Léon BLUM (1872-1950). Autograph manuscript, [July 1936]; 5 1/2 pages in-4, in ink and pencil, with erasures and corrections, on the back of Présidence du Conseil headed paper. Draft, extensively corrected and reworked, of the important speech delivered at the Front Populaire demonstration on July 14, 1936, Place de la Nation, before a million people. "Citizens, comrades and friends, We were all here a year ago. All together we took the same oath. The oath has been kept. It was kept by the popular masses who, in an effort of decision and discipline almost without example, affirmed their sovereign will on April 26th and May 3rd [...]. Within a fortnight, the two Houses had passed a set of social laws which, in terms of both spirit and content, represent something more than a reform, since they mark a change [...]. This week, the Chamber will deliberate on the nationalization of war industries and the complete overhaul of the Banque de France's statutes, while amnesty, the extension of schooling, the creation of a wheat board and the repression of tax evasion will be submitted to the Senate for approval. Immediately afterwards will come the plan for major works, the organization of credit for small and medium-sized businesses and for small and medium-sized industry, and the same measures to control prices, especially the retail price of foodstuffs [...]. In exchange for your loyalty, we ask you - and we ask all of you - for your trust, which you owe us for as long as we prove ourselves worthy of it. We ask you to leave us free to move about and regulate our progress [...]. On the other hand, on the side of the popular masses whose current is carrying us forward, the danger of impatience and haste must be clearly understood. We need to understand the need to maintain the same cohesion, the same marching order, between the complex social elements - workers, peasants, shopkeepers, small owners, small savers - that the Front Populaire has brought together [...]. Our victory last April and May can only lead to new victories. The cause of workers fighting for social justice and the cause of Republicans fighting for civic and public liberties must be indissolubly linked [...]. The government over which I preside had a dual role to play, as a regular government of the Republic and as a government born of the Front Populaire majority. It, too, claims revolutionary filiation. It is working for the same goals as you, since its mandate comes from you. With you, it wants to consolidate and develop the Republic, to link it to its past, to guide it towards its future, to assist it with that "sacred love" which will carry it towards new destinies".