Word: socialists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last February's election victory in Spain of the Communist and Socialist United Front was followed by a moderate Left Government and a radical Left rash of riots and arsons (TIME, March 30 et ante). In France last month's Popular Front election victory was followed last week, in precisely the same pattern, by Left-wing direct action, designed to compromise Socialist Leon Blum on the eve of his premiership. In France it took the form of an epidemic of "folded arms" strikes or "lock-ins" in munitions, airplane and automobile factories...
This week, just before the new Parliament met and Premier Sarraut hastened to make way for M. Blum, that anxious old gentleman warned a Socialist Party congress that extreme Left sabotage would invite a Fascist triumph. Said he: "Some people say that ours will be a Kerensky government, that it will be working to prepare the way for a Lenin, who will be the one to benefit. That is not so. In France, if some Kerensky were to fail, it would not be a Lenin who would be the beneficiary...
Former ministries, often with Socialist tags, but always with varying shades of liberal rather than Socialist opinions, might have offered some compromise. Not so the Popular Front government, being constituted as it is, with the radical left in absolute control of the lower house, and hence, in control of the ministry...
...such disruptions of economic and political life. It is, therefore, easy to understand why Premier Blum has promised everything to the discontented. He may, perhaps, be acquitted of expediency, but there were but two courses open to him. One--repression--was unthinkable since he is a man of strict Socialist principles and depends almost entirely on Leftist support. The only other alternative, which he took, was an immediate guarantee that he would clear away all the reasons for the workers complaints...
...Blum was most anxious to entice Radical Socialist (Conservative) Edouard Herriot into his Cabinet as Foreign Minister. Yet all his cajolery last week could not get a "Yes" out of the man the Socialists had helped to vote out of the Premiership in 1932 because he wanted to pay the War Debt to the U. S. M. Blum is not likely to become his own Foreign Minister as he believes the Premier should hold no Cabinet portfolio. Meantime M. Blum was busy promulgating the means by which he expects to guarantee France peace & power in Europe: a six-sided mutual...