25 APRIL 1925, Page 13

M. Caillaux, for his part, is not angling for the

applause of any particular party. He walks alone, supremely self-confident in the financial conclusions at which he has arrived from his own experience and thinking. In fine, as the Paris correspondent of the Times says, the Government is a selection of the Left with a financial policy which is likely to be more or less of the Right.

Those who believe in the prospects of the Painleve Government have found some encouragement in the fact that M. Briand has consented, after all, to sit in the same Cabinet with M. Caillaux. M. Briand would have preferred to have M. Loucheur as Minister of Finance. The reluctant collaboration of M. Briand and M. Caillaux, whose old disagreement is notorious, looks, of course, at first sight like a weakness, but it can as easily be interpreted as a sign of strength since M. Briand seems to have consented after deliberately taking thought.