To Negotiate

The U. S. Ambassador to France, Mr. Myron T. Herrick, embraced the new French Ambassador to the U. S., M. Victor Henry Berenger, as the latter was about to set out from Paris for Washington last week. Mr. Herrick kissed M. Berenger first on one cheek and then on the other. At Paris this enthusiastic Latin farewell was cheered as evidence of Secretary Mellon's intention to meet M. Berenger at least half way when he should arrive at Washington and resume negotiations for the settlement of the French debt.

M. Berenger, as everyone knows, was a member of the ill-fated Caillaux debt mission (TIME, Oct. 5, 12) which set itself a rigid limit of seven days in which to beat down Secretary Mellon's terms, and departed in dudgeon when "Wizard" Caillaux was unable to do much more than exasperate everybody during that period. He took back to France, as everyone knows, only a stopgap U. S. offer to accept $40,000,000 a year for five years as a full discharge on the interest of the French debt for those years. The Painleve Cabinet, in which M. Caillaux was Finance Minister, fell (TIME, Nov. 9, Dec. 7) and the stopgap offer has not been heard of since.

It is well known that M. Berenger was opposed from the first to M. Caillaux's program of attempting to deal with Secretary Mellon "in the manner of an actor defying his landlady." Now Ambassador Berenger, Rapporteur General du budget au Senat, is supposed to be coming to present tactfully the books which show France's "capacity to pay," and with the intention of remaining in the U. S. until a settlement is reached based upon a mutual flinging of all cards upon the table.

Meanwhile it was recalled that M. Berenger is almost better known in France as poet, author and editor than as the man who made reports on "High Explosives," "Modern War Tactics," "The National Safety" and "Our Colonial Armies," during the War.

His talent as a poet is not open to question among Frenchmen, who look to L'Academic franc,aise as their arbiter of culture. Several times that august body has appointed him its laureate. The thing is on record as a matter of fact--which impresses no people more than the French.

M. Berenger's optimistic, slightly "golden rule" philosophy of life was made known when he undertook to edit L'Art et la Vie, and later in a novel L'Effort. Mere "Effort" however did not suffice him long. His increasingly militant "golden rulism" found expression in the polemic daily, L'Action. That he holds no brief for mere crude babbitt attainment is clear to anyone who has read his L'Aristocratic Intellectuelle: "So long as a people do not grant to intellectual aristocracy its proper place, so long must their social system remain suspect to the wise and dangerous to the masses."

Incidentally the "intellectual aristocracy" of Paris has long frequented the Salon of Mme. Berenger, a charming daughter of the distinguished Delzant family.