CHANGES IN FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1943, Page 4

CHANGES IN FRANCE

CRISIS THAT BEGAN WITH WORLD WAR 1. NATION SHAKEN TO ROOTS. PROBLEM OF RESTORING ! BALANCE. (By Norton Webb, in the “Christian Science Monitor”). When in Tunis reviewing troops last June 28. General de Gaulle declared France would not be so different after the war as many believed. Somewhat : corroborating this statement is the recent pamphlet by another outstanding Frenchman, Prof. Andre Meyer of the College de France, now in America, in which the author, taking the long view, sees his country in the throes of a serious structural crisis that began with World War I and which the present conflict has merely aggravated and accentuated, and whose solution awaits the post-war period. The Third French Republic, up to 1914, had enjoyed a well-balanced and stable prosperity through a policy of severe self-sufficiency. The yield from French soil amply guaranteed shelter, food, and clothing for 42 million Frenchmen living within 212,659 square miles of territory, defended by three seas and three great mountain chains. Three factors produced this. Fertility of soil, an ideal climate and, above all. the French people's extremely industrious character. These constituted a highly nationalistic world of small proprietors, farmers, artisans, shopkeepers and little business men whose passion was personal economic independence strictly protected from foreign incursions. World War I shook this structure of French society to the roots. National self-sufficiency broke down and with it France’s economic system. As a world banker after 1918, France was forced out of her tight nationalistic shell and compelled to export to maintain any reasonable economic equilibrium. Then barely a decade after Versailles a new war loomed calling for 1 rearmament before the cost of the last had been liquidated. The French economic crisis, begun in 1930, reduced one of the world’s leading i individualtistic economies to a society cf masses integrated as units in great public and private enterprises, managed by groups of practically unknown men devoid of any personal responsibility. Absorption of France's economy piecemeal by the State then began. The French Government became a big banker, owner of France’s railroads, shipping interests, as well as air and canal transport. It also took over control of power production, fuels, mines, exports, and imports. Likewise, it fixed working conditions and salaries. The French State assumed control over agriculture not only through tariffs but by centralisation, distribution, and price-fixing of agricultural products. Further, the Government became a guarantor of business, fixing the value of enterprises, scaling rents and controlling them and building huge housing projects. And to pay for all this and other collectivist schemes, the State naturally drained French savings. Figures show that even by 1935 the average Frenchman was already working one day out of two for the State. This radical reshaping of the structure of French society Professor Meyer sees as having been accentuated by the present war with destruction by the State (presumably Vichy) of the last vestiges of French independence in its attempt to sway the entire lives of the French people. And development since the war of a bitter lack of confidence in human relations has capped the climax and macle the situation worse. Professor Meyer makes only a brief allusion to a solution. But it is apt and fundamental, for he says France’s proper balance can only be restored when the individual regains his rights and liberty. And this, he confidently believes, will be realised by the younger generation of Frenchmen who as a result of their terrible trials these last years have learned lessons that will fructify in the post-war era. 1 No doubt exists that' France’s great 1 underground army, now on the alert 1 to move at the propitious moment, 1 counts thousands of young Frenchmen I■ among whom are the leaders of the 1 1 France of tomorrow. And that they IJ have prepared plans for the setting up ‘ of the Fourth French Republic is , known. Whether the renewed French post-war State will largely follow traditional French republican lines, as Gen- I eral de Gaulle holds, is not yet clear. But what counts more and is already . happily very evident is that the new French democracy will vigorously abolish the degraded Nazi-Vichy slave State and re-establish one, as Professor Meyer implies, based on improved concep- g lions of the Declaration of the Rights g of Man and with new and sounder safeguards for preserving Liberty, Equality, f Fraternity. (