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Premier Laval wisely did not ask it. He prepared instead a note to President Hoover (see p. 10) which embodies from the French point of view important concessions. He risked the life of his Cabinet in presenting it to the Chamber. With all his rugged strength of body and mind he fought a furious Chamber battle for a vote of confidence. He won—magnificently —a majority of 197 votes in a Chamber of 610.
With his prestige thus strengthened, M. Laval began the real work of negotiation with Secretary Mellon. There were luncheons. Here too the indomitable continuity of French life and thought would not be swayed one inch. Mr. Mellon would doubtless have preferred to wolf down a club sandwich and drink a glass of milk while he talked. Instead the luncheons averaged eight courses, each course accompanied by a different and appropriate wine.
Luncheon at the Ministry of Finance was laid by devil-may-care servants for 13. But so strongly did the statesmen protest that they did not care, that Finance Minister Pierre Etienne Flandin dashed into his adjoining private apartments, brought back flustered Mme Flandin who made 14—the only woman at table.
With President Hoover and Secretary Stimson fairly fuming at each moment's delay, M. Flandin then motored his guests out to Longchamps where they saw not a horse race but the horse race of the Paris Grande Semaine—Le Grand Prix.
Security. What the Frenchman-in-the-street seemed to remember with most resentment last week was this: two years ago Tycoon Owen D. Young and important banking interests proposed to place, did place, Reparations on a "business basis."
The whole point of the Young Plan, emphasized ad nauseam, was that it made German payments so secure that not only would France and other countries get all their money in the end, but they would also get a great part of it at once by selling bonds to the public secured by Germany's promise to pay.
With a great moral gesture "political extortion" was wiped from Reparations and Germany accepted the Young Plan "voluntarily"—in return for important concessions. One of these was that the Young Plan scaled down the total Germany was expected by France to pay, from $31,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000 (TIME, June 10, 1929). Another was the withdrawal of French troops from the Rhineland five years ahead of schedule (TIME, July 14, 1930).
Jean Frenchman and his press, perhaps shortsighted, saw last week: first, that President Hoover proposed to abrogate for one year even the Young Plan, for France the minimum of all minimums; second, that the President proposed no guarantee that Germany will not use the sums re- leased to her for military purposes or for loans to boost German trade with Russia; third, that the Hoover plan embodied no element of "security" to France, no element of guarantee or compulsion with respect to resumption by Germany of payment next year; finally, that William Randolph Hearst and Senator Hiram Johnson (both of California where the President has his home), were shouting last week that Mr. Hoover's real purpose is to use a one-year moratorium as the World's stepping stone to permanent cancellation.