FRANCE’S PREDICAMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 199, 23 July 1926, Page 6

FRANCE’S PREDICAMENT.

It seems almost impossible to keep count of the many ministries which have been called into being in France since the armistice. The most lasting was that formed by M. Poincare, M. Clemenceau’s successor, to whom, however, much of the trouble the French people are now experiencing is presumably due. In failing to make provision for the country’s liabilities, by postponing from one year to another interest and other payments which should have been met, M. Poincare passed on to those who succeeded him in office legacies of debt which the country would now seem unwilling, if it is not actually unable, to meet, except at a cost which it seems ruinous to contemplate. M. Briand has made attempt after attempt to deal with a situation which is probably unprecedented in the history of any country. Ho has formed Cabinet after Cabinet, reshuffling the portfolios, and obtaining votes .of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies one day, only to be met by a vote of noconfidence a few days later. M. Herriot, who also formed a Ministry, could hardly hope to succeed where M. Briand failed, and the reception accorded to his Ministry by the Parisian press foreshadowed its early downfall, and the cable messages now tell us that M. Herriot has resigned and that M. Poincare is to again form a Cabinet. To be described as a “ministry of national calamity” and to suggest that, under it, the country will suffer the “depths of calamity and infamy” is bad enough; but, when it is further suggested that “M. Herriot composed a Cabinet for the salvage of the Left Cartel” it would seem the belief existed that M. Herriot was more concerned in furthering the views of his extreme radical and Communist friends than in studying the interests of the country as a whole. The parlous condition into which the financial affairs of the country have drifted is apparent in the still further depreciation of the franc, which, like the post-war German mark and the Soviet paper rouble, seems destined to lose whatever little value it has preserved during the last few months. Just as the avoidance of debt payments on the part of the individual ends in the loss of credit, so the nation that fails to make provision for the discharge of its obligations suffers in the of its credit also. The franc of to-day is probably of little greater value than the paper it is printed upon. It merely stands as a promise to make payment of a certain value. M. Poincare possibly estimated Germany’s ability and readiness to meet the reparations payments, on the same basis as the payments of the German indemnity, made by France after the FrancoPrussian war of the seventies, and in happy-go-lucky fashion decided to postpone payment of the French war obligations until the German payments were made. Such sums as were received from Germany, however, were expended in rehabilitating the devasta-ted-regions of Northern France, but no effort was made to clear up the accumulating liabilities of the Government in other directions. The failure to balance the budget for two years in succession, landed the country in a financial muddle which successive governments seem unable to remedy. Things apparently are drifting from bad to worse. There are far too many parties and factions in France to-day, each struggling for its own hand and it is apparently difficult for any particular group or section of the Chamber of Deputies to secure the support of a sufficient number of the other groups to ensure a stable administi'ation for the country’s affairs. The outcome is as uncertain as the condition of affairs is complex.