When in the early autumn of 1936 I last wrote about the French situation, we were everywhere confronted with whispers and rumours that there would be a revolution in France in October. A wave of industrial disturbances swept the country. It was believed that the Blum Government, supported as it was by the newly elected Communists, would be quite incapable of procuring or maintaining peace and order, that France would 'go the same way as Spain,' and that some violent counter-movement from the Right would perhaps be set on foot. I ventured at that time to contradict this alarmism, to point to the great stability of France, and to the general loyalty of Frenchmen to their Republican institutions and to predict 'that France would emerge from the winter stronger than she entered it.' In the main all this has proved true.
The violent manifestations of working-class discontent and their demand for improved conditions, their clashes with the employers, the immense series of strikes and lock-outs, have all passed without any serious physical strife or destruction of life or property. France is at work to-day. The violent Communists have lost ground in a marked manner. The red balloon which was inflated and ascending last August is shrivelling and drooping down in February. The suppression of Communism which is taking place in Spain, the savage rifts in the Communist party between the followers of Stalin and Trotsky, have both contributed to this weakening process. Moreover, the French Communists have, it must be frankly admitted, placed many restraints upon themselves and their more violent followers in the interests, not indeed of France for her own sake, but of France as the opponent of German Nazism. The Government of M. Blum, composed of very able men, has succeeded in appeasing to a large extent the internal stresses, and at the same time has shown itself capable of rallying the whole strength of France to the cause of National defence. It may be doubted whether under any other political grouping so many satisfactory measures for the strengthening of the armed forces could have been carried through-certainly not with such overwhelming assent. The relations between the fighting services and the Government are exemplary. The army salutes and obeys whatever chiefs Parliament gives it, and those chiefs, whatever their party political record, discharge their administrative duties wholeheartedly.
Thirdly, in the sphere of foreign politics, the action and influence of the Blum Government has been successful, or at least beneficial. There never was a time since the war when closer and better relations existed between the French and British Governments. Nor was there ever a time when the two western democracies worked more smoothly together in the common cause of peace and freedom. Most noteworthy of all, of course, have been the public declarations unchallenged on both sides of the Channel that in the face of unprovoked aggression upon either, Britain and France must be regarded as one.
These remarkable events have spread favourable reactions throughout Europe, and there is a renewed readiness on the part of many States, both great and small, to unite themselves against an unprovoked aggression, to take effective measures of defence and association beforehand, and to try to make the Covenant of the League a reality. To pretend for one moment that the danger in which Europe stands is not increasing would be absurd. But so also are the measures to cope with it. If the scene has darkened, the atmosphere has become more clear, and the shape of objects more sharply defined. In all this rallying of the forces which stand for peaceful and tolerant solutions of world problems, M. Blum has rendered a high personal service. Indeed, it was not in the power of any other Frenchman at this particular juncture in the life of France or Europe to do so much for the common good.
But now he has to face a crisis of a different order from those that have been surmounted. The concessions made to the urban wage-earners in hours and pay are imperfectly related to economic realities. The immediate institution wholesale of a 40-hours week coupled with the increases of wages involved all industries, the railways in particular, in very heavy additional deficits. As many as 60,000 additional men had to be engaged. Small employers working themselves with their two or three men, of whom there are a large number scattered about France, have been plunged in the greatest difficulties. In some cases the single workman protected by law, absorbs nearly the whole yield of a two-man business and forces the so-called 'patron' to part company with his assistant and do the best he can on a smaller scale himself. The immense class of officials at small salaries which plays so marked a role in French life all find their way of life affected by the inevitable rise in the cost of living. The balance between town and country has been deranged. The artisan with only 40 hours' work a week and his increased wages is no longer rendering a service to the community proportionate to the exertions required from the peasant and the farmer. On top of all this social expenditure has come the paramount needs of defence, which have simultaneously to be met upon a lavish scale.
Hitherto the spending of money has been found a panacea for all difficulties, foreign and domestic, with which the Government was confronted. But now the financial factor asserts itself in an imperious way. I do not wish to compare the highly competent, courageous and patriotic Government over which M. Blum presides with the feckless chatterboxes and spendthrifts at whose head Mr. MacDonald led Great Britain into the crisis of 1931. But a crisis not very different in character from what was then ours threatens France today. Prices are leaping up to a point where they affect the export trade as well as the small rentier. Behind them may come demands for further wage increases merely to maintain a portion of those gains which the French workpeople thought they had won in the autumn.
There appear to be two courses open. The first is one of extreme danger, namely, that the Government should attempt to fix prices-and in consequence everything else-at arbitrary levels. This would entail little less than the introduction of the present German system, and would rob French trade and industry of all that fertile flexibility by which economic truth is ascertained, and from which the wealth of nations flows. The second course, also indicated by British experience, would be the formation of a still more powerful and broadly based Government in France, similar to the national Coalition by which Great Britain was so swiftly led from her misfortunes.
In view of the war danger which any weakening of France would bring appreciably nearer, it would seem the duty of French statesmen of all parties to make large sacrifices of personal opinion and party affiliation in order to secure the greatest objects for which States exist. In the background there lies the possibility, so novel to Frenchmen and so familiar to us, of a premature curtailment of Parliament and a fresh appeal to the electorate. Meanwhile, by whatever means these financial and economic stresses may be met, we may be confident that the safety and underlying unities of France will not suffer fundamental injury.
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