Recovery in France In its first week M. Daladier's Government
has had all the success that could be legitimately expected. Its troubles are not yet over, but at least the most urgent difficulties have been overcome. After the triumphant votes secured by the Government in the Chamber and the Senate last week, the strikes that were paralysing France's aircraft industry have been settled ; the arbitral award in the engineer- ing dispute rejected the workers' wage claims but made special wage concessions to the armament workers. It is both a cause and an effect of the psychological change in France, and especially Paris, during the last week that both the extreme Left, as typified by the Communists, and the extreme Right, as typified by the employers in industry•, are willing to make concessions to M. Daladier that were refused to M. Blum. Indeed the Communists' positive approval of M. Daladier, as opposed to their hostility to M. Blum, has already annoyed the Socialists, the more extreme sections of whom may prove to be the most serious obstacles to M. Daladier's progress. But after so successful a start, there is nothing exaggerated in M. Daladier's hopes that in June, when his " limited powers " expire, he will be able to form a National Government. And it is fortunate that the new atmosphere in France has allowed the Govern- ment to seize the favourable diplomatic opportunity created by the signing of the Anglo-Italian agreement.
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