Suburban Revolution

With French President & Mme Albert Lebrun, last week French Premier & Mme Leon Blum went one evening to Paris' now splendidly refurnished Opera to hear a concert by the London Philharmonic. As fiddles sighed and flutes tootled, there began to be furtive activity in the rear of the Presidential Box. Just in case of another French Revolution, it is equipped as a telephonic nerve centre, attuned not only to Paris but to prefectures of all France, and that night last week trouble was already brewing hot in Clichy.

This arrondissement in northern Paris is a factory workers' district, almost solidly Communist but with a minority of hard-headed little cafe and shop keepers who are tough -- or with their middle-class ideas they would not live in Clichy. Some of these shopkeepers belong to the new French Social Party, successor to the bourgeois Croix de Feu league of gentle manly and insipid Colonel Count Casimir de La Rocque (TIME, April 20). Last week the Social Party hired the Olympia cinema house in Clichy for a special showing of their film La Bataille. Communists at once protested. Paris police authorities ruled that entry to the Olympia would be by card only, and that evening a careful police cordon verified that everyone who entered the theatre was, actually a Social Party member, excluding by this means people who might slip inside to provoke a typical Paris theatre political riot.

Scowling at these police precautions, Communist cohorts were slowly massing all this time in Clichy. As workers came home from their jobs, they started shaking their large fists, gesticulating and shouting snatches of the Internationale, Everyone was soon aware that many members of the crowd had brought firearms. Up bustled local Communist Boss Maurice Honel of the arrondissement, showing the police his card as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, demanding: "You must permit the citizens of Clichy to form a procession to demonstrate in front of this thea tre!" Keeping steady, the police commander refused him such permission. At this, citizens of Clichy began flinging paving stones, empty bottles and a little fierce rioting began with brawny wenches active in baiting police to "strike a woman." By now the crowd was swelling to an ultimate 10,000 and something like a total of 3,000 police were moving up. Inside the Olympia about 300 Social Party members sat watching on the screen The Battle, while outside battle was already raging or about to rage. From the Opera box of the President, four miles distant, the Premier sent dashing to Clichy his Private Secretary Andre Blumel and his Minister of Interior Marx Dormoy, then sat back to listen, like the true music-lover he is, to the London Philharmonic.

It was a real street war or suburban French Revolution by the time Premier Blum's investigators reached Clichy. The police, fearing a rush by armed workmen into the Olympia and a massacre inside, were now trying to evacuate the 300 French Social Party members and pipe them safely out of the arrondissement through thin police lines stretching through the crowd of 10,000. The crowd grew so ugly that gendarmes decided to clear the pavement outside Clichy Town Hall, and into it angry Communists retreated, hurling brickbats as they withdrew.

Next from the rooftops of Clichy's workers reckless citizens started using rifles. A police brigadier crumpled with two bullets in his abdomen. Then, as the police charged across the square, pistol and rifle fire cracked from the Town Hall, although Deputy Honel by this time had been bruised by a hurtling missile, his Communist zeal had guttered, and he was screaming for order and tranquillity.

Zip and zip!--Two bullets got the music-loving Premier's secretary, one in an armpit, the other in a leg, and a police ambulance took him home. The crowd and police, trading blows and bullets, fought back and forth over hastily erected barricades, and by this time many Social Party members were selling their lives as dearly as a cursing, kicking, politically-opinionated Frenchman always does, deeming that "Only cowards will not fight!" Somebody socked in the jaw the Minister of Interior, titular head of the French police. After two full hours of fury the 3,000 police and mobile guards slowly, desperately battling 10,000 furious and brawny workmen, got the upper hand of Clichy. Their decisive charge over a big barricade in front of the Town Hall, up its steps and into the corridors, where shooting did not cease at once, was about as grim as the Siege of Madrid, or most any fighting in Spain's Civil War. Gravely wounded by bullets were scores of police and citizens; 66 policemen were hospitalized out of more than 100 police casualties; and 200 citizens were rushed to hospitals, whence all but 50 returned home that night. In the hospital died four citizens ; one man was killed on Paris' field of battle.

After the concert, the Premier & Mme Blum were driven to Clichy hospitals. On the steps cameramen snapped her weeping.

Sturdy proletarians spent the night taking such "vengeance" in Clichy as police were unable to prevent. Typically they swarmed into a little cafe, smashing everything right and left, shouting at the owner, "Traitor! The police fired on us from your cafe!"

All over the world official Communist newsorgans went to press with accounts such as that of Manhattan's Daily Worker which opened with this lead: "Jean Blumel, secretary to Premier Leon Blum, was wounded by a bullet in the shoulder tonight in suburban Clichy, where a serious riot was provoked by Fascists who charged into squads of Mobile Guards and a crowd of 10,000 that had gathered to protest a Fascist meeting. . . . Guns, clubs, bottles, bricks, paving stones and iron bars were used as the Fascists charged into the crowd. . . . Mobile Guards and police blocked off all main streets in the suburb."

In Paris, well knowing that Communist editors everywhere were cooking up this sort of thing, much as they cook many another in efforts to prove that "Fascists" were the aggressors in the street fights which led Spain into Civil War (TIME, July 27 et seq.), New York Times Correspondent George Axelsson recorded the start of this Red version. Cabled Mr. Axelsson: "Among the Communists at the Town Hall late tonight, the allegation was made that the shooting was started by members of Colonel de La Rocque's Social Party, who had filtered back from the theatre into the crowd. This account in no way corresponds with that of the police or of non-partisan witnesses."

Next morning the Earl Browder of France, Communist Party Leader Maurice Thorez, called upon French New Deal Socialist Premier Leon Blum to demand "guarantees" that the Government would never again use police against a workers' mob as they were used at Clichy. Striding triumphantly out of this conference, Red Thorez had his official Communist organs announce that M. Blum had yielded to his demand, this being immediately followed by the Premier's official repudiation and denial. The John L. Lewis of France, M. Leon Jouhaux, leader of the General Confederation of French Workers, backed up Communist Thorez by ordering on strike for one morning 1,000,000 workers in Paris against the "Challenge of Fascism." In his strike call, M. Jouhaux demanded "purging of the Army and the public administration" of all non-proletarian sympathizers, and the Thorez Communists and Blum Socialists issued a joint communique: "The union of Socialists and Communists is more solid than ever in the fight against those who wish to apply to our country the customs and methods of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco."

During the half-day Paris strike, strong-arm squads burst into such restaurants as were serving luncheon, snatched half-consumed meals from under the noses of furious French diners. Shouted one of these, "Scoundrels! where is our Liberty?"

Shouted back a Red plate-snatcher: "Imbecile! we're saving it for you!" Premier Blum, waited upon by prominent Reds and Pinks, listened to their demands that he forbid all Social Party or "Fascist" gatherings in France and take steps to protect all Communist, Socialist and Labor meetings from "Fascist molestation." With a strength of character only his close friends would have credited him with possessing a few months ago, Leon Blum, the first Socialist ever to head a cabinet in France, firmly replied that the Government and police must continue to deal impartially with all French citizens, promised that before the Chamber of Deputies adjourns this week for Easter he will submit himself to the test of asking a vote of confidence.

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