The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1934. EXIT DOUMERGUE!

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19953, 10 November 1934, Page 8

The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1934. EXIT DOUMERGUE!

“I do not desire to deliberate,” declared the veteran French statesman, M. Gaston Doumergue in tendering his resognation as head of the French Government, “under the double menace of riots and dissolution.” Under normal conditions, the fall of the French Cabinet would not occasion any concern in ihe Chancelleries of Europe, but to-day such sinister forces are moving throughout France that the menace of a revolution has come so near, as to convince the Prime Minister of the futility of attempting to carry on against such overwhelming odds. The Fates seem to have played the Prime Minister a miserable trick. Deserted by at least six members of his Ministry, M. Donmergue has laid down the claims of office and retired to private life. It may be suggested that the French police have adequate authority to deal with all disturbances arising out of political or economic developments, but the fact remains that from end to end of France, the country is literally simmering with deep-seated unrest that possesses all the elements of widespread revolution. Since the uprising in February last, M. Donmergue has been to France a veritable sheet anchor, but he has lived to find himself unable to make headway in pulling the nation together, and today he finds himself deserted by the Radicals who cooperated with other French leaders in a party truce which gave France much needed breathing space to try to find a way out of her bewildering economic and political mazes. The edifice which M. Donmergue attempted to erect, which might have meant the salvation of France, have collapsed like packs of cards. For some months, internal discontent has been increasing in intensity, and to-day, manifestations of an exasperated nation can be seen in many parts of the country. The incidents are of all kinds: Ex-soldiers may peaceably interrupt the traffic on the boulevards. Or in a provincial town there may be serious riots against the police. Or there may be collisions between rival factions. The disturbances at the race course of Longchamp in themselves may have no importance, but they show how easily the public is aroused. 'There was what was considered a false start in the races, and because the stewards did not act quickly enough, the crowd invaded the course, pulled up the rails, started fires, threw' chairs and generally wrecked the race course. Precisely because the occasion was so trivial these disorders are highly significant. Nor are passions appeased when the Union des Amputes—Wounded Soldiers —meet on the steps of the . Opera, waving their crutches and chanting in chorus their demand for Ministerial resignations. They stir up public sympathy, and the forces of order, jeered at and impotent, are placed in an unenviable position. Again, the extreme section of exsoldiers, the Croix de Feu, under the leadership of Colonel de la Rocque, are holding many great public meetings, and parading in military fashion. The Socialists and Communists are forming other associations of which the most important is the Common Front. They come into opposition. The police intervene. Improvised weapons are freely used and missiles are mysteriously found. At Amzin, a military torchlight procession provoked rioting of the crowd which was exasperated by the projected visit of a member of the Government. Since his return to office M. Doumergue has repeatedly expressed the view' that France is too much at the mercy of political party intrigue. “Until this situation has been changed,” the Prime Minister said the other day, “it is idle to hope for real stability and complete confidence.” Proof that the veteran French statesman has failed to clean up the Augean stable, can be found in his ow'n statement, on his retirement from office; indeed, he has found deep-seated intrigue so firmly entrenched that the Cabinet he formed with such high hopes, has literally battered itself to pieces on the battlements of party intrigue and political compromise. Manifestly, the French people expected too much of “Papa Gastounet,” but it is plain that it is against the French Parliament that popular anger is directed. The people feel they are being badly governed, and that the politicians are interested only in trivial personal affairs, while the temper of the great mass of the people has not been improved by the repeated exposure of scandalous conditions in which highly placed Frenchmen were involved. Hence nothing but the purification of Parliament will satisfy the people, who are really very much in sympathy with the leader of the Croix de Feu, who has warned Parliament that if the rival parties continue to commit the crime of returning to their old intrigues, the nation wdll take its problems into its ow r n hands and w'ill rise up and give France the penetrating purging that is long overdue.

TESTED IN THE COURTS. Although the Government’s legislation relating to the dairying industry has been placed upon the Statute-book, with certain rather important modifications in the original proposals, the legislative plan evolved by the Govern-

ment has aroused a storm of criticism from end to end of New Zealand, not particularly in relation to the purpose and scope of the plan evolved by the Government to lift the dairying industry out of he financial doldrums into which the uneconomic market price of butter and cheese lias thrown individual producers, but because the Government proposes to extend the scope of that pernicious system of legislation known as government by regulation. The critics of the Government have not been slow in challenging the use of this objectionable method, and the decision of the Court of Appeal last year in the case of Carroll and another v. the AttorneyGeneral for New' Zealand is being quoted to show the danger involved in the Government’s plan. In that case a regulation had been made in 1933 by Order-in-Council under the Dairy Industry Act of 1908, the effect of which was to compel a dairy farmer, once lie commenced supplying his milk or cream to a particular dairy factory at the beginning of any season, to continue his supply to that dairy factory, whether lie liked it or not, throughout the whole of the season. Here the department overreached itself. The Court of Appeal was able to hold that the regulation was ultra vires and void: “I confess that I am not sorry at being forced to the conclusion at which I have arrived (said the Chief Justice in his judgment) because, if it be thought necessary to interfere with either the personal liberty of the subject or his freedom in exercising a lawful trade or business, and particularly in the sale of his own goods in the market of his own choice, it can scarcely be doubted that such a matter should (except where emergency conditions require otherwise in the interests of the public safety) be the subject of direct legislation by Parliament itself in appropriate, clear and unequivocal language, rather then be left to the discretion of a delegated authority. “It is an attempt (said Mr Justice Ostler) to make one class of men honest by Order-in-Council by taking away the rights of another class of men—an attempt, moreover, in my opinion, just as futile as the attempt to make men honest by Act of Parliament. . . Although the Court has been informed as to the object of this regulation, it has not been told how it originated. It would be interesting to know whether it was first thought of by the department or by the dairy companies.

Palpably, w r ith the object of strengthening the hands of the Government, the Public Service Commissioner, in his annual report discussed the tendency to resort to government by regulation, and it will surprise the great majority of the people to learn, on the authority of the Public Service Commissioner, that the demand for legislation of this type has arisen from the people themselves. Obviously Mr Verschaffelt is completely out of touch with the people, otherwise he would not make such a preposterous assertion. In dealing with this subject the Public Service Commissioner says it will be recalled, that “these demands call for regulation by the Government of private activities of varying kinds, and, in a different degree, implying the need for legislative control with more or less administrative supervision by officers or quasi-officers of the Public Service, in a gradually increasing number of industries, trades and commercial undertakings.” Without attempting to particularise in reply to the Public Service, it, can be said w'ith emphasis that the great majority of the people have no intention of transferring the functions of government into the hands of the servants of the State, but are unitedly determined, as far as they can, to insist on the preservation of their freedom in economic affairs, similarly w'ith things political, w'ith the growing insistence despite the difficulties of the times, that the national policy shall provide for more business in Government and less Government in business.