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In ferment today, the French people showed last week their typical moderation, dislike of smashing things and love of striking shrewd bargains. Thirty thousand strong workers of the great Renault motor car, aviation and armament works, having settled their strike, piled joyously onto flower bedecked Renault trucks, drove about singing "Arise and slash your thralldom chains! Let power be wielded by the Masses!" and other good bits from the Internationale. On the other hand 20,000 Citroën motor workers, having settled their strike, slipped off home by twos and threes, singing not at all and saying little.
"Pay Something Sometime." With so much mass individualism on his hands, Premier Blum could only grope rather than grapple. In his head this week, according to his entourage, buzzed the idea that he may be able to arrange something with U. S. Ambassador Jesse Isidor Straus. Not only the Ambassador but also the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, hopeful friends of the Premier recalled, is of the same race as Léon Blum. If France could raise a suitable Wall Street loan, much might be tided over. Last week on instructions from the Blum Cabinet, French Chargé d'Affaires in Washington Jules Henry handed to Secretary of State Cordell Hull a most cordial note on the subject of France's war debt default to the U. S., now totaling $325,080,018.75.
While not offering to pay anything, since France's position this week is rather that of a hopeful seeker of further funds, M. Henry declared that his country wants to make it "absolutely plain" that it "hopes" in the "near future" to make "a settlement of its debt on bases acceptable to both countries."
This was by far the nearest thing to a suggestion that somebody might pay something someday which the U. S. has received in several years from any of the twelve nations, now in default by a grand total of $1,159,958,451.15. The note represented, according to Premier Blum's friends, the turning over of a new leaf, for he said last month, immediately before becoming Premier and perhaps before realizing on how hot a seat he was about to sit: "In France we have a tendency to think of the question of debts as effaced and abolished—that it has ceased to exist."