"New Social Order"

(See front cover)

The new man in Europe today, the. comer upon whom all wise eyes were cocked last week, is Pierre Etienne Flandin, big bald Premier of France and the youngest man in his own Cabinet.

This week elegantly-tailored Premier Flandin crosses the English Channel with his messy-looking, franc-pinching Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, who wears white wash ties even in the dead of winter. Once again it seemed probable that weary old Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald would be cheered and heartened by the dynamic young Frenchman. The last time Flandin and MacDonald made a night of it in London (TIME, April 18, 1932) the Scot said afterward, "Conversation was free and easy--a sort of smoker which was in no sense a Quaker meeting!" That was apropos of the Danube Conference, which flopped and fizzled. This week the great questions between France and Britain are:

1) Shall they challenge President Roosevelt to end monetary shilly-shallying by entering a dollar-pound-franc stabilization pact?

2) Shall they formally concede to Germany as a right the rearmament already achieved by Realmleader Hitler as a fact in violation of the Treaty of Versailles?

3) Shall they demand that Germany, in exchange for recognition of her rearmament, sign the Eastern Locarno Pact and re-enter the League of Nations?

This sort of spacious international question is the sort James Ramsay MacDonald loves to twiddle with and talk about. That the British Prime Minister can actually be brought to do anything, the French Premier more than doubted. In Paris last week M. Flandin's press officer had orders to say that the visit might well turn out to be one of "courtesy and contact," with none of the quick action on great issues that Premier Benito Mussolini gave Foreign Minister Laval last month. Since Italy is minute, Britain monstrous, the London talks may still be of greater importance than those at Rome, but to be sure of wasting no time M. Flandin, a driving worker, busied himself with a great cleanup of State business in Paris last week before he crossed the Channel.

Easy Money. To quicken French enterprise Premier Flandin has insisted that money rates must be eased, and to get them down he had to fire the National Tightwad, respected M. Clement Moret, since 1930 Governor of the Bank of France (TIME, Jan. 14). Last week new Governor Jean Tannery was ready to play loose-wad. The play, long since approved by the Cabinet and hashed over in the Press, consisted in presenting the Chamber of Deputies last week with a bill at which extreme conservatives screamed "Inflation!"

Imperturbable big Flandin caused the bill to open with this significant preamble:

"The French Government, deeply hostile to any policy of inflation, remains attached to stability of the national currency and maintenance of the gold value of the franc. But, at the same time, the Government is resolutely determined not to deny itself the normal and perfectly legitimate means of action which may be placed at its disposal in the domain of credit."

In every phrase that paragraph is Pierre Etienne Flandin, but the bill was, of course, presented by Finance Minister Louis Germain-Martin. He asked the Chamber to prime the pump of French credit by raising the limit of Government short-term bond issues from its present maximum of 10,000,000,000 francs ($650,000,000) to 15,000,000,000 ($975,000,000) and to permit the Bank of France to re-discount such paper.

Does or does not this smack of Rooseveltism, anathema to hard-money Frenchmen? Because he thought it did, Governor Clement Moret of the Bank of France had to be replaced by less rigid Governor Jean Tannery. In the hot debate last week Premier Flandin characterized President Roosevelt's methods as "impossible here, because over there results are achieved through spending, while our problem is to reduce expenditure." For a statesman about to leave for London it was also none too tactful of Premier Flandin to exclaim: "What are the results of devaluing the pound? There is more unemployment in Great Britain today than before it went off gold. As for world trade, supposed to be stimulated by devaluation, it has slumped more than 50% since the pound and dollar were devaluated!"

Even after the Premier had exuded all this conservatism, the Chamber still thought his money bill fairly risky. "I prefer to take risks," M. Flandin has said, injecting fresh sap into withered French statecraft. "I believe France will win!"

This spirit seemed to catch fire as the Premier warmed up the Chamber last week, finally won a smash victory for his credit loosener, 450-to-122.

Gobad, Since Foreign Minister Laval is supposed to have given Premier Mussolini discreet French leave to pitch into Abyssinia, Premier Flandin needed last week some sort of Abyssinian outrage to persuade World opinion that Power of Trinity's Empire needs Fascist discipline. Just what was needed luckily occurred in Gobad, a blistering bit of French Somaliland adjoining the realm of kinky-polled Power of Trinity I, Emperor of Abyssinia, King of Kings and Conquering Lion of Judah.

