JOSEPH (1873- ), French poli tician, was born at St. Aignan on Aug. 4, 1873. After a brilliant university career, he joined the Paris bar. His book Le federal isme economique, published in 1900, showed him an ardent ad vocate of the trade union movement, and in 1906 he was elected to the Chamber as an independent Socialist, a follower of Pain leve, by his native district of Loire-et-Cher. In 1911 Paul Boncour was appointed labour minister in the Radical Monis Bertaux cabinet. In 1914 he held a command in Lorraine. Meanwhile, he had definitely joined the socialist party, thus ful filling a promise made to Jaures a few months before the latter's tragic end. He was returned to the Chamber at the November 1919 election and at once joined forces with Leon Blum in the struggle against the national Bloc. He was again returned in 1924, this time as deputy for Jaures' former constituency of the
Tarn. He was repeatedly a member of the French delegation to the Assembly of the League of Nations, and took an important part in the work of the League. He presided over the committee (Dec. 1925) appointed to report to the Council on the agenda for the disarmament conference. The role which he played in the League made him the object of attacks from many of the socialists, who reproached him with having been at Geneva the official delegate of a bourgeois government. In 1928, when the Radical-Socialists withdrew their support from the government, Paul-Boncour resigned his appointment as French delegate to the League of Nations, but remained a member of the Chamber. He was prime minister from Dec. 1932 to Jan. 1933, and minister of foreign affairs in the Daladier and Sarraut cabinets, 1933.