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A Frenchman who ought to know much about Moscow's Comintern is Deputy Jacques Doriot, mayor of Paris' reddest district, St. Denis. Fiery Comrade Doriot has just been expelled from Communist ranks because of a doctrinaire Marxist squabble, and last week he itched to spill the Soviet beans. Cried Deputy Doriot: "Although the Government run by Stalin assures France that Russia is supporting this pact to promote universal peace, Stalin at the same time, as Secretary of the Communist Party, tells the World Proletariat that this treaty will lead to another war and that this war will be the prelude to World Revolution!
"Just a few years ago," continued Deputy Doriot, ''the Communist leaders of Russia who now profess to be making this pact as defenders of the existing order in Europe were encouraging the Communists of Germany to denounce the Treaty of Versailles as an instrument of Capitalist exploitation. German National Socialism has inflicted a grave defeat on Communism. Therefore the Soviets, to make up for this setback, are now trying to utilize the Capitalist powers by means of this treaty against Germany—for Naziism is the fundamental enemy of Bolshevism!"
Thus spoke an ousted Communist who is frankly sore at Stalin. In good standing with Moscow is earnest French Communist Deputy Gabriel Péri. His speech last week was not brilliant, but it was candid to the point of Communist stupidity. "I hold firmly," roared Red Péri, "to the [Communist Party] decisions which have laid down that in case of war our duty will be to use the crisis which arises out of the conflict to hasten the fall of Capitalistic governments!"
Serpentine Twist, After such spilling of Red beans the dilemma of the French Parliament, to ratify or not to ratify its pact with the Soviet Government, became an issue which made the Chamber and its lobbies fairly seethe as Deputies racked their brains, each trying to decide whether he personally would win more or less votes from his constituents next April by voting for or against ratification of the pact.
Pudgy Premier Sarraut and his bean-pole of a Foreign Minister Pierre Etienne Flandin supplied little real leadership. Adolf Hitler had them anxiously guessing last week as the German Government's official press bureau pumped Nazi news-organs full of hints that, if the Franco-Soviet Pact was ratified, Germany would consider it a violation of the Locarno Pact.
Although tarnished by the years, the Locarno Pact is still a binding British-French-German-Italian-Belgian mutual guarantee to preserve, protect and defend both France and Germanv from aggression by the other. Most French legal experts last week considered it "sheer impudence" for Germans to threaten to tear up Locarno as a "scrap of paper" because they happen not to like the new Pact.