Only 26 years old was M. Albert Julien Bernard, handsome French Administrator of Gobad. He was promoted from Assistant Administrator less than a month ago. burned with zeal to excel in his new post. When terrified French Somali tribesmen rushed to inexperienced Administrator Bernard last week, squealing that 3,000 tribesmen from Abyssinia were pillaging their homes and carrying off their women, what did the bold young man do but sally forth with 17 native soldiers and attack the 3,000 raiders.

Attacker Bernard counted on his natives' brand new French weapons to rout tribesmen armed with 1874 model rifles and short, sharp cutlasses. While the French ammunition lasted M. Bernard's attack was a great success. Once it was exhausted tribesmen engulfed the tricolor, massacred every French native soldier, stabbed, hacked and butchered Administrator Bernard beneath the sizzling sun of Gobad.

In Paris the incident was handled with finesse. There was no outburst by Premier Flandin against Emperor Power of Trinity. All the gory details were released, for their valuable effect in preparing the French mind for gory Italian work later in Abyssinia. Then French Minister of Colonies Louis Rollin. who last month gave back to Tahitian girls their reputedly indecent pareus, announced that the massacring tribesmen were "nomads who have never been pacified," called Gobad an "occurrence incidental to colonial rule." To butchered young Administrator Bernard went, posthumously, by Premier Flandin's order, the tiny rosette of the Legion of Honor.

High Policy. The three issues to be raised in London by Premier Flandin break down factually thus:

Cut Rates. The U. S., Britain and France may be compared to three storekeepers, two of whom are selling at cut rates. Neither President Roosevelt nor Chancellor Neville Chamberlain of His Majesty's Exchequer has ever opposed the ending of cut-rate monetary competition, ultimately. The only trouble is that Premier Flandin seeks dollar-pound-franc stabilization now. He is the storekeeper who has not cut prices. While the other two deplore the unquestionably bad effects of present world money chaos, each hopes to gain brief advantage by prolonging it just a bit more. Last week only highest powered optimists hoped that a money stabilizing pact would be hatched by the Premier and Prime Minister in London.

For hard money folk the brightest news in Paris last week was persistent leakage of rumors that Pierre Laval in Rome promised Benito Mussolini a whopping French loan to defend Italy's lira on the gold standard.

Eastern Locarno. Assassinated with King Alexander of Yugoslavia at Marseille was the great French protagonist of a pact to end war in Eastern Europe by mutually guaranteeing all frontiers. This week Louis Barthou's successor. Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, must try to carry on. In French eyes no situation could be simpler: if Adolf Hitler is sincere in his peace protestations, then Der Reichsfuehrer should sign the Eastern Locarno Pact; if Handsome Adolf is insincere, then there is all the more reason why Germany's neighbors should sign, encircling Deutschland with a cordon sanitaire.

M. Barthou was pumped full of bullets before he could persuade the British Government to act without Germany. British diplomacy, harping away century after century upon the old string "Divide & Rule," does not readily accept a solution which would screw down everything too tight in Europe.

Perhaps the British Empire had best continue indefinitely fishing in troubled waters. But what about Adolf Hitler? He happens to be the boojum who has almost scared British statesmen for the first time since that super-boojum Kaiser Wilhelm II. Unquestionably Stanley Baldwin had the jitters when he announced, as Leader of Britain's ruling Conservative Party, "The Rhine--that is where our frontier lies!" (TIME, Aug. 13 ). Last week observers agreed that His Majesty's Government are just sufficiently perturbed by Nazidom so that Premier Flandin and M. Laval have a bare chance of getting London's consent to sew up the Eastern Locarno Pact without Germany-- if Germany continues reluctant. Also eager to get Hitler in the bag is Soviet Russia, especially so since Comrade Foreign Minister Maxim Maximovich Litvinov is a particularly Jewish Jew.

Might into Right? Chances for action at London seemed best in the realm of some pact or agreement to sanctify Germany's new rearmed Might as Right. An alert realist, Premier Flandin knows that nothing is ultimately gained by insisting that Realmleader Hitler has done "wrong" in rearming Germany.

No deliberate act of a sovereign State can be exactly wrong. Thus should the U. S. Congress, the President and the Supreme Court conspire in any project, however nefarious, it would be "right" and legal in the U.S.--as rearmament is right in Germany. To translate this Might into Right, to sanctify it at London this week or later, seemed the likeliest achievement for-Premier Flandin and Prime Minister MacDonald.

