FRENCH POLITICAL CRISIS

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 January 1914, Page 8

FRENCH POLITICAL CRISIS

THE £52,000,000 LOAN. FIVE CABINETS IN IHREE YEARS. LONDON, December »5. The defeat of M. Bach >u and tho fall of the French Cabinet naker, tlif fifth Ministry to j,:> >n •:<c liM; 'lirce years, and is anotii'r t'.vjr ; .| lo -if iho kaleidoscopic character of ir.i clcrn French politics. On Mond.iy the Cabinet, escaped defeat or. \Uh f2.000.fC0 army loan question by if: v'tes. A private motion for a £60,000 i'OO 1- an, which the Government accepted, was defeated. On the foil .wing evening, however, the Government; was d< ii-ated by 22 votes on the qu-,wv..m <f the ex•mption cf the new Rentes, or State securities, in which form ihe bmi is to be issued, from taxation. The Government was in favour of this exemption. M. Caillaux, the Radical-Socialist leader, was the cause of .ho Government's defeat. He was Premier from June, 1911, to January, 1912, wh-m he was forced from power owing to tho general dissatisfaction with his conduct of the negotiations with Germany regard ins; the exchange of territory which followed the Moroccan crisis.

M. Barthou held office for eight months and a few days. The amendment of M. Delpierre, which finally caused ihe fall of the Government, was as follows :—"Mention shall hereafter bo made on the certificate of registry of State Rentes of all the immunities with which they are' privileged." M. Barthou, in accepting the amendment, and in making it, further, a question <>f confidence m the Government, said that he wished to leave no shadow of doubt on the matter. Nobody could henceforth accuse the Government of not having taken up a clear position. Tt was necessary, he said, after the attacks that had heen made, to nlainly that the Rentes of the French State would he exempt from taxation. Not to-day only, he said, emphatically. but to-morrow as well—that is, for all future time. If M- Caillaux looked at it in the proper light he would see that this would tend to assist in th<? voting of the income tax, instead of retarding it. At the conclusion of the Premier's sneech, the chairman of the Budget Committee spoke, and his words, perhaps, helped the Government's fall. He pointed out the fact that by assuming that the present debate was calculated to harm the credit of France, it not followed Ivy a vote in favour of the immunity of the Rentes, the Prime Minister had gone outside his role.

On ihe other hand, M. Caillaux and M. Jaures contended that the principle of equal burdens for all precludes in-anting a privilege to French Government stockholders in the event which is now not far off, of an income tax forming part of the French fiscal system. Tne coupon of the French Rentes must, like British consols, pay income tax at the source when the French income tax is voted. Moreover, five years ago the Chamber, by a large ma-

jority, passed a resolution against exempting Rentes in future from an income tax.

The Chamber proceeded to vote on the amendment without the slightest misgiving. The Government had already in various subsidiary questions scored a much larger majority than it had obtained for the principal clause in the Bill approving the loan, and there seemed no reason why now it-, would fail to score again with a majority of at least 30 to 40 votes. When, therefore, about 20 minutes past 8, the result of the ballot—29o against the amendment and only 265 for it —was announced there was general amazement.

Tho Paris correspondent of the Daily Mail cabled : "The defeated Ministry" had carried out a measure of very great importance not only to France but also to all Europe. It had realised in the face of fierce opposition the project, of increasing the strength of the French army by o 0 per cent, by prolonging the term of military service from two yeais to three. But before this great task could be completed by the voting of the Budget which was to provide for the increased national expenditure thus entailed, the Government has fallen, and much of its work may possibly be passed back into the melting-pot. "M Caillaux is one of the chief forces in trench political life at the moment. He is very rich, and has considerable financial interests in Egypt, the Argentine, and Russia. He is lieieely energetic, and if he had his way would drag out into the arena of conflict ail those vexed and bitter questions of religious and social reform which lie only just beneath the surface of French politics. He has a vigorous, combative face, with a completely b-tld head, the gradual reddening of which is said to act as a useful gauge of the intensity of the debate to spectators in the galleries of the Chamber. '■ ' There is another statesman whose name suggests itself at once for office. That is M'.-Aristide-Briaud, the ex-So-cialist, a railway porter's son, who rose to be Premier, and who, while in that office, broke the railway strike, winch was the last great effort of Syndicalism in force to organise discontented laboui in an attack on the community. M. Briand would carry on, in its large lines, the policy of the Cabinet which has just fallen. But he is so deeply committed to the project of electoral reform, which would certainly not at the present moment command a majority in the Chamber, that his tenure of office could only be temporary-'' ____