ARMS AND THE MEN

Recently that fight has loomed most noticeably in France. The Comite des Forges has decidedly not been a popular name in France. To be exact, it never WAS a popular name. Just as a politician in the United States was always against Wall Street during his campaign, so in France many a political victory has been won by accusing the opposition of being in the pay of the Comite des Forges. Of late, as political tension in France has grown hotter, so resentment against the De Wendels and the Schneiders has grown more bitter.

No country has more to gain from peace and the sanctity of treaties than France. So it is not surprising to find that many Frenchmen are now saying that France made a tragic mistake in supporting Japan (in a backhand manner) in the Manchurian affair. And they note, with bitterness, that it was the Do Wendel press that wanted to let Japan have her imperial way.

To France's great credit it must be said also that, except in the Manchurian affair, France has been, for her own best interest, the stanchest supporter of the League. More than that, her Briand was unquestionably the greatest Peace Man of the post-war decade. Today, many a Frenchman is resentful of the fact that Briand's policies did not succeed in conciliating Germany, and while blaming Germany most, he wonders whether the failure was not helped along by the patriotic M. de Wendel.

If Herriot should again come to power it may well be that he will feel a mandate even more powerful than ever before to fight against the warriors of Europe--and to include among his enemies the armorers, greatest of whom are the greatest industrialists of his own land. For they are sometimes not TOO clever, these Schneiders and De Wendels. And they seem to miss one point: the fire trenches and shell holes that scar the countryside in war time are only the primary lesions of an informational social discase. When the disease at last inevitably attacks the blood and bones of nations that have gone to war, even De Wendels and Schneidors can suffer--suffer with their tottering banks, their dropsical holding companies, their shocked and collapsing industrial empires.

Within their long lives, however, neither Francois de Wondol nor Charles Prosper Eugene Schneider has ever let drop a word to indicate that he sees any connection between his business and an eventual ruin of his capitalistic industry. Only Sir Basil Zaharoff, doddering brokenly in his wheel chair, seems to give any outward evidence of disillusionment. That may be only because he gambled $20,000,000 of his personal fortune on the only war in which he ever took emotional sides--the Greco-Turkish War in 1921--and lost it.

Or it might because he was always the cleverest, anyway.

The End.