Tomcat's Cabinet

There was a cabinet crisis, the franc was supposed to be in danger and Paris was on the qui vive last week, but sad-eyed President Albert Lebrun did not hurry through his luncheon. After the cheese, the fruit, the steaming cafe noir and the exquisite fine, there would be plenty of time to send one of M. le President's long-snouted Renault cars around to fetch a successor to fallen Premier Edouard Daladier (TIME, Oct. 30). When the limousine went out at last it sped to the Navy Ministry. There a great gourmet, one of the most discriminating connoisseurs of food and wine in France, had for once missed the rite of luncheon, waiting anxiously at his desk for the expected summons of President Lebrun.

Gourmet Albert Sarraut is one of France's great empire builders, a stocky, twinkly-eyed Senator with a warm sense of humor, an icy sense of duty and the charmed life of a tomcat. At the turn of the century Georges ("Tiger") Clemenceau picked young Tomcat Sarraut as a likely scrapping partner in the bitter Dreyfus affair. As Clemenceau's Under- secretary of Interior, M. Sarraut was challenged by a certain Deputy Pugliesi-Conti to duel over the rehabilitation of Jew Dreyfus. He accepted "on condition that it is to the death." Tomcat Sarraut's seconds thought he was dead when they carried him off the field run completely through the body by his opponent's dueling rapier, but he had lost only his first life. He recovered to become Undersecretary of War in the first Cabinet of Aristide Briand who was to be eleven times Premier of France.

Sent to Indo-China as Governor-General, Tomcat Sarraut lost several more lives in a stern, successful effort to put down native rebellions and buttress unshakably the Chinese cornerstone of French empire. At a reception a native with a bomb shook the Governor-General's hand, grew nervous under his steady gaze, lost courage, shuffled on down the reception line, then turned and threw the bomb which blew a great hole in the floor near M. Sarraut. Few months later another bomb, hurled directly at the Governor-General, missed him by inches, rolled among a crowd and blew twelve Chinese to bits. Indomitable M. Sarraut continued to appear publicly on all occasions while slant-eyed, superstitious natives murmured, "There comes 'The-No-Can-Be-Killed.' "

In 1914. Governor-General Sarraut returned to France, enlisted and lost a few more of his lives on the Western Front winning a breastload of medals. After the War he went back to Indo-China, again as Governor-General, only to be attacked by a Chinese Communist with a repeating pistol who pumped him full of lead.

"The Governor-General's intestines were punctured in several places yet twelve days later he was walking about!'' marveled his surgeon.

"Twelve days are all I need to get over things like that!" Gourmet Sarraut likes to boast over a bottle. "Once an automobile ran over me on a bridge--so that not only were some of my bones crushed but I was also flung into the river. Ten days later--two days sooner than my twelve-day average--I was again on my two feet, somewhat splintered but able to work."

In recent years M. le Senateur, who is now 61, has worked hard but inconspicuously in several ministries. He was Minister of Interior in the Poincare Cabinet of National Union which "saved the franc" (TIME, Feb. 7, 1927). Several times Colonial Minister, his strictly practical empire building won a nickname, "The Great Co-ordinator." On the death of France's great Naval Minister Georges Leygues, "Father of the Post-War Fleet" (TIME, Sept. 11), sturdy Tomcat Sarraut took the Naval portfolio which he held until summoned last week by President Lebrun.

The President had little choice. For reasons peculiarly French it was really M. Sarraut's turn to be Premier. Ever since the election of May 1932--when the Chamber of Deputies majority shifted from Right Centre to Left Centre--the only "logical" party from which to pick a premier has been that moderate Left-Centre group misnamed the "Radical Socialists."

One by one outstanding Left Centrists have been picked by the puppet President to be Premier:

Edouard Herriot, paunchy and philosophical, whose Cabinet fell when the Chamber balked at his demand that France pay her due debt installment to the U. S. (TIME, Dec. 26).

Joseph Paul-Boncour, flashy and temperamental, one of the great trial lawyers of France, .who fell when he tried to jam through a properly balanced budget (TIME, Feb. 6).

Edouard Daladier, shrewd and homespun, who nursed a makeshift budget through the Chamber last year and clung to power with consummate skill for nine months but fell fortnight ago when the Chamber again balked at passing a soundly balanced budget.

Had M. Herriot been well last week the President might have summoned him, but he lay griped by a kidney infection resulting from his trip to the Soviet Union and Turkey (TIME, Sept. 11). "The rumor that I have been poisoned is ridiculous!" said he last week. "There are no more Borgias!"

With Herriot out of the running, Daladier just fallen and Paul-Boncour under a cloud,* Tomcat Sarraut took his turn as Premier last week without enthusiasm, well knew that the Chamber factions are still so insecurely interbalanced that only a General Election--which many Frenchmen now consider inevitable--could provide any Government with a really firm majority. Carrying on in the circumstances as best he could, he announced a new Cabinet which was simply the Daladier Government reshuffled:

Premier and Navy Minister/---Albert Sarraut

War Minister/---Edouard Daladier

Foreign Affairs/---Joseph Paul-Boncour

Finance/---Georges Bonnet

Interior/---Camille Chautemps

Justice--Albert Dalimier

Colonies--Francois Pietri

Air/---Pierre Cot

Education/---Anatole de Monzie

Promptly nicknamed a "Ministry of Convalescence," this Sarraut Government announced in the words of the Premier, "We will take our time. . . . Our policy is pure Radicalism.**. . . We have decided to cut Government costs mercilessly. It is impossible to ask the taxpayers to pay more. . . . We pledge France to continue the foreign policy of Aristide Briand--full co-operation with the League of Nations. We shall refuse to enter into separate disarmament negotiations with Germany."

Though this program promised little, Premier Sarraut received from the entire French Press what was called a "fraternal welcome"--fraternal because he and his brother Maurice are among the leading publishers of France, own the famed Depeche de Toulouse, most potent French provincial newsorgan. Approvingly the Paris Press recalled that at the London Economic Conference, Delegate-Gourmet Albert Sarraut delivered a ringing speech in which he cried, "The world in this time of Depression is suffering from grave underconsumption of wine. . . . Ah wine: the gift from heaven of the blood of life which has been vouchsafed us in this vale of tears as compensation for our suffering! . . . Assuredly at such a time as this the world should drink more wine!"

*Because some Frenchmen feel, perhaps unjustly, that he and Sir John Simon jointly bungled the negotiations at Geneva after which Germany quit the Disarmament Conference and the League.

/-Portfolio held by same man in the Daladier Cabinet.

**In the French meaning of Radical, pure ''moderate Liberalism."

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