PICTORIAL SUPPLEMENT
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. SATURDAY, APRIL 14,
1934
PAGE THREE
FRANCE FOR DICTATORSHIP?: ROYALIST CALL TO ACTION
M. LEON DAUDET'S
VITRIOLIC PEN
By MORRIS GILBERT. The Constitution of the Third Ropublic, framed in 1875, pro- vides a method of appealing to the people of France over the head of Parliament. The method is for the President with the express ap- proval of the Sonate to dissolve and call
the Chamber of Deion.
for a new general
would have disapproved.
USELESS PROCEDURE The result of this imbroglio in 1877 has been to make practically useless the procedure of dissolu- tion. No other president over han tried it during all the years of the Third Republic.
So students of the machinery of government of the French republic
It has only been employed once, sert that in practice if not in and then improperly. That was low the Chamber la elected for a when MacMahon as president in full four years, and the electorate 1877 after fighting with the minhas no means of meddling. fatry of the day forced its resigna- But under the battering of the tion, appointed another ministry Stavisky scandal and the demon- of his own, and then dissolved thestrations of the politically unim Chamber.
porant royalist group, demand for
The people of France Immed-revision of basic law and practice ately came back by electing just has become insistent. Except for
.
DX-
extremist groups-the extremo right or Action Francaise crowl, and the Communists at the treme left-the demand has not been to cast out the regime, but, to reform it.
If the French regime were not a republlen one, what could it be, people ask. A monarchy? The
thought is fantastic. A commun- ist state? Not so long na the greatest. power in France--the peasantry has anything to say.
Hence, if there is to be some emcient way of cauterizing the wound inflicted by Stavlaky on the French state; it is likely to be found in reform within the state as now instituted.
SOME QUERIES.
L'ACTION FRANCAISE
Contre les voleurs, contre le régime abject TOUS, CE SOIR, DEVANT LA CHAMBRE
Le général Weygand AUX PARISIENS less.FLO.atia guerre
The French government has sel- dom been nearer chaos than to day. The Stavisky case has raised a moral, as opposed to a political, Issue, and the population gives every indication of extreme dis- watisfaction with the government. alternative than resignation for
What would happen, people ask, | President Lebrun.
if President Lebrun should groap
dale Stavisky
Leon Daudet, son of Alphonse | them off from the offices of his Daudet, is living proof that once paper (with the help of his trusty In a while a grost raan has a great "Camelots) for several days. son. Robust, Gargantuan in ap: The cause of this curlous adven- pearance and in zest for good eat ture was the tragic death of Dau- Ing and drinking, Rabelaisian In dot's son Philippe, 14 years old, the use of his pen, this great pol ten years ago. The boy, a preco- omist has ons devotion, the House clous lad who looked older than also a run-away. of Bourbon; and three hatreds, his years, was the Republic, Americans, and Pro- He had been known to disappear
for days at a time. hibition.
Invited to Amerles not many years ago, he brusquely declined, on the implied score that he didn't care much for Americans and couldn't possibly live in a country so barbarous as to deny the right to drink well and freely.
Now with the fail of Prohibition there are reports that Daudet might change his mind. He might do so, on that ground-but it is not likely that he will over change his opinion of Americans, whose political doctrines in 1770 and.
The last time he did so, his dis treased family began to suspect foul play. The boy's body was found in a Paris hospital. He had been shot through the head. The police verdict was quiclde.
Then began. Daudet's most ter rifle onslaught on the authorities. He began by accusing the polico of having "framed" the suicide for political reasons. Ho continued by accusing the police of having. "planted" a letter on the youngster
that he had turned
thereafter played no small part income and we leaving his.
pushing over the monarchy whose chlot champion Daudet remaina to-day.
ROYALIST ORGAN., Daudet's great mouthpiece is his newspaper
Action Francaise, which is the organ of what the philosophers of royalism describe "Nationaliamo Integral." Day by day for a score of years, this paper has been coming out, with, day by day, a blast of superb in vective written by Leon Daudet.
