M. BLUM’STASK

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 August 1936, Page 12

M. BLUM’STASK

FRANCE’S PROBLEMS

LONDON, July 8

Tho enemies of the Blum Government in France are already saying that its days are numbered, but, according to tho Paris correspondent of “The Observer,” it would be a mistake to think that it is in any immediate danger.

The Government will almost certainly remain in office until the end of the session, which will, perhaps, be as late as the beginning of August. By that time, most of the Popular Front programme will have been translated into legislation with record speed, and it is from that time that M. Blum’s position may begin to be insecure.

“The Observer” correspondent considers that if the Government can bring off a. financial miracle it will

have.another lease of life, for the feeling of the country is sufficiently in

sympathy with its social reforms to make resistance from the employing

class hopeless. If the Government cannot find the large sums of money necessary to finance the reforms, it is

doomed. Tho first of the elements to break away from it will naturally be the Radical. There are, it is stated, already signs of this. But the insecuri-

ties of the Government, it is considered, may not depend upon Parliamentary action alone. M. Gaston Bergery, a detached and far-sighted political figure, declares that it is difficult to believe that the country, having adopted the Popular Front programme, will be able to apply it, under the existing economic and political system. The execution of the Popular Front programme will, he points out, in any case be a heavy charge upon that system. What alteration, he asks, will the country make in order to meet the change? The whole problem, in his view, rests upon tho question whether the Socialists will have the courage to recreate a social and econqmic order in France, which will unite all classes, except that class which has hitherto dominated French economy, through the trusts and tho old political system.