Britain Leads the World in Emergency Phone Service

The long agony of Léon Blum’s Front Populaire government came to an end when the Senate refused it drastic powers to tackle France’s near-permanent financial crisis. The determined opposition of France’s great political veteran Joseph Caillaux was the main force behind the defeat but in reality Blum was caught between ever-more distant and treacherous support from the Communists and his far from radical allies of the Radical Party. Blum was replaced as prime minister by Camille Chautemps of the Radicals, still under the Front Populaire banner but essentially centrist. After threatening the abandonment of a fixed Franc parity to gold, his new finance minister Georges Bonnet won approval for a package of revenue raising measures after epic struggles both within the collation and in parliament. The Chautemps government did not look any more secure than its predecessor. Just as worker support for the prolonged and bitter strike in the US steel industry appeared to be softening,