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Although Socialist Blum had resigned this did not destroy the political majority of the Popular Front. Mindful of this fact President Lebrun asked another Popular Front statesman before dawn to try to form a Cabinet, picking for this effort a Radical Socialist who had twice before been Premier, Camille Chautemps. Names notwithstanding, the Radical Socialists are more conservative than the Socialists in France, and thus the selection of Middle-of-the-Roader Chautemps meant a shift toward the Centre and away from the Communists. To form a Cabinet on this basis was ticklish work this week. Premier-Designate Chautemps, who had been Minister of State under Premier Blum, not only asked Deputy Blum to become Minister of State in his attempted Cabinet but observed to reporters: "I have just been talking to M. Blum, my predecessor and perhaps my successor!" Down but not out was Léon Blum, hailed this week by confident Jewish and Socialist friends as "the first Jew and the first Socialist to become Premier of France—but not the last!"