Election Prospects in France
The decks in France are getting cleared for the election. M. Laval was overthrown through the hostility of the Senate to an Electoral Reform Bill giving votes to women and abolishing the second ballot. Now the Chamber has passed the Bill shorn of those provisions and the two Chambers are consequently at one. That means that the Radical Socialists and Socialists will be able as usual to support their own party candidates on the first ballot, and at the second concentrate on a single Left candidate belonging to one party or the other as the local circum- stances may dictate. The election date, which is not yet fixed, seems likely to be April 24th, with the second ballot a week later. M. Tardieu is evidently anxious to push ahead with Disarmament and his Danubian scheme with the idea of piling up as much achievement as pos- sible to lay before the electors, but nothing decisive in either field can well be effected before the probable election date. Meanwhile the budget has to be carried through, and though it is balanced on paper the figures in reality, according to the Senate Finance Committee, conceal a very substantial deficit. A swing to the Left at the election still seems likely.
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