Hemingway, The Wild Years

FRENCH POLITICS

Raymond Poincare is a changed man. Until a few months ago the little white-bearded Lorraine lawyer in his patent leather shoes and his gray gloves dominated the French chamber of deputies with his methodical accountant’s mind and his spitfire temper. Now he sits quietly and forlornly while fat, white-faced Leon Daudet shakes his finger at him and says, “France will do this. France will do that.”

Leon Daudet, son of old Alphonse Daudet, the novelist, is the leader of the Royalist party. He is also editor of l’Action Francaise, the royalist paper, and author of L’Entremetteuse or The Procuress, a novel whose plot could not even be outlined in any newspaper printed in English.

The royalist party is perhaps the most solidly organized in France today. That is a surprising statement to those who think of France as a republic with no thought of ever being anything else. The royalist headquarters are in Nimes in the south of France and Provence is almost solidly royalist. The royalists have the solid support of the Catholic church. It being an easily understood fact that the church of Rome thrives better under European monarchies than under the French republic.

Philippe, the Due of Orleans, is the royalist’s candidate for king. Philippe lives in England, is a big, good-looking man and rides very well to hounds. He is not allowed by law to enter France.

There is a royalist fascisti called the Camelots du Roi. They carry black loaded canes with salmon colored handles and at twilight you can see them in Montmartre swaggering along the streets with their canes, a little way ahead and behind a newsboy who is carrying l’Action Francaise in the radical quarter of the old Butte. Newsboys who carry l’Action Francaise into radical districts without the protecting guard of Camelots are badly beaten up by the communists and socialists.

In the past year the royalists have received a tremendous impetus in some mysterious way. It has come on so rapidly and suddenly that from being more or less of a joke they are now spoken of as one of the very strongest parties. In fact Daudet is marked for assassination by the extreme radicals and men are not assassinated until they are considered dangerous. An attempt on his life was made by an anarchist a month or so ago. The girl assassin killed his assistant, Marius Plateau, by mistake.

General Mangin, the famous commander of attack troops, nicknamed “The Butcher,” is a royalist. He was the only great French general who was not made a marshal. He can always be seen in the chamber of deputies when Leon Daudet is to speak. It is the only time he comes.

Now the royalist party wants no reparations from Germany. Nothing would frighten them more than if Germany should be able to pay in full tomorrow. For that would mean that Germany was becoming strong. What they want is a weak Germany, dismembered if possible, a return to the military glories and conquests of France, the return of the Catholic church, and the return of the king. But being patriotic as all Frenchmen they first want to obtain security by weakening Germany permanently. Their plan to accomplish this is to have the reparations kept at such a figure that will be unpayable and then seize German territory to be held “only until the reparations are paid.”

The very sinister mystery is how they obtained the hold over M. Poincare to force him to fall in with their plan and refuse to even discuss the German industrialists’ proposal to take over the payment of reparations if they were reduced to a reasonable figure. The German industrialists have money, have bee…