FRANCE IN 1928

Hokitika Guardian, 23 February 1929, Page 3

FRANCE IN 1928

HER PROSPERITY AND POWER

WHAT OF THE FUTURE. In his annual report, which has already, by virtue of its quality, become a regular chief event of the year’s end, Mr Cahill, the Commercial Counsellor of the British Embassy in Paris, has discribed the prosperity of France as “unique in Europe” (reports the Paris correspondent of the “Uoocrver”). Take, for example, a few of the items; an export trade two and a-half times its great, measured by the tonnage test, as before the war; a production of iron and steel four and three times respectively greater than before die war, and now such as puts her definitely ahead of Great Britain as a typical industrial Power; not only an alienee of unemployment but an actual, almost acute, shortage of labour despite the immigration in recent years of over 3,(XX),000 workers—over 7 per cent, of her population; a proportional influx such as America has never known, for it would amount to-day to some nine millions passing through Ellis Island, and such as puts France uemograhpically ahead of all the im-migrant-receiving countries. Add a birth rate far higher than that of Great Britain or any of the northern natioifs, a territory (excluding the overseas possessions) larger than that if any other European country save Russia, and, to wit, one of incomparable ' wealth, agriculture and mineral, wim an ironfield whose ore-producing capacity is 60 per cent, of that of all Europe and a climate and soil without peer for generosity. Add again an industry newly equipped, thoroughly up to date, and with an output capacity enormously increased. And, finally, add a Budget that in gold value is not •o very much greater (the depreciation :>f gold being taken into account) than icfore the war, and a taxation per head less than half that in Great Brittin. Such is the France that hails the lirth of the new year.

MILITARY AND POLITICAL HEGEMONY.

Measured by the more old-fashioned tests of military strength and political influence, France at the end of 1928 enjoys a situation of hegemony that she has not known since the days oi bonis the Fourteenth, and which Napoleon in all his glory did not succeed in surpassing—an army incomparable stronger in material equipment than l>efore the war, pretty well equal (.uespite a disputed margin of figures) in effectives with.the army of 1919; Witn a trained reserve system so reirganiscd that the first-line reservists' •'ill he fully equivalent to pre-war effectives on the frontier; an army, again, in close connection with a halfdozen of other vassal armies of allied States, all more or less directed by the French General Staff, in short, a swiftly mobilisable striking force of such overwhelming superiority to any conceivable opponent that in sheer practical fact France may lie said militarily to hold the Old World in tlfe hollow of iier hand. Add to this unique military hegemony (out of all correspondence to the population strength n France and owed to the military, clauses of the Versailles Treaty) a final reassurance for which - apoleon would have risked everything, and never attained—the power, as General Niessel, the chief air authority in France, has boasted, ol reducing Great Britain’s sea power to nothing and of blockading successfully the British Islands and the narrow waters surrounding them l>v her areoplanes. submarines, and cruisers. Such, once more, is the France of to-day. Her hegemony may not last. It may prove artificial in the long run. But what cannot lie contested is that it exists. POLITICAL QUIET.

finally up to November, and even (save in a nominal sense) thoroughout 1928, France, tlie classic land of political tumult, has been in a stato of political truce; one might even say stagnation. In April the 1924 Parliament, which had at all events closed the era of the Ruhr and put the London Conference, the Dawes Settlement, and Locarno to its credit, came to a miserable end.' The once triumphant Left had been shattered. In his speeches just before the election at Bordeaux and at Carassonne M. Poincare demanded in his own favour an almost Napoleonic plebiscite. And a Poincare plebiscite it proved to be, but not in the sense that he desiired. In the party confusion that existed it was the Conservative forces that gained the most; it was the Radicals, who had so self-sacrificingly yoked themselves to M. Poincare’s chariot, that lost most; and vet it was the Socialists, against whom M. Pioncare’s manoeuvres had been particularly directed, that also gained. Indeed, the extreme Left vote, Socialist plus Communist, amounted to more Elian a third of the electorate; a relative strength greater than that of the Labour party in Great Britain. If the Labour party is some, what stronger proportionally in the House of Commons than is the extreme Left in France it is’because, at the orders of Moscow, the French Communists in the seconds ballots at the end of April concentrated their attack upon the Socialists—to their own undoing, for in the result the Communists are grotesquely under-represented, but also to the.loss of many Socialist seats, notably that of M. Leon Blum, tlie leader of the party and perhaps the most brilliant political intellect in Europe. The outcome was a Chamber nominally Poincarist, really undefined to th< point of chaos, with a strong Conservative bias, most unwelcome to M. Poincare himself, who always poses as a moderate man of the Left,

“SAVING’’ THE FRANC,

Nothing was further (from M. Poincare’s thought than to stabilise the franc; or rather, to put it more clearly, to convert the de facto stabilisation of about 124 francs to the pound into a legal reality. He had purposed to reduce tile rate to 100 francs to the pound, or even less. But lie found himself ere long caught in his own (oils. One of his ways of “saving” the franc had been to instruct the Banff of France to use the printing press freely for the purchase of gold or pounds and dollars of their equivalent. The theory tnat prompted this instruction was manifestly absurh. It was that if you printed a million new paper francs to buy gold or the equivalent of gold, it was somehow not inflation—in other words it was a belief in a miracle such us that of lift, mg yourself up by the scruff of tiie neck. P.ut jn a real world miracles do not happen nor false doctrines prevail. The Bank of France used its printing press to such purpose that by June it had acquired several millirds of dollars, pounds, or other gold equivalents. When the moment came in Poincare’s opinion for a further revalorisation of the franc towards 100 to the pound the Governor of the Bank of France was compelled to intervene. As such revalorisation meant a stupendous loss to the Bank, his intervention took in effect the form of an ultimatum. M. Poincare, much as it was against his will, was forced to give way. The necessary Bill was forced through Parliament, and the franc was stabilised at its do facto value—roughly, at 124 to the pound.

