M. Poincare at the end of several anxious debates has
come through with small majorities, which some observers describe as a victory, but which are truly much more like defeat. He has staved off the danger, as he considers it, of a return to single-member con- stituencies, which the Radicals want, but his movement down the slope is for all that scarcely checked. The collapse of the franc is, indeed, a very genuine danger signal. Everybody outside France was aware of the danger of pursuing the expensive and futile policy in the Ruhr, of lending money freely to potential military allies, and of trusting to windfalls which were never likely to come, for balancing the Budget. Frenchmen, for the most part, continued to believe, or to pretend to believe, in M. Poincare's reassuring statements ; but at last the psychological moment came when the inevit- able happened and there was a break in confidence.
