FRANCE: Assassination’s Aftermath

From the Quai d’Orsay to the Place des Invalides the street lamps were on, shining wanly through black shrouds of crepe. As if to make up for official negligence that may have cost the old gentleman his life, the entire distance was lined with steel-helmeted soldiers, elbow to elbow. Six feet behind this first line was a second line of Republican Guards, with a row of plainclothes detectives stationed between the two. Thus last week did France bury her great Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou. All the diplomats who stood bareheaded under the grey sky, all the regiments that marched past the flag-draped gun carriage, all the black crowd that stretched away for blocks had but one idea: Louis Barthou and Alexander of Jugoslavia would not have been shot down last fortnight in Marseilles if police had taken proper precautions;* Louis Barthou would not have died if a flustered bystander had placed the temporary tourniquet above instead of below the wound in his arm. Premier Doumergue pronounced the funeral oration: “Lift up your hearts as we meditate on his life and example. Let us bar the route to the powers of evil that are loosened everywhere and doing the work of death. Remember always that this man who has laid down his life fell at a moment when he was seeking to assure the peace of the world. . . . But if good international work is to be done there must first be good national work, and that can only be secured by union. Disunited peoples are weak, and weak peoples are a prey and a danger.” With his voice breaking, little Gaston reached his climax: “To desire peace is not to obtain it. Let us oppose to passion our will for peace, but let us support it with an unbreakable resolution to hold force in check whenever it is not in the service of right.” Reporters who have seen many state funerals in Paris in the past five years, noted one novelty: three figures in long white sheepskin coats carrying a wooden box. They were Rumanian peasants, come to scatter Rumanian earth in the tomb of Louis Barthou, honorary citizen of Rumania since last summer (TIME, July 9). Hardly had the crowds streaked off to their homes than the Doumergue Cabinet took up the ugly aftermath of the assassinations. Obvious problem was to find a new Foreign Minister, but even more pressing was a clean-up of the French police. In command of this force and hence morally responsible for what happened at Marseilles was the Minister of the Interior, grey, fleshy-faced Albert Sarraut. Even before Barthou was laid away in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Minister Albert Sarraut stepped quickly out of the Doumergue Cabinet. That made two vacant posts to be filled.

Up again came the pale shadow of Alexander Stavisky, almost forgotten for a few days. France’s Minister of War is Marshal Henri Pétain. Honest and ingenuous, he is serving his first trick in a Council of Ministers and hence has little understanding of the terrific pressure, the secret wire-pulling, under which equally honest Minister of Justice Henry Cheron has attempted to conduct the Stavisky investigation.

At the end of a Cabinet meeting last week Premier Doumergue closed his portfolio and kindly asked if there were any further questions.

“Yes!” said Marshal Pétain. “There are some Ministers who are burdens in the Cabinet, whom we might well get rid of.”

His white chin bristling, old Henry Chéron stood up.

“To whom do you refer?” he demanded.

“You!” retorted Marshal Pétain.

“At this point,” reported Paris correspondents, “discussion became only fairly cordial.”

Henry Chéron resigned, and now there were three posts to fill. If all Europe were not balanced on a precipice, it would have meant the end of the Doumergue Government. Fortunately for the brave little Gaston a few more cantonal elections followed those of fortnight ago. with the same results. The worried French electorate was in no mood for political changes. Doumergue adherents received comfortable majorities.

Within the Government, therefore, the vacant posts were filled. Swarthy, beetle-browed Pierre Laval, former Premier, was promoted from the Ministry of Colonies to the Foreign Ministry. A little known politico named Paul Marchandeau became the new Minister of the Interior. He tried to solidify himself with the electorate by promptly appointing a new head for the Sûreté Nationale, Prefect Magny of the Department of the Marne. But who was to be the new Minister of Justice?

The Frenchmen who delighted to throw eggs at old Henry Chéron were just as careful not to take his job. M. Doumergue finally persuaded 60-year-old Lawyer Henri Lémery, obscure Senator from Martinique, to be Minister of Justice.

*After France’s President Sadi Carnot was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist at Lyons in 1894, it was decreed that a Chief of State or visiting sovereign should never be driven through the streets of a French city in a conveyance with running boards. It was from the running board that the assassin fired his pistol at Barthou and Alexander.