FRENCH ELECTION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22389, 8 April 1936, Page 13

FRENCH ELECTION

CAMPAIGN OPENS OBSCURITY OF CONTEST FOREIGN AFFAIRS FACTOR By Teleitrnph—Press Association—Copyright LONDON, April G The Sun-Herald news service says the general election campaign in France will open to-day. The first ballot will be taken on April 26, and the second on May 3. In all 2730 candidates have been nominated for the 615 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the majority of whom will disappear after the first ballot, when the four main parties will remain, the Communists, Socialists, Radical Socialists and the Croix de Feu and other Nationalists. The contest is more obscure than for many years. Internal politics will still be first in importance, but foreign affairs recently have so monopolised public attention that the preliminaries and party groupings have lost much of their meaning.

The parties of the lieft and Right, which were clearly divided in November on such questions as the future of Parliamentary Government, economic and financial policy and social legislation, are confronted now by a single issue—Democracy versus Fascism —which has been transplanted from the internal to the foreign field. Herr Hitler's violation of the Locarno Treaty has enabled the Left to steal the Right's thunder because the question is not only the defence of France against Germany, but the defence of the democratic system against autocracy.