FRENCH TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 126, 24 November 1923, Page 16

FRENCH TRADE

THE MIRACLE OF ITS PROSPERITY.

The great miracle has been wrought in .France, writes Sir W. Beach Thomas in the "Daily Express.: 1 "The prosperity of the country leaps to the eye. Things and people, factories and labour, the productive army and the military army, the putting forth of raw material and manufactured material, of coal, iron, and potash, as well as gabardine and tires—aU the efforts of national energy boom. Great and splendid new factories have become chief objects of the scenery round Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and scores of other countries. In the^ Pyrenees, the French Alps, the Oentral Plateau, in the Departments of the Nord and the Pas do Calais new factories are equipped with new electrical power an d n, ac hi ne s of the. best and latest pattern. The most modern iron and steel plants in the world have been installed along the frontiers, in the once devastated'regions. Enormous engineering trusts, grounded on productive factories «i aIT parts of France, have extended their operations to Czecho-Slq-vakia, to Poland, where the State mines are now under French control, to Rumania. — , .

It is the reasoned, verdict, of the British commercial counsellor of our Paris ijnbassy that in many manufactures France has now 'acquired knowledge which relieves her of W dependence^o a considerable extent on foreign imports ; and, he might have added, enabled her with, the help of a low «- ft^^ 1 v*™ &eir home mar- ■ jT°. m BntlBh: manufacturers. This incredible prosperity has not come by accident. It has been organised. The Government has lavished money on restoring devastated areas, on rebuildmc and re-equipping factories,-on increasing the mean* of transport, and developing cfe^fi ?l d Wv. ater P™'*- The -n«° tw U ■ M 6n 8O ra Pidlv increased worV V™ th 6 third ta "za in *c world. It loses money, but it aswt« immensely trade and commerce^ and Industry The expenditure has entailed a heavy debt, and has temporarily lowered is now returning home—buttered."