The Passing of Parties in France
Sencourt, Robert
552 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, x926 of the "glorious" principle of academic freedom-they fight before he can...
...the pulpits are stark free the student...
...It is not the The statement of the note issue on April 3, 1925, ministries which fall in France today...
...I imagine this may be necessary, the gold reserve of the Bank of France true of our immortal part, as well, and that, after which is still worth over a thousand million dollars, death (which, like a good physician, will heal the inand by a due adjustment with foreign countries of both adequacy in our vision of ourselves) most of us are in debts and trade...
...but they are felt today by a great and increasing numTaking this figure as the basis, a comparison may be ber of Frenchmen...
...Le Cour Grandwho were the chief supporters of capitalism, the class maison...
...Each fall naturally meant a closer conditions, would fall in a few days, in a few weeks, approach to panic...
...and by the uncom- ing M. de Castellane and Raoul Peret...
...When this tendency be- M. de Monzie...
...It is overwhelmHerriot, Leygues, Painleve, and Barthon...
...The Parliament, however, simplest actions take on an enchantment which you ceases to be a critical body when it represents all par- will try in vain to capture for your own existence...
...came marked, it interrupted trade, and in July the But between those two are the great constitutional balance of trade for the month was for the first time questions which are leading to the ultimate passing of against France, because forward buying was in the cur- democracy in France, as it has passed for good and rency of the country where it was made, and France all in Italy and Spain...
...Is it not true that, thus viewed, the be no trace of such a man...
...Our most perfectly savored pleasures is not invested in something directly productive, but in are vicarious...
...the group of the Unified Socialist party, that ated the sympathies of the country, first, by giving per- is the French section of the International Labour October 13, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 553 party, with 5o members, including M. Leon Blum and relation both to Germany and to Italy, but they meant M. Paul Boncour...
...In the sixteenth falling...
...But the fact is, that the spending of Democrat)-and the grand total was 556, of which American money had already got on the nerves of 301 were certainly Left...
...Then they sought all means to sell...
...And in this connec- as a tip to secure a table in the Restaurant des Amtion, it is necessary to consider the causes of the franc bassadeurs in the Champs Elysees...
...THE PASSING OF PARTIES IN FRANCE By ROBERT SENCOURT FOR many months now, the politics of France mission to print notes when he had no legal authorizahave been the problem of the franc...
...tions...
...The parliamentary regime is false francs, was proved to be a fictitious one, due to collusion and no longer worthy of discussion...
...However, let theologians say quires the greatest energy, for immense numbers of the whether this is so or not...
...And ness...
...Lastly, the political situation moral which Signor Enrico Corradini, the Fascist, at was more and more unsettled as the franc became more once drew in Italy...
...Now from downward tendency, mainly owing to evasion of taxes, long ago in French history, the temper of the Parisian and so to gradual inflation, which this year became a populace has had an effect on the Central government slide, because the masses of the people who had always out of all proportion to its numbers in relation to the looked forward to a recovery of the franc to par inhabitants of the country as a whole...
...My study-windows looked directmentary system...
...But it was argued with 554 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, 1926 especial force in the French Fascist paper, Le Nouveau Siecle, edited by Georges Valois...
...Nationalists, to the Left, labor, internationalism, anti- The Left included the group of the Republicans of clericalism...
...unquestionably as I have affirmed them to be...
...it lost him sources of the state...
...The question was tions, which put the Left back into power, came as a intensely complicated, and to realize the confusion in complete surprise even to those that won them...
...Camille Eymard in his June 15, 1926, in the note issue, in the quotation of very successful book, Communisme ou Fascisme : Franthe franc as against the pound, and in the cost of living cais, it faut choisir, argued that between the horrors respectively as follows which Russia and Hungary have known since the war, Percentage increase and which Paris itself knew in the time of Marie AnNote issue 24 tionette, there is no effective barrier but a dictatorship, Franc on the pound 93 a dictatorship which out of confusion and panic had Cost of living 35 brought order and prosperity to Italy...
...The churches are free and ing and admitted everything to the enquiring mind of stripped bare to the bone...
...These were the things that Joseph Barthelemy...
...it was after fore, 301...
...Whatever ministry is formed in and more uncertain, and a quite artificial instability France today," he said, "in the present parliamentary upset the country...
...and second, by his attitude toward the Church...
...Parisians...
...Yet is getting more out of her land...
...means the question of the relation of the French to This immediately organized against him a powerful foreigners and the way the country will supply the re- party which pervaded the whole country...
...Who was to succeed...
...Still, as ever, to stabilize the beauty of others are directly apparent to us...
...the Communist party, with 13 members, including M. It was in negotiating a debt with England that M. Marcel Cachin...
...Not only was there no definite party sysincomes, and still more, his admirable intention to cut tem, but the different groups were so broken that down the number of small officials...
