French Cabinet Crisis The French Chamber and Senate this week
gave a striking demonstration of how much Frenchmen are united on ques- tions of foreign policy and how much divided on social questions. The important debate on foreign policy in the Chamber ended with a vote of 439 to 2 in support of the policy of " respect for treaties within the framework of the League of Nations " ; but the Government's Bill enacting the new labour code again brought about a Cabinet crisis. The Senate refused to accept the Bill and returned it to the Chamber with alterations, affecting agriculture, methods of arbitration and the sliding scale for wages, which the Chamber was not able to approve ; but the Government did not secure its majority in the Chamber until it had announced that it would resign unless it had its way on the three " crucial issues." There is no doubt that one of the determining factors in the situation was extra-Parliamentary ; for the C.G.T. had declared that the Government had already, in its concessions to the Senate, betrayed the agreement with the trade unions on which the labour code is based, and on which the possi- bility of its success depends. The Government however, looks like surviving the crisis ; no doubt the chief cause of its success is the impossibility of organising an alternative Government of the Centre and the Right, and the impossibility is likely to continue so long as the Right completely fails, as at present, to express the feeling of the country on questions of domestic policy.
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