FRENCH ELECTIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 83, 7 April 1936, Page 11

FRENCH ELECTIONS

CAMPAIGN OPENS

ISSUE MORE OBSCURE THAN EVER

DEMOCRACY v. FASCISM

United Tress Association—Zy Electric TelC'

graph—Copyright.

(Received April 7, 9.30 a.m.)

LONDON, April 6.

The "Sun-Herald" news agency says that the General Election campaign in France opens today. The first ballot will take place on April 26 and the second on May 3. For the 615 seats 2730 candidates have been nominated. The majority of the candidates, will disappear after the first ballot, when the four main parties will remain, the Communists, the Socialists, the Radical Socialists, and the.Croix de Feu and other Nationalists.

The contest will be more obscure than for many years. Internal politics are still of first importance, but foreign affairs recently have so monopolised the attention of the public that the preliminaries and party groupings have lost much of their meaning.' The Left and the Right, which were clearly divided last November on such questions as the future of Parliamentary government, economic and financial policy, and social legislation, are now confronted by a single issue—Demo-, cracy versus Fascism —which1 has been transplanted from the internal to the foreign field. Herr Hitler's violation of the Treaty of Locarno has enabled the Left to steal the Right's thunder, because the question is not only one of the defence of France against Germany, but the defence of the democratic system against autocracy.