FRANCE: Acts Before Words

Andre Tardieu, 63, the baldish, bankerish French statesman whose countrymen used to call him “I’Americain” for his bustle and bluntness, lay gravely ill last week at Menton after a nervous breakdown. He was the last living French signer of the Treaty of Versailles, and as Death knocked at his door, the last bitter fruits of that treaty were dropping off history’s tree into the ample lap of France.

If his shaken mind could form the thoughts, sick Andre Tardieu must have given thanks that France, in this dark hour brought on by his generation’s vindictiveness, was no longer led by doctrinaire democrats of the Blum type. At her head now was serious, square-skulled Edouard Daladier, up from schoolteacher and poilu to emerge, after years of bourgeois apprenticeship under stodgy Edouard Herriot, as a leader whose nationalism approaches that of Poincare or Clemenceau. “The Soldier’s Premier” they now called Daladier. Ever since Munich he had been busy forging a Stop-Hitler ring around Naziland.

When Edouard Daladier learned (through the press) that Russia would give Hitler a free hand in Poland, he indulged in no public breast-beating or recriminations. Action was his answer. After conferring in his capacity as Minister of National Defense with British War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha, he summoned Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet from vacation in the country, closeted himself once more with his generals. To M. Bonnet he gave the job of checking with France’s allies, letting them know that this time France meant business. To his generals he gave the word to man the Maginot Line.

Ordinarily France’s reservists get their call to the colors quietly, by mail. It was so last September, before Munich. This time, Daladier commandeered a fleet of Paris busses and taxicabs, formed them into “bucket brigades” with brushes & paste to plaster Paris after midnight with the neat white posters, bearing the crossed flags of the Republic, which spell Mobilization. Next day, the north and east Paris railroad stations were jammed with scores of thousands of young men, averaging in age about 25 years, some in khaki, some in the old horizon blue, most in civilian clothes with their extra socks and keepsakes in bundles. Uniforms awaited them at the Maginot Line.

The first day’s contingents were grave and grim. Fathers wearing 1914-18 Croix de Guerre, wives with strained faces, saw them off. Next day two more categories were called up. These were more cheerful, going to join their comrades, calculating that their job would be primarily defensive, to hold the most massive system of forts ever built, mostly underground. In two days and nights, Daladier moved between 500,000and 600,000 troops to France’s eastern border from Paris and other cities of the north, to join a million or more already there. All private munitions factories were taken over by the Government, all vacationing employes called back to work.

This much action Premier Daladier took, after consultation with his Cabinet, under the emergency powers given him by Parliament last November. He acted silently, though letting the mobilization be fully publicized to warn Germany. Then, on the eve of the German Army’s scheduled assault upon Poland, he addressed his French people by radio, again as much for Hitler’s benefit as for theirs. His tone was sombre, simple, convincing. Said he:

“With the life and liberty of Poland . . . the destiny of other Europeans is linked. . . that of every French citizen is involved. There is not one of you who does not understand that if, by lack of foresight or by cowardice, we permit all these people to succumb one after another . . . very soon this effort [Hitler’s] to dominate Europe will turn quickly against our own country.

“Remember, too, that that onrush on France would have at its disposal far more vast means of action and resources than at present threaten our country. …”

Daladier referred gratefully to the peace efforts of the Pope, Franklin Roosevelt and King Leopold of the Belgians. He referred to Britain’s mobilization and said: “Our resolution is like hers. For the defense of liberty, France and England make a solid unit.”

Then he concluded: “In these solemn hours we would all like to believe . . . that wisdom and reason will triumph in the end. But if all our efforts remain useless, we shall appeal to Frenchmen and to French women—to your desire not to suffer servitude. It is that courage and that will which animate you young men, who by hundreds of thousands have rejoined your regiments, with the grave, silent resolution of which no country in the world has ever shown a more magnificent example.

“Frenchmen, you wish to remain free. We want peace, but we cannot accept or submit to violence. . . .

“Frenchmen, French women, I have no need to tell you your duty. . . .”

That night, Paris (like London) was darkened. All shipping was warned to keep six miles clear of the Cotentin peninsula (Cherbourg). Next day a contingent of British troops landed at Dieppe. Trainloads of British naval reserves rumbled across France to the Mediterranean. French engineers cut the eight Rhine road bridges from Basle north to Strasbourg, mined all the south Rhine railroad bridges. French police went out to speed the nation’s harvesting with the order: “Get it in, wet or dry.”

Meantime Foreign Minister Bonnet, quicker to obey his chief than he was last year, conferred and conferred at the Quai d’Orsay, by telephone and face-to-face with the men of Britain, of Poland, of Rumania, Hungary, Spain, Turkey. U. S. Ambassador Bill Bullitt called every day (his daughter Anne, 15, kept busy at the U. S. Embassy helping panicky Americans start for home). M. Bonnet kept in touch also with Berlin and Moscow through M. Daladier’s Ambassadors there. What he learned he passed along promptly to his Chief: that Turkey would stand fast with France and Great Britain (see p. 25) ; that Spain disliked Hitler’s deal with the hated Reds; that the Serb-Croat settlement in Yugoslavia made possible that country’s neutrality; that Hungary dreaded fighting; that Rumania feared Russia’s new attitude, but would defend herself; that Russia’s Foreign Minister Molotov had virtually insulted the British Ambassador, been barely civil to France’s Ambassador Paul Emile Naggiar.

After hearing a report from General Doumenc, head of his military mission to Moscow which Stalin’s men double-crossed, Premier Daladier called Ambassador Naggiar home for “a long leave.” M. Daladier’s next newsworthy step was to plead once more with Herr Hitler that he negotiate directly with Poland.

Then from Berlin came a remarkable letter of response from Herr Hitler, “as one old front fighter,” to “Herr” Daladier as another: German corporal to French poilu. He deplored war’s horrors. He pleaded his renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine, and the expensive construction of the Siegfried Line, as proofs that Germany thought its account and border with France were settled. He argued that his power-politics method of correcting the Treaty of Versailles’ unjust dictates had spared other statesmen embarrassment. He called reports of German mobilization a lie. Poland’s demands “laughable insanity were they not so tremendously dangerous.” He complained of Polish atrocities, said Poland was impossible to reason with. He asked “Herr” Daladier how he would feel if Marseille were corridored. In any case, said Corporal Hitler, Danzig and the Corridor MUST be his. He concluded: “Regardless of who wins . . . the Polish State of today will be lost any way you calculate.” So words were ended, acts remained.

*Left to right: Paul Marchandeau, Edouard Daladier, Albert Sarraut, Camille Chautemps, Raymond Patenotre.