Word: brer
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Laval's Year. On the morning of Jan. 24, 1931 there was again a French crisis. The Steeg Cabinet had fallen following charges that the Minister of Agriculture had speculated in wheat. Importunate telegrams flashed from the President's Palace to Brer Briand at Geneva begging him to become Premier for the twelfth time...
February: Just getting into his stride, Premier Laval leaned on the stooped shoulder of old Brer Briand in Chamber debate, backed him in pledging France to observe the One-Year Naval Holiday proposed by Foreign Minister Dino Grandi of Italy...
April: Foreign Minister Aristide Briand's conciliatory policy toward Germany having been discredited in French eyes by the revelation that Germany and Austria planned a zollverein (customs union), Premier Laval put tactful pressure on his own Foreign Office, forcing Old Brer Briand to take a "stronger line" which later forced zollverein into the World Court, where it died...
September: Taking Old Brer Briand in tow, Premier Laval junketed to Berlin, conferred with Chancellor Bruning and Foreign Minister Curtius (since resigned), achieved little or nothing, but boosted his fame enormously and is said to have made a warm friend of Dr. Bruning. ("What a man!" Visitor Laval exclaimed to beaming German newshawks. "I wish there were more such men in France...
...once supposed to be someone else's Cabinet was dramatically pointed up when 69-year-old Aristide Briand collapsed in the Chamber Nov. 17 and lay for a few moments crumpled down upon his desk. As chairman of the League Council (both before and after this collapse) Old Brer Briand lost further prestige by failing utterly to restrain the aggression of Japan in Manchuria. Meanwhile short Premier Laval and his tremendously tall, broad-shouldered and aggressive Finance Minister, Pierre Etienne Flandin, were fighting through the Chamber their fiscal program for next year...