Evening star., 1929-11-17
TARDIEU BELIEVES FRANCE
TO BE NATION WITH FUTURE
Young Premier, Without Party, Proves
Nation Can Be Led by Business
Man Rather Than Politician.

claimed, bade France be proud of what
had been accomplished in the 10 years
following the making Of peace and be
confident for the future.
He Leads No Party.
The position of Tardieu politically,
then, Is at once conspicuous and con-
fusing. He is the leader of no party.
He belongs neither with the Right nor
the Left. The Radicals and Socialists
are as hostile to his domestic politics
as the Nationalists are suspicious Of his
foreign policies. His strength, such as
it Is. lies in the fact that the majority
of the French nation are beginning to
show the same impatience with the In
trigueS and petty maneuvers of the
old-fashioned political game that Tar
dieu voiced as far back as 1924.
Moreover, in all that he has done
enthusiastically, Tardieu has been
amazingly successful. He has earned
and deserved the title of "the Amer
works and then of the interior, he
brought the energy Of his own vigorous
personality and the stimulation Of his
progressive mind into what had been
the stagnant backwaters of of1icialdom
Naturally Tardieus progress has
pleased none of the politicians whose
methods he has rejected and whose
shortcomings he has exposed. And, a
bit like Clemenceau, Tardieu lacks the
art of ingratiating, and If he is a Splen-
did administrator (Which THE Tiger"
never was) he is poor politician.
Yet he has made himself felt, he has
become a power, he has risen to be
prime minister, If perhaps only for
day. But even If he falls now, Tardieu
has completed the task which he OBJ
viously set for himself when he staged
comeback" five years ago. He has
become the one conspicuous French
public man who is identified with busi-
ness rather than politics. To be sure,
Poincare, as the savior of the franc,
also has claims, but Poincare is growing
old, he has recently had a breakdown
and trying operation. And he has
made more enemies than friends and
the grudges endure.
Tardieu, after all, is a young man
and he is coming to be regarded as a
safe man. With Poincare in two min
istries he earned the right to annex the
prosperity issue; now associated with
BRAND, he can lay claim to that of
peace. And prosperity and peace are
the dominating desires of France. To
these slogans, too, Tardieu adds his
own, which is progress"
From the American point of view,
AoAAACdo CdACCA 10 VI uIuoud1 u1VEIGSG,
because, as a consequence of his close
contact with American business and
finance, he has become the protagonist
OF the idea of Americanization of
French industry. But, on the sother
hand, as his last book disclosed, while
he is a convert to American business
methods, he remains loyal to the his
torical traditions of his own country.
One must credit Tardieu. too, with
the courage of his convictions. When
he decided to take Office In the Poin-
care cabinet of 1926 it was against the
advice of Clemenceau. Talking with
him at that time, I asked what he
heard of Clemenceau. WELL" he re-
piled, "he opposed my taking this job
and so now, while we correspond regu-
larly, we only discuss non-controversial
subjects like God and Moses"
His Stand Took Courage.
That courage shines through his re-
cent decision to undertake to form q
cabinet. All wisdom seemed to counsel
waiting. A premature grasping of
power might insure a new defeat and
another period of waiting. But for
Tardieu it was inconceivable that at a
critical moment France should be with
out government. So he took the risk.
And patiently the risk was great. But
over against 1t must be set his con-
viction that there is new France, or q
new spirit in old France, the belief that
France can and will play as great q
role in the modern world, the world of
big business and high finance, the
world of rationalism and cartelS, as 1t
played in the age when war and diplo-
macy were all that counted.
Tardieu would be the first to reject
any suggestion that he has anything in
common with Mussolini or that Fascism
could have any place in France, yet at
the least, like Mussolini, he is a young
man, who has arrived politically since
the war and has made clean break
with all the methods and the men Of
the pre-war political world. He has
the same faith in the new France that
Mussolini has in new Italy, but along
with this faith goes an unshaken ale
glance to democracy as opposed to dicta-
torship. His program is rather that of
Hoover than of the Duce.
In sum, Tardieu has staked his polit-
ical career on the gamble that France
Is twentieth century country, not an
eighteenth century survival. And If
there Is any measure of accuracy In his
calculation. even If he fails now, he will
still, in the French phrase, continue to
be a coming man."
CCopyriRht, 1920