FRANCE: Question of Prestige

“Premier Raymond Poincare and his Ministers are turkey-gobblers, the laughingstock of the universe, the shame of France.”

Thus, last week, read a sentence in the Parisian Royalist newspaper L’Action Francaise. The writer, famed, impudent, irrepressible Editor Leon Daudet was still in secret hiding last week (TIME, June 13 et seq.) defying the French police to discover whither he had escaped from the Prison Sante.

Observers thought the situation politically dangerous to the prestige of the Cabinet and M. Poincare who recently ordered out some 3,000 police, soldiers and firemen to overawe the Royalist followers of M. Daudet and force him to go to jail on a technical charge of “defamation.” There was talk last week of even hastening adjournment of the Chamber of Deputies for the summer, to stop scurrilous debate upon the Government’s unpopular acts in respect to M. Daudet.