Here M. Poincare’s task was finished. Ho had, despite himself, sue needed in “saving” the franc. But it was now absolutely, certain that at the reassembly of Parliament, after the summer vacation an end would come to the political truce called. National Union, and that .the younger and more ardent spirits in the Radical party, restive under the long subjection to M. Poincare and horrified at the election results would,. under the inspiration of M. Caillaux, always in the background one of the great directors of French political life, feel themseives obliged to put an end to their unnatural association under M. Poincare’s aegis with the Conservatives. .

M. POINCARE S FALL AND RETURN.

What delayed the break-off was the curious •personality of ,Al,. Jtiemoi formerly chief of the Radical party a politician of no chameleon eloquence rather naive at bottom and,.. tnuugn strangeiy admired oy Labour in Eng.aim, in heart and soul a devotee oi M. Poincare. v» lien Parliament re-

usseunneu iu was uiscovereii Tamer belatedly that the Budget contained clauses undoing mu oeparatiun j-.au* and readiflitung .me oesuiu ami me Assumptionists,, rtffe two religious orders that -since the Dreyfus case are most hated in France, though! utterly .luuinerenc to this out-of-date unti-cieiucuiisc issue the young Caillau cist Radicals seized upon the opportunity. indiscreet -speeches by the cupacy and’'Trfitva-gJfcSf by-vuie Royalist youtn, especially in Lyons, M. nerriot’s stronghold, liejped- At the .uiiuial Congress mi me Raditiil part,' <it Angers at ilie beginning' of November, where the older “militants” were already in battle mood over the C lerical issue, M. Alontiguy anu others m M. Caillaux’s young men raised the parallel and deady issue of luvncii militarism. The lacts were with them the rank and file were with them. M. i'oincure Jiimser saw'that the ureacn was inevitable and accepted willingly the resignation of his Raeiial colleagues ,including the reluctant M. iierriot. A week later a new Poincare' Government was formed based upon the Conservatives and the Centre, its sole purpose is to carry through the Budget, which in the end it has done, despite a tremendous onslaught delivered by M. Montigny and seme of the Socialists upon the swollen naval and military estimates. The year ends with M. Poincare in power hut with no intention to remain in power. His real ambition is to withdraw from the strife at the height of his prestige and to prepare the way for another term as President of the Republic.

THE NEW ENTENTE. What has bound him to office is his unchanging and unchangeable foreign policy. After putting the brake on M. Briand’s efforts at Franco-German reconciliation he lias devoted all his efforts, with Sir Austen Chamberlain’s sentimental rather than deliberate aid r.o restore the common front against Germany. In the summer of 1928 something like an Anglo-French alliance at all events on the pro-1914 model, seemed to have been established, of which the so-called nav ; a|. compromise was merely the facade. .Negotiations are now in progress, and events "ill show whether the revolt, of public opinion in Groat Britain and tlm frank resentment of Washington lias, in filet put an end to this extraordinary revival of secret diplomacy qf the worst pre-ar type.

THE ALSATIAN AUTONOMIST MOVEMENT.

From a historian’s point of view the greatest event in France in the year 1928 has been M. Poincare’s ferocious attempt to crush the Home, Rule movement in Alsace and its failure. Despite his acts of coercion, his suppression of the Autonomist press .and the imprisonment of the Autonomist leaders, Alsace returned to the Chamber at the general elections several Home Rule leaders, who were, however, denied the right to take their \seqts. Tn his policy of coercion against Alsace, futile though it is, M. Poincare is, strange as it may seem, supported by

the Radicals and the Socialists and opposed by the reactionaries. Like the Irish, the Alsatians are fervent. Catholics and wish to retain the Concordat and the Catholic schools. On the issue the ultra-reactionaries arc with them and the Socialists and Radicals against. As events are moving, the Alsace-Lorraine question threatens to become one of the festering sores of Europe.

The last few weeks of the year have been stained by financial scandals; that of the “Gazette dit Franc” and that of M. Klotz’s sensational collapse. Both have their political side and both are being used by the enemies of the Republican regime. Monarchists and Fascists alike, to destroy the popular adherence to Parliamentary institutions. Tt cannot be denied that the anti-democratic campaign, of which these very grave scandals are the occasion, has become exceedingly menacing. At the same time, owing to various psychological causes—for example, the lessened respect for human life since the war, the sentimental tenderness of jurymen, and the curious ethics of the leading advocates of the Bar—the jury system in France is under review. Thus December 31, 1928, leaves France really prosperous, apparently dominant in Europe, hut containing within herself seeds of trouble that will probably germinate into the public view during tho twelve months to come.