ANOTHER FRENCH POLITICAL CRISIS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 133, 22 June 1937, Page 6

ANOTHER FRENCH POLITICAL CRISIS.

Political crises in Er.ance are of such frequent occurrenee that they hegin almost to lose significance. The latest, culminating in the resignation of the Blum Government, of which we have news to-day, comes, however, at a singularly unfortunate time, for it betrays an instability in Franee that can scarcely bilt have some reaction, perhaps of a not altogether weilcome chara.cter, upon the thoughts and conduct of the dictatorial rulers of Germany and Italy, both no doubt already somewhat elated over the success that is attending the arms of their dictatorial protege in Spain. Great Britain and Franee have come to he regarded as the chief defenders in Europe of the democratic system of government and this evidence of weakness in one of them comes at -a very bad time, particularly when we recall that a.t the moment there is something of a rapprochement taking shape between Great Britain and Germany that is badly though quite unreasonably resented in Franee, whose people can never interpret any move towards better relations with their traditional foes as anything other than a desertion of Anglo-F rench f riendship. i As has been the case with so many who have gone before him M. Blum's downfall is immediately consequent on the difficulties of national finance which has for long been in a perilous condition. In order that he might mend. matters in his own way he was dslcing for ivhat were in ishis particular respect almost dictatorial powers, with the prospect, of eourse, of fresh burdens of taxation. The measure investing him with these powers, which included practical control over the Bank of Franee, was passed =by the Chamber of Deputies, buit, it is to be noted, only with the 'assisfcance of the Communist members who had a.t first decided to ref rain from voting because the Bill did not go as far as they wished in the direction of penalising Capital, thus showing that the Popular Front is far from being an altogether united body. It is a little bit strange to observe that 1VI. Blum's success in the Chamber met with immediately favourable reaction not only on the Paris Bourse, but also on foreign Stock Exchanges and all seemed to be going swimmingly for him. However, he would seem to have counted without the Senate, a much more conservative and stahle body than the Chamber, its members being elected for a term of nine years, with only onethird of their number retiring every third year, while the general election of Deputies takes place every fourth ye'ar. ^ The Senate at once set to work to trim down some of the morje arbitrary provisions of M. Blum's Bill and, when he refused to fall in with the compromise suggested, eventually threw it out altogether, with the result htat he has been compelled to resign the rpins fo office. It may be said that the Senate is representative specially of the Capitalist class and this perhaps may be admitted, but always with the qualification that in the sense of an investing class the Capitalist class in Franee is much more widely spread than in most countries, for it is customajfy there for people of quite small means to commit their savings to investments of one kind or another, mainly perhaps to Government or municipal loan stock, but still to no negligible extent in well-established industrial and commercial concerns. It was doubtless this great and politically influential body of rentieres, as they are called, rather than the really big Capitalists, that took fright at M. Blum's proposals depriving them of a substantial part of their small incomes and found their objections voiced and upheld by the Senate. Thus, as one writer has prophetically put it, the Popular Front (xovprnment of M. Blum, has found itself hopelessly wedged between the nutcr.ackers of Labour spendthrifts and Capitalistic economy. No doubt, the fact that M. Blum had ultimately to depend on Communist support in the Chamber would only go to increase the trepidation of the rentieres. The fact that the Government thus showed itself to be virtually at the mercy of the extremists among its followers was quite sufficient to shake all confidence in it and eventually to shake it down. Looking at the situation from an international point of view, it has perhaps been well said by an English review writer on foreign affairs that "it is the weakness of Franee not the fitrength of Germany that is the real danger to the balance of power in Europe. She is rent asunder hy feuds and her Government, at the beck of the * Extreme Left, no longer makes any pretence of administering the country impartially.' ' In any true democracy a Government so placed and not in itself strong enough in democratic principle to resist pressure must fall as has that of M. Blum, from which so much was hopefully expected because his professlons of having the interests of all classes at heart were confidingly accepted.