DAY OF RECKONING

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3471, 26 May 1934, Page 4

DAY OF RECKONING

FRANCE'S PENALTY OF EXTRAVAGANCE..

The day of reckoning has come in France. Eighty thousand civil servants, representing a tenth of the total, will be retired, the salaries of others will he reduced by 5 to 10 per cent., and there will be a rigid amendment of the pensions system. Outside observers have been expecting some dramatic movement of this description as the alternative to bankruptcy. Latest, reports from the Continent indicate that the finances of France have been reduced to a. deplorable mess by inefficient Ministries and Parliaments. The Paris correspondent of the London Financial Times recently declared that it would he necessary to go back SO years in the history of France to find a condition of financial confusion and wastage at all comparable to that which now exists. All parties have been equally guilty in the orgy of spending. Although the moderates blame the Socialists for pandering to every demand from organised bodies in the electorate necessitating the expenditure of public money, it was under the regime of the moderates that 150,000 bogus pensions were voted. Deficits in the national Budgets have become chronic in the last few years, and borrowing on a huge scale has been resorted to.

Last year the French Treasury borrowed approximately £12(1,0 00,000, and this year it has been authorised to borrow £120,000,000 additional, for which hills have already been issued for £50.000,000. If it does not achieve budgetry equilibrium this year. France may be faced with a problem of currency inflation involving the abandonment of the gold standard. The action of President Lebrun in legalising the economy policy of the new Government under M. Doumergue, by which it is expected that savings amounting to £34,000,000 will he effected, is the first important action to restore the finances to a sound basis.