FRANCE IN STATE OF FLUX

Southland Times, Issue 23678, 29 November 1938, Page 7

FRANCE IN STATE OF FLUX

LEGACY OF MUNICH INDICATIONS OF GRADUAL TURN TO THE RIGHT What is the future of France, vitally affected now at home and abroad by the Munich agreement? In this article a special correspondent discusses in The Herald (Melbourne) the grave problems facing the republic and indicates that they are of a more serious nature than is generally reaAs the Munich agreement drops into the past, the French Government speaks of it with less and less apology, while the nation thinks of it with less and less pleasure. M. Edouard Daladier, the Prime Minister, talks of the end of a crisis that has lasted 20 years, and declares that the agreement was not reached under constraint; M. de Monzie, his Minister for Public Works, declares that France has no ground for feeling humiliation and remorse. The ordinary Paris workman, who may well have been mobilized during the crisis and have waited for the war in a front trench by the Rhine, can be heard murmuring: “We should have gone to it” Paris naturally woke up first to the gravity of the defeat that France has suffered. The provinces, where life is slower and easier, and foreign contacts are fewer, are reacting belatedly. The soporific effects of a Press which the Foreign Minister (M. Bonnet) has brought to a great extent under indirect Government control by various forms of persuasion is more enduring in a small town than in the capital. Friends of the Foreign Minister have found all sorts of explanations for his foreign policy. It has been alleged without a shadow of truth that the former Czechoslovakian President, Dr. Benes, asked to be compelled by Britain and France to give way before Germany as otherwise war could not be avoided. It has been declared by men in high position, with very close contacts to the Foreign Minister, that it was Britain’s attitude which prevented France from standing by Czechoslovakia. For many Frenchmen a strong and comprehensive dislike of the only party which has made France’s defeat the main feature of its propaganda—the Communist Party—has contributed to confuse the issue. • , On the other hand the Legitimist heir to the throne of France, the young Comte de Paris, in a declaration which made many Republicans wish that the Royalist cause was not so thoroughly dead, delivered to journalists on the soil of France in spite of the law of exile, acknowledged that the Government, acting as he argued under circumstances which at the end of September left no alternative, had, for the first time in 15 centuries failed to fulfil a promise solemnly given in the name, of France.

Had M. Daladier felt able to take up this attitude, the future of France might look brighter than it does at this moment. TREND TO THE RIGHT Munich is proving a milestone in France’s internal affairs as much as in her foreign policy. The political current which for two years ran strongly to the Left and was stagnant all summer, is now sweeping swiftly, if silently, to the Right. M. Daladier, Prime Minister and leader of the French Radical Party, who was one of the principal architects jf the Popular Front (that is an alliance of Liberal and Labour of all complexions, including the strong French Communist Party), which ruled France for the two years after the Election of May 1936, was _ cheered enthusiastically by the majority of the Radical Party Congress when he made an onslaught on the Communist party the principal feature of his first speech since he faced Parliament for a short session immediately after Munich. The Communists have few friends outside their own ranks in France today, and they do not deserve to have them. They have persistently hunted with the hounds and rim with the hares during their two years of association with the Government, taken credit for Government measures while shouldering no responsibilities, demanding a strong foreign policy while perpetually causing unrest in industry. When the Prime Minister, however, makes the Communists the only scapegoats, after an international crisis in which, as the Socialist leader, M. Blum, puts it, the popular Press under capitalist control sometimes behaved like the Press of high treason, pleading the defeatist case openly, he is apt to throw the whole of Labour into opposition, even though he insists upon his determination to maintain the most important reforms of the Popular Front. The first result of M. Daladier’s speech at Marseilles was to cause the trades unions, which were rent by disputes between non-communists and communists, to close their ranks. French Labour is divided by the most bitter disputes, but the French working man does not like to think that they are being exploited against him from outside. , , In other words, the opportunity of French national unity has been missed, and M. Daladier or his successor will for some time, to come depend on a majority of the Radicals. Centre and Right, instead of on one of the Radicals and the Left. t . The Right is no moreninconstitutional or unparliamentary than the Left in France, and in normal circumstances the shift would not be of such great importance. But in 1938 it may have far-reaching consequences, for although the political routine is still retained, the whole political landscape is really in a state of flux. It is indeed the third time since the war that a strong Left majority has broken up in the course of a Parliament’s lifetime and, without new elections, a Government under the influence of the Right has come into office.. But never before had such hopes been placed on a Left victory as on the Popular Front in 1936. The Popular Front was to prove that democracy was as vigorous and as bold as the fascist dictatorships. It has been defeated at home and the last island of democracy in Eastern Europe has disappeared. CAN STRUCTURE ENDURE? The swing back to the Right has occurred without the fall of a Government, without an important parliamentary debate, and nor even under remarkable personal leadership. Foreign policy has been reversed without a parliamentary debate on foreign affairs. (The perfunctory discussion after M. Daladier’s return scarcely counts.) Finance is passing out of the control of the Chamber through the habit of repeatedly delegating extraordinary powers of decree to tbe Government.

Thus the realities of parliamentary government are being steadily undermined. Party congresses are assuming the same importance as parliamentary sessions.

There is an uneasy feeling that a wall of the old constitutional structure may give way at any moment under the

tremendous stress of France’s unsolved problems. There is the financial problem. M, Daladier has admitted that next year as this year, the Treasury will have to borrow in some form or another more than two-thirds of the total sum raised by taxation. How this is to be done is quite unknown. The entire French financial and industrial system is in need of an overhaul. There are international problems pressing on France both in the Mediterranean and in the East, where a Japanese army is now near the frontier of French Indo-Chtna. In the public mind discontent and disquiet tend to generate passions and prejudices, which may break out at the next crisis. There is, for instance, a strong tendency to anti-Semitism and dislike of foreign immigrants at the moment.

The Frenchman has one supreme civic virtue—his readiness and ability to serve his country as a soldier when called upon. Individually he has retained all his vitality, his gift of improvization and love of his personal liberty. It is with these qualities that he faces the unknown future. Whether they will enable him to solve the political problems of this country remains to be seen.