Sober French trade union leaders and the property-hugging French proletariat were at their wits' end last week as obstreperous Communists and wharf scum at the naval ports of Brest and Toulon staged a bloody dress-rehearsal of revolution.
In Brest bold Sub-Prefect Jacques Henry risked lynching by Red mobsters who had torn down the tricolor of France from his Sub-Prefecture and hoisted a Communist banner, to the vast delight of Moscow (see p. 24). While rioters surged around him singing the Internationale, M. Henry grabbed the lanyards and began hauling down the Red flag amid a hail of rivets, bolts and paving stones, one of which bloodied his head. Shouting "Vive la Patrie!", injured Sub-Prefect Henry not only shoved and bluffed his way out of the crowd without giving up the Red flag which he had seized but also rescued the French tricolor. Abashed by his courage, the mob quieted, only to be aroused later by Reds who finally managed to start a window-smashing spree which left the narrow streets of Brest a seeming shambles.
Next day Labor Syndicate Head Berthelot, representing most of the 6,000 workers at the Brest Naval Arsenal, angrily announced: "We accuse extremists, Communists, of provoking this trouble! We accuse especially the professional agitator Balliere!" After going to work again, the 6,000 proletarians at Brest Arsenal showed where they stood by abruptly stopping work for an hour in a "folded arms protest" against the 10% wage cut decreed for state employees by budget-balancing Premier Pierre Laval (TIME, July 29).
"Hang Laval!" and "Laval to the Stake!" was the cry at Toulon two days later as a minority of 700 workers at the State gunpowder plant marched out singing the Internationale. They were joined by Riviera rabble which swept through the streets smashing windows, robbing shops, cutting electric wires and wrecking lampposts to make looting easier in the balmy darkness. As police and steel-helmeted Gardes Mobiles rushed in, they were sniped at from the housetops. Shrieking Communists ran about encouraging everyone within earshot to "Build barricades against the Cossacks!"
Soon French warships in the harbor swept the rooftops with their searchlights while crack French Colonial marksmen tried to pick off the snipers. All Colonials used in the streets were white, the Government announced, but Toulon's electric plant and some Municipal buildings were put under guard of coal-black Senegalese. Vice-Admiral Louis Berthelot of the Toulon naval station declared: "The arsenal workmen have sent me a delegation saying that they do not wish to be linked with last night's bloodshed which they ascribe to underworld agitators eager for loot." Meeting in a suburb three miles outside Toulon, the arsenal workers cheered their regular leaders, who urged them to return to work. Said Prefect Maunier grimly: "If the workers recommence their rioting, it will be their misfortune. We are ready for them now: In future Toulon will be so strongly guarded that any outbreak will be quickly mastered."