trousers, black jacket, white tie and suede-topped buttoned shoes wagged his
short forefinger at the President in high-laced shoes and conservative business
suit, making hotly such points as that France will not stand for having another
Moratorium thrust forward from the U.S. "suddenly and brutally." (Never
understood in the U.S., the French position was and still is that President
Hoover had a perfect right to be as "sudden" as he liked about sacrificing for
one year $257,000,000 due the U.S. (that being his own business and Congress
not being in session): but that the President had no right "brutally" to insist
that France make a similar abrupt sacrifice of $97,000,000, that being Premier
Laval's business and the French Chamber being not only in session but twice as
angry as Congress when Congress finally convened and voted.) Equally blunt was
Mr. Hoover, according to some reports, in challenging the French thesis of
"Security before Disarmament," insisting on "real disarmament" when the
Disarmament Conference meets.
Concrete result of the White House negotiations was almost nil, Premier
Laval departing vastly puffed and pleased by a verbal agreement that he should
summon the German Ambassador on his return to Paris and start Germany taking
the initiative for a final settlement of her troubles by appealing under the
Young Plan for a committee to study them, which has now been done.
November: The complete dominance of Premier Laval over what was once
supposed to be someone else's Cabinet was dramatically pointed up when
69-year-old Aristide Briand collapsed in the Chamber Nov. 17 and lay for a few
moments crumpled down upon his desk. As chairman of the League Council (both
before and after this collapse) Old Brer Briand lost further prestige by
failing utterly to restrain the aggression of Japan in Manchuria. Meanwhile
short Premier Laval and his tremendously tall, broad- shouldered and aggressive
Finance Minister, Pierre Etienne Flandin, were fighting through the Chamber
their fiscal program for next year.
December: Chamber and Senate passed not only numerous routine Budget bills
and the like but also approved several highly controversial steps involving the
personal prestige of Premier Laval and Finance Minister Flandin:
1) The loaning from the Treasury to the Bank of France of $100,000,000 to
cover the Bank's present paper loss on Sterling which it still holds. Premier
Laval, it was revealed, kept the Bank under pressure during the summer to
"stand by the pound" when its directors wanted to sell Sterling.
2) The loaning of $12,000,000 to the French Line to complete their unnamed
super-super-liner.
3) The adoption of a $140,000,000 program of public works to relieve
French unemployment, two-thirds of this sum to be furnished by the Treasury and
one-third by local bodies. According to Laval Cabinet official estimates there
are unemployed some 500,000 Frenchmen, compared to some 7,200,000 U.S.
citizens.
On Christmas Eve the Chamber gave Premier Laval a straight vote of
confidence 315 to 255, then adjourned to the second Tuesday in January, leaving
the Man of the year unshaken, triumphant. How great is his achievement may be
measured by the fact that only four French Premiers since the War have been
able to remain in power for as much as one year.
Pierre Laval in his year-end public address at Chapelle-la- Reine nailed
to his Cabinet's mast a French policy (practical or impractical) respecting
Reparations which was endorsed next day by virtually the whole French press:
"We will not allow Reparations to be sacrificed to private debts!"
"Tenez bon! Hold tight!" shouted a delighted auditor.
"I always do!" cried the Man-of-the-Year. "We will not let the Young Plan
be torn up!"
Nation of the Year? France closed 1931 with vastly greater gold stocks
than any other European state (the U.S. has half again as much); she could
count her unemployed in hundreds of thousands while Britain and Germany counted
theirs in millions; but her trade balance has turned adverse: her U.S. tourists
dwindled from 300,000 in 1929 to 100,000 in 1931. The conviction is strong
among Frenchmen that they are just entering hard times.
COVERS GALLERY: Click here to see the cover image from 1931
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