PARIS AND THE NEW PAPER TRICK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19048, 27 June 1924, Page 10

PARIS AND THE NEW PAPER TRICK

AFTERMATH OF THE FRANC CRISIS. (From Melbourne Age’s special Correspondent). PARIS, April 17. The impression that Paris makes on one just now, on returning to it after an absence of sbme months, is that of a wood on the day following a paper chase. For all Paris is no more than a series of hoardings, as it were, on which are pasted notices or scraps of paper announcing an alteration in price due to the increased cost of living. A writer of sub-titles for films would undoubtedly describe the situation as Paris—or the Aftermath of the Franc Crisis. It is the minuteness—the pettiness, almost—of detail with which some of these alterations have been carried out, and, iu most cases, their trivial insignificance that makes one realise how very real must have been the state of panic into which France was thrown when the franc started to collapse a few months ago, and how very far-reaching was its effect on the psychology of the people themselves. From Poincare down to the humble keeper of the smallest “bistro’’(the cheapest kind of bar, where working men congregate), the first thought of all immediately and inevitably turned, towards the problem of squaring up the situation, and making someone pay somehow'for the calamitous state of things which had befallen them. Poincare brought in stringent measures that ■will have the effect of cutting down salaries and administrative expenses, and of increasing taxes; the bistro keeper wrote in clumsy figures on several scraps of paper the announce ment, “60 centimes,” and stuck these on the glass front of his bar, on the tariff placard inside, on everywhere, in fact, where there had formerly been an announcement stating that a safe creme (glass of coffee with milk) a bock (a quarter litre glass of light beer), or a glass of white wine (the drink of predilection of real chauffeurs) would cost the consumer “50 centimes.” Merely by adding on ten centimes—an incalculable sum in English money to-day—satisfied this worthy son of thrifty France that he was getting even with fate. When you get into a taxi, you see pasted on to the window in front of you, a notice stating that passengers must add 20 centimes on to the fare as registered by the meter, this (most important of details!) not to be confounded with or deducted from in any way the tip due to the chauffeur. When you go to get your ticket at the underground station, and hand out the 50 centimes which used to be -he fare, the woman behind the guiehet glares at you, demands an extra ten centimes and asks icily if you have not read the notice posted up in front of the guiehet. In all trams, buses, and trains you go through a similar experience. But. it is when you reach the post office that you begin to feel the effect of Poincare’s little system of cutting down expenses and raising up taxes. Nothing has been altered to any extent as far as inland postal charges are concerned, but when the postal official scrutinises your letter, packet or telegram and murmers the word “etranger” (foreign), you can prepare yourself for the worst. Some of these reforms are so recent, that generally, he has to consult the new tariff sheet himself before being able to calculate just exactly how much more the French Government is asking you to pay on a letter, packet or telgram destined for a foreign country. In most cases this amounts exactly to the double of the former rate. What the rates and taxes will be for householders and flat dwellers when next they fall due only Poincare and the tax collectors as yet know. When you go to your favourite “prix fixe” (fixed price ( restaurant where yom were wont to excellent meal for 10 francs including wine and coffee, you find that the übiquitous scrap of paper has been pasted up over the “10 francs,” and that you are now asked to pay twelve, in some cases fifteen, francs for a similar

When ,in desperation, towards evening, you decide to forget these minor tragedies of life, if only for a while, in some theatre or concert hall, you are confronted by the same scraps of pasted paper, the same notices, and the same icy demand from the girl at the ticket office and the programme seller, as from the underground official. In the shops you notice the same difference in price, and realise that your spring hat and frock will cost you at least 50 per cent, more this year than it did last. You find later that your grocer, your greengrocer and every other tradesman has played the sa,me little trick of the pasted scrap of paper on you, and that the butcher has even had to have entirely new placque made for sticking into his feat, so enormously has this gone up in price that it is beyond, the powers of the pasted scra£ of paper to cope with. And so, wherever you turn in the gay capital, your ardour is damped and your imagination chilled by the apparition of a notice or a scrap of paper pasted over a former price, both equally for the purpose or raising this to its utmost limit. The one touch of irony about it all is that all these measures were thought out in a period of panic when the franc was being quoted at 128 to the pound, and at a correspondingly low rate in other foreign currencies; that they are being applied now, when the pound has dropped again to 69, does not seem to have occurred to anyone, or, if it has, the maker of laws, like Poipcare, and the seller of beer and coffee, like the bistro keeper and all the others in be tween , are only too glad to ignore the fact, and profit by a panic that has passed. The King and Queen of Roumania passed through Paris last week, and during their three days’ stay they were feted and made the idols of the city, from President Millerand down to the man or woman in the street who helped to block up main thoroughfares by waiting in thousands for hours to see the royal personages drive by. The usual official receptions at the Elyseo v and the usual ceremony that inevitably takes place over the unknown soldier’s grave ’neath the Arc de Triomphe whenever foreign potentates visit Paris were supplemented by visits to the horse show, the central aviation camp and so forth, and everywhere a bevy of French officials fluttered at the heels of King Ferdinand and his Queen, and

on every occasion newspapers took care to chronicle a description of the clothes worn by Queen Marie, at the same time as they took care to chronicle the fact that she had had them designed for her by Parisian dressmakers and milliners.

The direct reason, of course, for the royal visit was the cementing of the pact between France and Roumania, the third link in the diplomatic and military chain whereby France hopes to frustrate Germany’s plans for expansion of her western and eastern boundaries, taking care of the southern one herself. By entering into arrangements with Poland, Czecho Slovakia and Roumania, she feels, no doubt, that she is making preparation for this emergency in the future, although such preparation will be of little avail to her if ever Germany escapes through her net on the northern boundary and fuses with Russia. Still, for the moment, France is carrying out the one alliance policy that seems capable of helping her deal with an immediate emergency of rallying round her these three smaller powers of Central Europe.