As Italian bombs delivered the first thuds of actual war last week, most Frenchmen abruptly forgot that they have always been the best friends of the League of Nations and indulged in an orgy of self-interest. Among parties of the Left and Right fierce anti-Fascist and pro-Fascist epithets flew. Deputies rushed up from the provinces and buzzed feverishly in the lobbies of their Chamber, though it was not in session and Premier Pierre Laval would rather have butted his hard head into a hornet's nest than have permitted Parliament to meet. Electric in the air of Paris was a feeling that, if France is not to drift further and further to the Left, she must jog Right in the present crisis. That is, her own Fascists of the Croix de Feu, which has no connection with either Mussolini or Hitler, must raise their own standard under Colonel François de la Rocque and prevent the Socialists and Communists of France from turning the French Government and the League of Nations against Italian Fascism. Thus for the first time was seen the spectacle of Fascists screaming for Peace.
With lean Colonel de la Rocque ordering the youths of the Croix de Feu to mobilize all over France in a series of ominous mass meetings, Newspundit Henri de Kerillis declared in L'Echo de Paris: "An order for mobilization against Italy, even a partial one, an act of war, even limited to a simple act of aggression toward Italy, would create in France a violent commotion of bloody, of desperate resistance and an atmosphere of civil war."
Even the hoary savants of the Académie Française felt the danger of provoking an internal French crisis by taking steps against Italian Fascism to be so acute that a dozen of them manifestoed: "It is with stupefaction that we see the [British] people whose vast colonial empire includes one-fifth of the Earth appearing in opposition to young Italy's justifiable enterprise. . . . The League of Nations must not commit the folly of dealing with a civilized nation [Italy] and a barbarous nation [Ethiopia] on the same footing. . . . The risk must not be run of plunging the nations of the West into a European war as a result of what ought to be regarded as a purely colonial incident."
Added Le Journal des Débats, "In reality this is a struggle between Italy and England" but "England, with much force and cleverness, has transformed the entire affair into a conflict between Italy and the League of Nations."
"Honest Broker" Pierre Laval. In French eyes the British Royal Family became partisans last week when King George conferred explicitly on the Italo-Ethiopian war with his Ministers at Buckingham Palace (see p. 23) and Edward of Wales emulated his grandsire Edward VII by having Premier Pierre Laval to luncheon on the crisis at Britain's Paris Embassy. Necessarily President Albert Lebrun then had H. R. H. to luncheon and the persuasive charm of Britain's "Empire Salesman" was fresh in the mind of the President of France when he summoned the French Cabinet to hear Premier Laval expose the policy he would pursue next day in the Council of the League of Nations.