Skyscraper Flandin. Tallest man ever to rule France, the 6 ft. 4 in. Premier is Flandin le Gratte-Ciel ("Skyscraper Flandin") to the people. Unlike Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, who was born a peasant, M. Flandin comes of a family distinguished for generations in the cause of the Republic. His father, when a moppet of eight, was chased by the police, under the Second Empire, for pasting over the billboarded names of Royalist candidates Republican stickers. Today the Premier's elder brother, Paris Physician Charles Flandin, boasts: "Cure, the tiny village of which my brother is still mayor, owes its paved streets and its bridge to our grandfather, its schools to our father, its electricity and its autobuses to my brother. C'est un bebe!

"His character? Ardent, yet reflective! At college he always seemed to be doing nothing, so great is his faculty for work and assimilation. His memory is prodigious, and my brother is a born orator. Voil`a un homme!"

Far more venturesome than most Frenchmen, M. Flandin was early a motorist, broke into the War as one of its first flying fighters. During a long career of politics in grooves honed smooth by his family, he remains the family daredevil, a Flandin who hops at a moment's notice into his plane and buzzes skyward. Cabinet posts for Flandin have been easy, his favorite portfolio being Minister of Finance, under Tardieu and Laval.

Experiment in Democracy. Last year M. Flandin, then Minister of Public Works in the National Union Cabinet of beloved onetime President "Little Gaston" Doumergue, represented France at Canada's Jacques Carder celebration, lunched with President Roosevelt at Hyde Park and sailed home on the Ile de France profoundly thoughtful. Foreseeing that the Doumergue Cabinet would soon be wrecked, Democrat Flandin set himself to evolve a new deal for France which he has called "the last experiment in parliamentary democracy."

Today, on the continent of Europe, only one great power remains a democracy--'France. Necessarily the Flandin Government is oldfashioned, compared to new-fangled Hitlers, Stalins and even Schuschniggs. Finding France glutted with grain and wine, M. Flandin, instead of trying to jack the prices of such staples higher, has jammed laws through the Chamber unpegging the artificial, sky-high prices of certain French staples (TIME, Jan. 7). Slowly la vie chere--the high cost of living--is being ' whittled down. New trade agreements, including sensibly readjusting tariffs, have been signed with Italy and Belgium. A similar pact with Germany pends.

Premier Flandin, though he has signed emergency decrees tightening quotas and upping certain tariffs, avows himself a liberal free trader. Last week, during the Chamber debate on his money bill, he produced statistics showing that in the volume of her shipments of goods and commodities of all sorts, as well as in the growth of deposits in her savings banks, France is slowly gaining ground, without devaluation. "That is of no real use!" snapped the Premier. "It solves nothing and has disastrous after-effects!"

In only one respect is Premier Flandin really New-Dealish. Champion of Democracy and the Republic though he is, the Premier recognizes that in 1935 laissez faire is dead, even in France, and that the Government must exercise a modicum of control. In his most outspoken manifesto he summed his virile aims thus: "My doctrine is that the State should interfere with production only in order to assure its liberty, to organize that liberty, to defend that liberty. ... If the automobile industry should let Citroen go completely bankrupt--Citroen in whose affairs the State has no right at all to intervene-- what would happen? His plants, rid of all their fixed charges, would pass into the hands of one group or another, which would start producing at prices low enough to ruin Renault and Peugeot. It would be the same story in many industries. That is why I want to find some legal way for these industries, through some united action, to adjust production to consumption, to eliminate production at sacrifice prices."

Last week kinetic Premier Flandin boldly intervened to rescue the virtually bankrupt Citroen ("The Ford of France") company and its 22,000 employes with a 15,000,000 franc loan extended by the Bank of France.

"France Is Renewing!" In his approach to all problems the Premier wins esteem in France chiefly because his approach is so characteristically French. He is against mass production: "Our only export future is in supplying foreign countries with products of high quality, even though the price must also be high. . . . We do not desire to become, nor could we become, a nation of mass production and consequent cheap labor. That would be a step, or rather many steps backward!" M. Flandin feels that the genius of the French is as the World's elite workers, creators of the mode.

Definitely the Premier is for work in the basic sense : "We have in France today an overproduction of intellect which is as severe and more dangerous than our overproduction of farm goods or of manufactures. It is time to put an end to this! We must cut short the development of an intellectual proletariat--a social plague which results from granting diplomas without any reference to the need. ... I plan to work out the average number of new doctors, lawyers and engineers needed every year, and to restrict schools to supplying not more than this need."

More broadly the youngest (45) French Premier sums up his vision of the future thus: "What will the new social order in France be like? I laugh at those who think that Capitalism is dead. . . . The struggle for success has always been bitter, and only a few can win. . . . The younger generation seems to me to have a new vitality. This is needed if we are to get business going again. France is renewing herself!"

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