FALL IN THE FRANC.
In the Foreign Market, however, there has been a notable— though certainly not surprising—exception to the general rumness in the shape of the weakness of French Rentes, which have been affected by the continued fall in the franc. With the one exception of the recent appointment of a Committee of Experts to investigate the position, readers of the Spectator know that I have been unable throughout the period covered by the &bide in the franc to discern any prospects of an early improvement. That has been due to the fact that there was apparently complete failure on the part of the French authori- ties to realize the seriousness of the position and the need for a strong constructive programme of reforms, including the use- 'of Bank of France gold reserves as a bulwark to the exchange. From time to time there has been talk of use of the gold reserves to obtain external credits, but that is a very different thing from using the gold as the Bank of England uses its gold in freely exporting when called upon to do so by the state of the exchange.
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