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Every German still sees the pact as tending to chain Germany within her frontiers. It is a grim fact that most Frenchmen believe Nazi secret agents were behind the Mauser pistol which, in the hands of a Macedonian terrorist at Marseille, killed not only France's royal ally King Alexander of Yugoslavia but also the maker of pacts against Germany, old Louis Barthou (TIME, Oct. 15, 1934).
The Marseille killings, as if they had occurred only yesterday, boiled up afresh in the current French Chamber debate. Police precautions at Marseille were scandalously lax, and officially to blame was the then Minister of Interior who is now Premier Albert Sarraut. The brand new scandal of the Royalist attack in the open streets of Paris on No. 1 Socialist Blum was dextrously flung at the stodgy Premier by ebullient Deputy Henry Franklin-Bouillon of the Right, who roared: "You are head of the Government which claims to have assured order in the streets, but don't forget that you are also responsible for what happened at Marseille!"
Thus taunted. Premier Sarraut utterly lost his head and flung back at M. Franklin-Bouillon the unparliamentary epithet, "Salami! Salaud!"—i. e., "You dirty dog!" As the Chamber became a bedlam of confused shouts, the Right seemed to forget that it backed M. Barthou at the time of the Franco-Soviet Pact's creation, and its present defender Premier Sarraut of the Left was reviled with cries of "Kerensky! You are heading France for Bolshevism!" Tired of being screamed at, the Premier, who is a misnamed Radical-Socialist of the moderate Left, sharply demanded a snap vote of confidence and to him rallied the Socialists of bedded Léon Blum plus their Communist allies.
Premier Sarraut won "confidence" by the handsome count of 380-to-151 and immediately ducked out of the Chamber. In ducked his parliamentary secretary M. Jean Zay to explain that M. Sarraut had no recollection of what he had shouted at Deputy Franklin-Bouillon and certainly did not recall having uttered the epithet "salaud." Huffed & puffed Orator Franklin-Bouillon, "Well! I consider that my honor has been satisfied."
Double Cross? After his assassination, Louis Barthou was succeeded as French Foreign Minister by dextrous Pierre Laval, whose policy of trying to be friends with everyone included a call in Moscow upon Comrade Litvinoff fortnight after the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact had been hastily signed at Paris. This furtive attitude the French Foreign Office maintained so long as Pierre Laval remained Premier, the Pact lying on the shelf unratified while he wrestled with the Ethiopian Crisis (TIME, June 8 et seq.). Last week the French suspicions which have kept the treaty on the shelf were explosively aired in the Chamber, and this week they are to detonate in the French Senate.