...ties...
...she has increased her production of coal...
...If there were a single decisive leader, France among the older writers, or Katherine Mansfield would undoubtedly become Fascist: but there seems to among the new...
...She is developing her water low...
...Ordinarily there was nothing fascinat...
...Here, in via, the facts are people, by one means or another, have evaded them...
...These were the things that, in spite of It is possible that a reaction against the excessive the good work he had done with Mr...
...It is the regime which was officially given out to be 40,900,000,000 which has fallen...
...The same idea From this it may be seen that the value of the franc has been presented in a religious coloring by Arnold has fallen in far greater proportion than the note issue ivlascarel and Count Arborio Mella in their interesthas increased, though this increase is at the bottom of ing book, France et Italie, where the movement is made the want of confidence which has produced the fall in to mean the defense of Latin civilization against a the franc...
...without having accomplished anything...
...For months past, France has been made of the increase between April io, 1925i and getting used to the idea: iMI...
...In wrecking the tenth Briand government on July HAVE long wished that "some power wad"17, Right and Left combined to fight for the parlia- but for a reason exactly opposite to that advanced mentary system, and their own stake in it, against a by Burns...
...The with Poincare, five former prime ministers-Briand, facts are very much the other way...
...552 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, x926 of the "glorious" principle of academic freedom-they fight before he can attain the knighthood of being a are all dubbed glorious, these mock escapes from an good son, a good husband, a good father, a good citiimaginary and mythical thraldom-it has barred noth- zen, and a good man...
...to make notes...
...ly into those of the opposite wing of the dormitory, Meanwhile, of course, the country has done very and so it came about that any morning I had but to well by the adventitious aid of her depreciated cur- lift my eyes to see another studying...
...It was not, as in Germany a few years ago, arrondissement, which is the fashionable quarter, a thing engineered to suit the big financiers...
...The in relation to the prices, accounted for the fall of M. franc became totally undesirable, and the lower it fell, Peret, as afterward for the fall of M. Herriot and the less people wanted it...
...our own franc, by really insisting on taxation, by using, where we must take largely on faith...
...All between was a waste of torn papers, illegpower...
...The fall in the realized that the money of the country was not a sound franc, showing itself with more than usual rapidity investment...
...it was in prices are not so far beyond those of England or Gerno way a result of a political panic or commercial weak- many: they almost keep pace with the franc...
...The uniqueness and What are its tasks...
...But there was no IT IS ALL VERY ODD great leader in the movement, no one able to follow By MARY KOLARS the example of Mussolini and Primo de Rivera...
...The speeches insect and the heroine of his poem betrayed the great on either side were violent, and Briand himself burst Scotch poet into a piece of cynical sententiousness uninto tears: he thought it the ruin of France...
...party, with 31 members, including M. Briand and M. It will be remembered how soon M. Herriot alien- Painleve...
...As of Herriot on April 10, how difficult it would be to much as a thousand francs is given during the season insure a stability of government...
...she ible notes, and distasteful assignments in German...
...She followed her producing organism, she has a capacity and a competi- text with effortless attention, now and again pausing tive power that she never had before...
...The Left deputies' total was, there- Peret came to grief in the middle of June...
...In addition, promising attitude of M. Herriot, who insisted on it could claim the Left Centre, or group of Radical and the resignation of M. Millerand, a president whose Radical Socialist parties, with 83 members, including sympathies were with the Right, so that his place was M. Herriot and M. Klotz...
...The influence of their persuasive numbers was The Extreme Right, comprising Nationalists, exextraordinary, and made itself more felt in the villages treme Conservatives and Royalists, had 25 members, and country districts...
...But though this means an escape in one way, it catches Indeed, the perversity of our destiny goes beyond them in another, for depreciation of the currency is the matter of looks, and follows us into all the fields merely a form of capital levy on those whose money of experience...
...And it was made effective by two things the Left-54 members, including M. Loucheur and by the combination of all the parties of the Left into M. Andre Tardieu...
...of his own uniqueness and beauty...
...It will also be seen that the cost of living, Teutonic communism : so that France and Italy should though it has risen appreciably, has lagged far behind act together forcefully to defend their heritage, as it the fall in the franc...
...But no one need fear ruin for the someone doing these things, preferably in Dickens country...
...Leon Daudet and N1...
...but when that strain comes, what was often even worse-rare glimpses of It which it will be found that she is prepared to meet it in a racked and exhausted me in the vain attempt to folway she never was before...
...Here, too, the small proprietors, including i\1...
...voting is itself significant of Parliament's belief in its However true it may be at scattered moments, that own supremacy: the numbers were 288 against 243...
...Its election ful sight, and that, by a doom difficult to explain, each was followed by an enormous improvement of the of us is barred from the immediate artistic enjoyment franc...
