FRANCE: Door is Closed''

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    Prime Minister Poincare talked on. An hour passed, two, three. Having beaten down opposition with the force of his choppy, tack-hammer sentences, he frank ly admitted that he, Raymond Poincare, was far from approving of the Mellon-Berenger agreement as written. For ten years he had hoped for better terms from Washington.

    "But," he shouted suddenly, "when dur ing ten years one knocks at a door and it remains closed, one must admit to one's self, gentlemen, that it is closed! . . .

    "The Government is not hostile to the Chamber's expressing reservations," he argued. "It is only opposed to their being incorporated in the law of ratification, and considers it its duty to inform the country and Parliament that there is no chance of reservations so formulated being accepted. . . .

    "There are those present who would like to overthrow the Government on the question of ratification. Let them hurry, so the successor can have time to face the War supplies debt and reply to American demands! . . .

    "Do you know what it means if this accord is not ratified? It means that France will be drawn before an arbitration tribunal where the United States has a clear case. She has merely to present little slips of paper signed by France acknowledging the debts."

    After four hours of speechmaking, the Chamber adjourned. The Deputies rose stiffly from their chairs and stumbled homeward. But M. Poincare was in the rostrum again at 9:30 the next morning —he had only finished his preamble. By noon he was well under way. At 8 p. m. he was nearly done. So was the opposition, after eleven hours of listening. They sat silently in their chairs thinking of cushions.

    Having retold the entire history of France's debts to the U. S., touched on the history of the Reparations conferences, the occupation of the Ruhr, he abruptly asked his audience:

    "Who is sure that we are not going to need England and America again some day? Are we going to leave in existence a nasty misunderstanding over war debts?"

    Members of the right wing applauded. Socialists were in an uproar. Having listened quietly to M. Poincare on the first day they were determined to heckle him on the second. Regardless of the merits of the controversy they were bent on overthrowing the Poincare government if they possibly could. But as M. Poincare well knew, they lacked a leader. The conservative Echo de Paris sourly printed a cartoon showing lanky Ramsay MacDonald hoisting the red flag to the salutes of the leading French Liberals and Radicals. Observers found none of them strong enough timber for the Premiership.

    In the foreground stood plump, abdominal Edouard Herriot, France's Prime Minister in 1924-25. Officially leader of the Opposition, round M. Herriot's political fortunes have sunk so low during the past year that March elections nearly saw him robbed of his virtually hereditary position as Mayor of prosperous, silk-weaving Lyons.

    A tiny bugler (in the cartoon) was liberal, pacifistic Aristide Briand, nine times Prime Minister of France. Popular abroad, M. Briand's chances seemed spiked at home by the fact that as Foreign Minister in the Poincare Cabinet he is already pledged to Poincare's debt ratification policy.

    Most likely candidate was the lanky, long-mustached figure of Socialist Leon Blum, peering over Herriot's right shoulder. Opposing the Poincaresque

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