Out Cabinet!

MM. les Deputes were presented last week with the 1932 budget which, to the ingenuous eye, balanced. A little rapid pencil work by Deputies of the Left showed that it did nothing of the sort. There was an actual deficit of between $160,000,000 and $280,000,000 hidden by such devices as counting only nine months for expenditures but twelve months for receipts, and including Reparations payments which Germany obviously will not make because of the Hoover Moratorium.

Nevertheless the Chamber supported Premier Laval's budget policy by a majority of 52. Next the Chamber, for the third time in 13 years, approved giving the vote to Frenchwomen who have never gotten it because of die-hard opposition from the greybeards of the French Senate.

To them Premier Laval took the electoral reform bill (containing not only women's suffrage but broad electoral reform). In the Chamber it had passed by a vote of 278 to 0; but due to the absence of Left Wing Deputies, there was doubt of a legal quorum. Nevertheless Premier Laval thought the Senators might as well talk about the bill, offered February 19 as the date on which talk should begin.

Vexed, the Senatorial greybeards, who wanted to vent their angry words at once, promptly overthrew the Laval Cabinet by a vote of 157 to 134.

Since the Cabinet was overthrown in the Senate. President of France must ask a Senator to try to form the next Cabinet. Last week Paris guessed that President Doumer would ask Senator Laval to try to succeed himself.

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