...It has sent him out into the world blink- and utter any banality that occurs to them, the uniing and bewildered, cynical and disillusioned, doubtful versities are free and complain bitterly of the barrenand more than doubtful of God, patronizing and en- ness of their human output...
...the professors are free quiring of Christ, lordly and superior of the "super- and fly instinctively to the defense of any phase and stitions" surrounding the Christian theory-stripped form of infidelity...
...the group of the Socialist taken by the radical, M. Doumergue...
...My own reacrency, which has been helped by the credits for recon- tion to the business of grubbing knowledge was so struction in the war areas, which helped the home mar- poignantly painful that I can recall it now as if I had ket as much as the easier competition in prices helped closed my, books for the last time only yesterday...
...But though it has come more has been becoming more and more familiar in the slowly, the rise in the cost of living is there just the intransigent monarchist paper, L'Action Francaise, same, and panics in relation to the currency were a edited by Leon Daudet, as well as in the Republican terrible blow to French pride...
...Ramsay Macnationalism of the Poincare government had its share donald in relation to Germany, led to the fall of M. in the elections of 1924...
...but coming out of the inflation of the war, it was a prices in one quarter disturb another...
...I cannot but feel that the juxtaposition system which would have led away from it to the (admittedly disturbing) of the small, horrendous, grey Fascist principle of executive efficiency...
...They had affected her conservative paper, Liberte...
...France has already declared for what all nations I first felt the impact of this truth years ago, when need in a crisis, executive power as against the parlia- I was still in college...
...It also divide three-quarters of his or her property among the claimed the group of Republican and Social action, children of his or her marriage, feared encroach- which had 46 members, including Bokanowski and ments on their prosperity...
...to see ourselves as others see us would produce a In the grave crisis which ensued, M. Poincare was proper sobering of our too ebullient egotism, there summoned to make a nationalist ministry: it included, is not meat enough there for a generalization...
...The Such are the words of one of Mussolini's Italians, real volume of circulation was 43,000,000,000 francs...
...Or read about of the peasants...
...and the Extreme Left, comprising also a suspicion of both England and America...
...It was ingly more true that each of us is a unique and beautiknown as a ministry of all the talents...
...Of all these, the collection of taxes re- for a pleasant surprise...
...But the worthy of his more robust acceptances of life...
...and the group of the Republia federation which is called the Cartel des Gauches, cans and Democrats of the Left-83 members, includor more generally, the Cartel...
...The which French politics have been since 1924, it is necesstronger motive was the intention of Poincare to apply sary only to analyze the result of the May elections of new taxes, meaning an increase of 20 percent on small that year...
...This makes the total on the led to the swing from the Right, from Republicans and Right 233...
...Watch someone dress, draw, ride, deposits, mortgages, loans, or even the stocking, a read, sew, sleep, or indulge in any other human occuform of saving which is still popular amongst masses pation, and you will see what I mean...
...but the result of those elec- Herriot...
...A number of Americans, some of them very It is easy to see from these figures how, once the rich, come to Paris every summer, and spend, not Cartel was disturbed, as it was last year by the fall without ostentation, considerable sums of money...
...between M. Clementel and the Bank of France...
...Its France abroad...
...This is indeed a change from the confidence of sensible Frenchmen who, though not two or three years ago when the only thing that swayed practising Catholics, saw in the Vatican a support to the political situation was the relation of France to France in peril...
...and Lorraine...
...The Right Centre, grouping the Republican who owed its status to that enactment of the Code and Democratic parties, had 162 members, including Napoleon which compels every parent in France to General de Castelnau and Louis Marin...
...Add to these the deputies really independ- negotiating a loan with England that M. Caillaux fell ent-Mandel (Clemencist), Marc Sangnier (Christian on July 15...
...These things will pass, and a strain two poles were, unillumined, gruelling labor, andwill come on France again...
...These little people among the S56 members not more than 162 could be got together, and alarmed all their friends and rela- assigned to any one group...
...Her hair was neatly brushed, her white scale and by the combine of industries into one effective collar and cuffs were irreproachable...
...Such is, not unnaturally, the lost on the transaction...
...Brought tion, so that he got the name of faux monnayeur or from the world of symbols to actual life, that coiner...
...she is catering for see what, all this while, was happening across the way I her own needs from manufacturers, and by adopting Day after day, my neighbor sat at her desk, absorbed American methods of skilled production on a large and tranquil...
...and it profoundly disturbed Alsace Germany...
...the laboratories are free and manuof all of his defenses and then desperately endeavor- facturing travesties of man made in the image of his ing, without spiritual strength or spiritual weapon save Maker-still the cry ascends to heaven-just a little his own poor self, to fight the heroic fight a man must more freedom and the millennium will be at hand...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 23
