A PARIS LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18168, 5 November 1930, Page 15

A PARIS LETTER.

A NASTY JAR. FRANCE AND GERMAN ELECTIONS. (Prom a Correspondent.) PARIS, September 21. School holidays In France, unlike England, do not end until the first Monday in October. Parisians, however, in their great mass—or, at any rate, the male part of them—are now already back from the country, and the capital, having shed most of its summer tourists, is beginning to look itself again. Theatres that have been closed are tearing down the notice of “Relache” from their doors and putting up playbills instead, while the return of v M. Tardieu from Vittel, where he has been doing a cure, has reawakened political activity. The reassembly of Parliament is still more than a month away, but already questions of personalities are being discussed.

What, for instance, will be the situation of M. Briand in view of the capital that his opponents are making out of the results of the German elections? Will this autumn perhaps see the reappearance in Parliamentary life of M. Poincare, who, to judge from his frequent Sunday speeches and regular contributions to the Press, appears once more to be full of activity? For the moni&s-t, however, it is Germany and Hitler that ■are preoccupying public opinion, for every happening across the Rhine is so carefully scrutinised in Prance that the elections, and all to do with them, have been followed here almost as closely as though they) had been within France’s own border.

Generally speaking, Sunday’s results have come as a very disagreeable shock. It is all very well for newspapers, wise after the event, to say that whatj has taken place in Germany since the evacuation of the Rhineland was a sure sign of what was coming. A large, increase in National Socialist votes was certainly expected, but nobody foresaw a triumph of anything like the magnitude that Hitler has achieved. Now there is a general questioning: “How does Europe stand in consequence?”; underlying which is the second query, “What hr particular will be the effect upon France?” “Briand Must Go.” To this latter question the answer varies according to the political complexion of. the person concerned. Those who believe that a peaceful future for Europe is bound up with some reasonable understanding between France and Germany have suffered a bitter blow. They would like to believe that continuation of the policy of rapprochement might be possible, but they realise that it has had a very severe setback. By the Nationalist Press the bankruptcy of the Briand-Stresemann policy is declared to have been proclaimed so brutally that they immediately draw a tangible conclusion from it. Briand must go, say his adversaries, to whom the general elections have thus brought fresh ammunition for the campaign already in full swing against him over his scheme for a European Federation. But even moderate opinion Is deeply disquieted, and will" certainly watch most vigilantly further developments in Germany. Out of the lukewarm Republicanism of the Reich has sprung, it is felt, a new thing—Hitlerism, with its seemingly fantastic programme supported by over : 6,000,000 Germans.

The unknown quantity that this implies, combined with its known demand for revision of the Treaty and the Young Plan, cannot fail to cause a check in any move towards a Franco-German rapprochement, and to stiffen perceptibly the attitude of suspicion and reserve towards the Reich, which, as I pointed out a few weeks 'ago, had already, as the result of the speeches during the electoral campaign, taken the place of the friendly atmosphere that prevailed before the evacuation of the Rhineland. For whether or no some German Government excluding the “Nazis” be formed, French public opinion is hardly likely to let its Foreign Minister forget that 6,0 C 3,000 Germans have voted for a party that openly 1 proposes to overthrow the existing settlement of Europe. A Publishing “Stunt.” A short while ago a wag, evidently hoping to kill by ridicule the evergrowing fashion for literary prizes in France, proposed giving a reward for the worst piece of literature published during the year. A book that has just (come into my hands seems to indicate that in another direction an effort of a more serious kind is being made to check this abuse of what has been called “personality mongering” in literature. For the primary effect of the literary prize is to give to the author who has gained one a market for his books, quite irrespective of their intrinsic merits. “U.S.A., with Music,” has in itself nothing to do with literary prizes. It is a scathing satire on American life of to-day, and especially upon the man who has the “sales punch” summed up in the catch phrase, “He would sell you snow-shoes in hell.”

The unusual feature is that the book bears no author’s name, nor even a pseudonym. It is in fact the first effort in a campaign initiated by an enterprising new American publisher in' Paris, who hopes to induce the public to buy—and the critic to judge—books for what they are, and not for the name of their authors. The theory is that nowadays the artist of every kind is crushed under the weight of the business man, and that he consequently seeks to produce what he can sell rather than to sell what he can produce. A crusade of this kind is a bold venture in these days of self-advertisement. For it implies not merely a struggle against a deep-rooted habit of mind on the public’s part, but an appeal to the writer to throw off his natural vanity and to put aside all hopes of being known to the world as the author of such-and-such an epoch-making book. It will be all the more interesting to watch how this attempt to divorce in the public mind the artist from his work will succeed.