The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1934. THE FURY OF THE SEINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 33, 8 February 1934, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1934. THE FURY OF THE SEINE.

J?or the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that «c can do

Tennyson has been criticised for his line, "the red fool-fury of the Seine," but the news from Paris will bring it to mind to-day, and it is still a question whether the following line, about piling barricades with dead, will not be illustrated literally again. Whatever wo may call this violence of the Paris mob, it is in evidence to-day as it has not been since the days of the Commune, over sixty years ago. No one yet can foretell the outcome. The rioting has assumed some of the features of civil war, and has spread to many provincial towns. Some even see in it the end of the Republic and the triumph of either the Royalists or the Communists. The one cry of Fascists and Communists is "Down with the Government!" What hau caused the outbreak? On the face of it there does not

seem in the Stavisky scandal alone any justification for such extreme violence. Previous financial scandals, such as the Panama affair, stirred up a certain amount of agitation, but nothing was done in any way comparable to the present rioting. One cause is to be found in the , French Parliamentary system. A French paper has referred to the "afflicting spectacle that is offered by the politicians with their disorderliness, their talkativeness, their manoeuvres and their impuissanee." The same paper goes on to speak of the lobbying, the machinations, the conspiracies and the conflicts of ambition which prevail among the politicians. French Governments lately have followed this or that current, obedient to every wind that blows. The pilot has been changed on the high seas, and there has been no directing idea and no powerful arm. The consequent muddle has created in every class the desperate sentiment of incertitude. There has been a feeling that everything has been falsified, that there have been unworthy comradeships, and that there has been a bankruptcy of leadership. The resignation of M. Daladier will not solve the difficulty. It is a general distrust of the political system rather than a distrust of any one politician that has caused the rising.

Will the present events be the death of the existing order in France? "The Times" thinks it -well' may be. If so, what will take its place? ~• The Royalists are not strong politically, nor have they a strong claimant to the throne. Communism has gained adherents in the towns, but the' French peasants, with their strong individualism, would never countenance it. There remains a dictatorship, but no Hitler or Mussolini has so far appeared. There does not seem to be any really strong man in France to-day capable of enforcing Fascist rule. , It is clear that neither the Ministers nor the Chambers commend themselves to the public, and the example of Germany resurgent under Hitler may tempt the French to try some form of one-man rule. France has suffered many disappointments. She has failed in her search for the "security" she demands; her foreign policy seems likely to estrange her from her European allies; she has lost the reparations she expected from Germany; she is fighting against odds for the gold standard to which she has pinned her faith. Financial stringency has brought much suffering to her people. In these circumstances the explosive nature of French public opinion was almost bound to show itself. Yet it may be that the ultimate good sense of the people will shoAv itself and the Republic be saved. It would be a tremendous tragedy to herself and the world if France yielded to either Fascrsra or i Communism, or was plunged in civil Avar.