The Northern Advocate Daily "NORTHLAND FIRST" SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1938. French Government Falls

Northern Advocate, 15 January 1938, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily "NORTHLAND FIRST"

SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1938. French Government Falls

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FRANCE is again without a Government. The frequent changes in Administration indicate the -futility of a Parliament with too many parties, and confirm the belief that a democracy with two, or perhaps three, great schools of- political thought, is still the most stable and efficient, whatever the limitations of the party machine may be. 'The fall of the Blum Cabinet last June and its replacement with the Chautemps Government—still the Front Populaire—found the nation confronted by a severe economic and financial erksis. General industrial unrest in France added further to the embarrassments of the new Administration. M. Chautemps was compelled to undertake a policy of drastic retrenchments. M. Georges Bonnet, brought back from America, to take the portfolio of Finance, declared that the nation was on the verge ot bankruptcy, and that M. Blum's theory that by increasing purchasing power increased production would follow, had not brought about the permanent recovery the former Prime Minister had expected. Higher costs, due to the 40-hour week, paid holidays (and the economic loss caused by the outbreak of stayin strikes) had inflated prices to such an extent, he said, that the benefits of the new workers' agreements had been cancelled. The internal troubles of France were further intensified by the colkipse of the franc in August and September last. The Radical-Socialist element chose to allow the exchange to swing free, rather than to modify the 40-hour week and other of M. Blum's overhasty social reforms. Adherence to the shorter working week was, however, the main condition of Socialist support of the Chautemps Administration. The Prime Minister shrank from tackling the obvious remedy for falling production and adopted a policy meantime of '' wait and see'' in respect to the 40-hour week. But even the Labour leaders have realised that the sudden application of the shorter working week has seriously embarrassed French industry, and the Socialists were not slower than the more conservative group of the Government to see that the 40-hour week would reduce the economic life of France to chaos. They, therefore, reluctantly concurred in a policy of gradually relaxing the hours limit where it created hardship. The eminent French Trades Union leader, M. Jouhaux, for one, was under no illusions as to the inherent dangers of a hasty reduction of working hours, when he declared that, to be economically sound, the 40-hour week must be applied simultaneously in all competitive manufacturing countries. Given this support, the Government, as was reported a week ago, decided to extend hours in industries and shipyards on which the rearmament programme depends. However, according to Odette Keun, Liberal French journalist and author, in the " Manchester Guardian," the worst legacy the Front Populaire has left the country is not the financial and economic situation, disastrous though it certainly was. The worst legacy, to his mind, was that political authority has rapidly escaped from the hands of Parliament, so hypnotised by the everrecurring threat of a "Ministry of the Masses," so conscious of its feebleness and so eager to escape responsibility that it acquired the habit of leaning too much upon the organ of. Labour Syndicalism, the Confederation Generale du Travail, and of the organ of the great industrial firms—the Confederation Generale du Patronat Francais. At a time when the State devalued the national currency, without warning, nullified by law a great number of private contracts (individual and commercial, rents, farming agreements, the sale prices of commercial stocks, etc.), and when an extraordinary number of people consider it a proof of idiocy to keep their signed engagements, since "exceptional decrees" afforded them easy outlets and repudiations, the common citizen was faced with the loss of his constitutional defenders. The turmoil of the past eight months, and again the dramatic scenes in the Chamber of Deputies, when M. Chautemps made the speech which left no alternative but resignation, proved that France has moved too fast. From the difficulties facing a number of New r Zealand industries, the Dominion, under Socialism, has fallen under the same error.