да
family on that account.
a
In view of the fact that at that time Daudet was engaged in vio. lont attack on the government, French people began to place con- siderable credence in the desolat- ed father's tremendous accUBA- tione. The taxi-driver in whose cab Philippo's body had been found brought suit against the polemist, and Daudet was tenced to five months in Jail.
sba-
The slege of the Action Fran calae commenced. Camelots kept off the police for several dave. At ainst one morning, Profect of Police. Chlappe himself appeared in the street below, and, begged Daudet. for the sake of keeping the pence. is Daudet, with a pompous reference
Without great weight na moulder of political action, in or dinary times, the Daudet daily column is the most brillant, the funniest, in Paris. Its fun nover light, but always brutal. A to the need to prevent "civil war"! club to batter the heads of politle- did so, and marched off to prison. ians of the hated republican in triumph. regime, to preach the superior morals and manners of a Bourbon king.
Daudet has another means of compelling a hearing: a body of hard-boiled, quick-hitting young atera, ducal fledglings mostly, who and who comprise a sort of Parl ble in nations surrounding France. alan Ku Klux Klan which has been
LEON DAUDET.
THE CALLER; Leon' Daudet, ita THE ANSWER: a riot staged by Paris Royalists.
PURE SPECULATION.
THE CALL TO ACTION: the front page of "L'Action Francaise,
colourful editor... strike"-there would be no other
parties of the middle.
From either wing, then, one might expect an effort toward "full powers'dictatorial powers mod-
DAUDET'S RETURN. But that triumph was nothing compared with the triumph of five dava later, when a bewilder- ed government auddonly discover-
his legal right to dissolve the under such conditions, the election express themselves at the ballot elled on the many examples visi-are called the "Camelots du tot" ed that Leon Daudet had escaped!
approval" of such a step which is
constitutionally required?
After all, the Senate is just as
of
a new
is in
The hoax was the best that had tickled the French people for a century. It had been managed by the Camelots, who by a clever use
of telephones from the Ministry of the Interior to the prison, manag-
Granting the improbability that If the president should resign, Frenchmen will have a chance to Chamber and call for an election?
Again the answer president would be
the What would happen if the Sen-thrown as usual into the combined realm of pure speculation. ate should withhold the "express ballot of Chamber and Senate.
But it is felt in some authorita. Meanwhile the greatest political trying to terrorize the city for But-presumably-there would be tive quarters that the trend would playboy of Lodern France-Leon years. Mostly its spleen is vented no dissolution.
be the same as has been seen in Daudet has been having the time on innocent hucksters in the com In that case, what would popu- other countries faced in these of his life, these, last few weeks. munist suburbs of Paris. Ocened to convince the prison authori- lar feeling be? Popular feeling times with political crisis: A He has been battering cabinets sionally, as in the last few weeks, broke the late Chautemps govern- swing from the moderate contre into a pulp, ahouting for his King it strikes out in a big way at the mont-with, as some people as-in both directions toward the ex-with a bull-throated roar, and lay- sert, the connivance of Prefect of tromes. Police Chiappe, who permitted the That is, a now election in rioters to go to greater lengths France to-day would be likely to than he might have, dono,
show both an increase for the con- These are the terms of the crisis nervatives and an increase for the Sociallats, at the expense of the which, France faces to-day,
much a Radical Socialist group as the Chamber and it is the Indi- eal Socialist Party which is to-day ander fire. It might hesitate to refuse to approve the President's
Gaston Doumargue who heads Franco's nervour new regime.
same kind of a Chamber.net. the
them Otherwise it is believed,
In that case-- WAR proved would have been a coup d'etat when President Millerand some years ago faced a ministry "on
which MacMahon hy, no means
ing about him on all sides with the club of his glorious (and often extremely impolite) wit box as a result of the Stavisky scandal. What would be the re- sult?
government.
ADVENTUROUS LIFE. Daudet's life has been a series of adventures. A duelor of note, defied the Paris police he once coming to arrest him and held
tles that the government was re- leasing its celebrated captive.
Daudet spent two years in Brus sols, close to his beloved king, also in exile, and then was wirdoned. He returned to Paris, neclaimed by, thousands, and immediately took up again his slogging of the repub liean regime..
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