THE INTERNAL SITUATION IN FRANCE.
MCLEMENCEAU has been in office nearly two • years, and Englishmen are wondering what chance he has of prolonging his unusually long Ministerial life, and what he will be able to do if he stays on. His position is rather paradoxical. For all the will in the world, he has not been allowed to redeem his pledges of social reform, and yet he has not been cast down as a useless Dagon, as other French Prime Ministers have been cast down who have been successfully prevented from legislating. Brilliant Parliamentarian and manager though he is, he owes his preservation through several crises, not only to his skill and daring, but to the peculiar pressures outside Parliament which neutralised the attacks of his enemies. Domestic perils like the revolt in the wine-growing districts, the anti-militarist movement, and the threats of the General Confederation of Labour suddenly to force Paris to consent to all that the workers desired by starving it into submission have passed away like shadows, and M. Clemenceau stands where he was. In each emergency he was necessary to the State, because there was no time to lose in changing Governments if the community was to be delivered from immediate danger, loss, or suffering. Perhaps he was the only man with a policy ; at any rate, the country was not willing in a single instance to refuse to consent to his methods in order to fill the gap with a mass of disordered and_ generally captious criticism. But of all the external pressures which have helped M. Clemenceau to keep his equilibrium, the greatest, of course, has been the Moroccan problem. This supplies the supreme example of M. Clemenceau having a policy, and his critics having none. We do not say that M. Clemenceau's directions to the country's military and naval representatives in Morocco have been always the wisest possible, or that the danger of a very serious entanglement there is averted by what is happening now, but the difficulties have been very great ; and what- ever one may have to say about the results of the Clemenceau policy in Morocco, it has been clear from the start that no group in the Chamber had any coherent alternative scheme. Really, more has depended on the sagacity and restraint of the French soldiers and sailors in Morocco than on the ideas of the French Government at home. For the Government there were only two courses possible,—to take military action, or not to take it. The latter would have been tantamount to withdrawing from Morocco altogether, and M. Jaures himself has not proposed that. M. Clemenceau bad only to appeal to the Chamber the other day against M. Jaures's severe, yet unilluminating, strictures to receive a quite triumphant majority. Thus it seems that he may remain Prime Minister for some time longer. Yet what can he do with his power at home ? What likelihood is there of his accomplishing any part of his programme ?
Among the measures promised by M. Clemenceau, three must be mentioned as of first-rate importance. These are the proposals for an Income-tax, old-age pensions, and the purchase of the Western Railway. Temperamentally the French people are in favour of indirect taxation for all purposes, and the resistance to be overcome to an Income- tax is very great. They put up smilingly, for example, with the high price of food caused by the exasperating and hampering octroi at city gates—a tax which English- men would hardly allow to exist for a month—because in paying that price they do not actually pull out a coin and hand it over to the Government without getting any visible return for their money on the spot. By indirectness the idea of being taxed is broken more gently. Of course every Frenchman is intelligent enough to know that though taxation be indirect, he is paying the money just the same, and, indeed, is paying more, owing to the expense of col- lecting multitudinous indirect taxes ; but tradition is very strong, and the expedients by which a Frenchman has been accustomed to keep such an ugly thing as taxation out of his mind are precious. Nor is a guileless self-deception the only obstacle to the violent directness of an Income- tax. An Income-tax is thought to be inquisitorial ; some Frenchmen talk as though the Revolution would have taken place in vain if a Government official were armed. with the tyrannical power to demand returns of trading- profits and. such like. Conservative Republicans complain, too, that an Income-tax would mean unnecessary inter- ference by the State. No one dislikes unnecessary interference by the State more than we do, but probably most Englishmen will share our difficulty in appreciating the state of mind. which looks upon the nationalising of a railway as a less undesirable inter- vention than the levying of an Income-tax. A few clauses of the Income-tax Bill have been passed in the Chamber, but the progress is very slow, and it is to be remem- bered. that an increasingly hot opposition comes from those moderate Republicans of the Centre on whom M. Clemenceau has been compelled. to rely for support. The scheme for buying the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest was carried in the Chamber before this Session ; and as Bills in France can be carried over from one Session to another, it need not be passed again. But the Senate, which is considering it, is not very friendly, and. it is doubtful whether it will ever emerge in a form acceptable to popular opinion. It is quite certain that there is a strong popular opinion on this subject. The grievances of " strap-hangers" on London railways are as nothing to those professed by passengers on the Western Railway ; and we have read accounts in the papers lately of how the malcontents in their wrath wrecked some of the property of the company. The Bill for old-age pensions, like the Railway Bill, was accepted before this Session in the Chamber ; but it is now checked by the Commission of the Senate, and. no one can foresee the outcome. The Deputies added several classes, including domestic servants, to those originally named as eligible for pensions, and they voted £12,000,000 as the annual cost of the scheme. The Commission of the Senate has tentatively cut this sum down to £4,000,000, and asks for information on the very pertinent question where the money is to come from. It seems actually to be a fact that this measure has been sent up to the Senate without any indication of the sources of revenue to be tapped. This is a capital illustration of the way in which such legislation is proposed, not only in Britain, but in other countries. Of the two essential questions in all such schemes—" What will it cost ? " and " Where shall we get the money ? "- one is left out as though it did not matter. Another interesting parallel for British observers is the intensely obstructive power of the French Senate. M. Clemenceau, his whole Ministry, and the majority of the Chamber have promised to their constituents all the measures which are blocked. Perhaps the anger of the Chamber would be greater, or rather not quite so feeble, if the Senate were an hereditary body. But as it is an elected body it somehow seems less unnatural to Deputies that the dualism of Parliamentary government should be asserted, in however unfavourable a manner to themselves.
The success with which M. Clemenceau has been able to remain in his political garden without showing any fruits of his cultivation is best proved by the absence of any clear suggestion as to his successor. M. Millerand's name flashed across the sky some months ago, and again there was darkness. Lately M. Combos has been mentioned. Indeed, rumour set in strongly in favour of the author of the Associations Law, and it was only a few days ago that it began to desert him when he is said to have made a clumsy speech at a dinner in honour of M. Brisson. This is not a matter in which we can pretend to an opinion. We can only record the facts. When in office M. Combes showed what seemed to us a rather frigid and narrow spirit—dangerously like sectarianism, though nominally its reverse—in dealing with the Roman Church. This was seen not so much in the text of his measures, for the French people were un- mistakably in favour of the suppression of the congrega- tions and of the separation of the Church from the State, as in his temper, which was notably unlike that displayed. later by M. Briand, who had to put the same policy into practice. Perhaps M. Combos has done injustice to himself, if his nickname le petit pere is a clue to his character. If he came into power again, he would look for support more to the Left than M. Clemenceau has done. He is now President of the Commission which is considering the disposal of the property of the suppressed congregations. On the whole, we are inclined to think that a reconstruction of the inanimate Bloc with a definite opinion on foreign policy, in place of the confused and negative criticism which has poured from the Radical- Socialists and Socialists during the Moroccan controversy, may precede the advent of a new Prime Minister.
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