TOPICS OF THE DAY.
FRANCE AND THE HOPE OF PEACE.
THE French Presidential crisis has ended, and ended constitutionally. Before the declared hostility of the Chamber of Deputies, and of the Senate, M. Millerand has bowed. The tide has set far too strongly against the Bloc National for the President or anyone else to stem it. There have been many and anxious speculations in the English Press as to whether the Constitution of the Third Republic has not been badly shaken by the crisis. An attack on the first magistrate by the legis- lature seems a dangerous and unfortunate course ; but there is perhaps something to be gained as well as to be lost for France out of her recent difficulties. If, as now seems certain, the Constitution itself emerges intact from the crisis it will have been defined and established rather than shaken.
We may hope that once and for all the position of the French President will have been decided. For many years there has been a doubt whether he was to be a figurehead, essential but personally powerless, like a modern constitutional monarch, or whether, on the American model, he was to perform the duties and enjoy the privileges of the head of the Executive. M. Millerand decided to attempt this latter course, and he succeeded at any rate in showing conclusively that the French Constitution did not make it a possible one. For he had at once to attempt to eat his cake and have it ; either the President is a figurehead above the party strife and immune from its ups and downs, or, alternatively, he has real power, but is, like everyone else in a democracy, subject to the national will, that is, to Parliament, and therefore to Party. But M. Millerand claimed both the immunity of a dignified impotence and the prerogatives of a democratic representative. He was obviously right when he demanded that the Presidency "should be kept protected from political fluctuations," but the leaders of the Left are obviously also right when they demand that the national will, as expressed by universal suffrage, shall prevail. Clearly the only way that these two things can be combined is for the President to confine himself to the duties of a constitutional monarch, that is, to summoning Ministries and accepting their resignations.
Doubts are continually expressed of the stability of the coming Ministry of the Left. Its majority would probably be small, but not necessarily so small as some of the supporters of the Bloc National expect. The motion which voted down M. Millerand was carried by a majority of no less than 115, but this included the 39 Communists who would certainly not support a Herriot Government. Even without their votes it would appear, that a Government of the Left might have a majority of something like 75. What its policy is remains to be seen. Mr. MacDonald is still patiently waiting. Will he and the new France be able to work in harmony together for the settlement of the great international questions ? If once an agreed policy on reparations and security can be put into action, the way win be open for a wholly new European situation, with Russia and Germany both included in a League of Nations, modified and simplified in the light of the experience it has gained in the last four years. Under these conditions Europe might recover her pre-War prosperity in two years.
'Are these the dazzling hopes which pass before Mr. Mac])onald's and M. Herriot's eyes ? Is this an ideal towards which France would consent to move ? But before we an even entertain such Osions the Experts' Report must be put into action, the Ruhr occupation ended, and a feeling of real security produced in France by some means or other. It is ,easy to talk of these preliminaries, but we are still very far from their realiza- tion. Both the French and German Governments will have to take their courage in both hands, and be prepared to withstand the fiercest criticism from their Nationalist parties before they can come together. The first indica- tion of the lines on which a settlement might be readied was given in the speech of Herr Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, in the Reichstag on Friday, June 6th. As was apparent from the moment of the publicatiim of the Experts' Report, the real point at issue is : Who is to act first ? . It is agreed that the Germans cannot carry out the Report without the evacuation of the Ruhr, and also that France cannot and will not evacuate the Ruhr unless the Report is put into operation. Who, then, is to move first ? In the present condition of suspicion and distrust between France and Germany the question is a very difficult one, but Herr Stresemann, in a passage in his speech which seems to have received considerably less attention than it merits, made a very definite suggestion for the lines of procedure. We quote from the Times correspondent :— " He suggested that if the necessary legislation were passed in Germany on July 1st, all the French regulations with regard to the Customs, frontiers, &c.P should be withdrawn by July 14th. The Experts, though they did not deal directly with the matter in their report, did by implication express their disapproval of military interference with industrial affairs. It must be the aim of Germany to get a definite date put to the period of military occupation' because if the Report was to afford France a guarantee for certain deliveries, then everything must be avoided that injured Germany's productive capacity, under which he included a con- tinuation of military occupation."
In other words, Herr Stresemann wants the Ruhr occupation to be "made invisible" fourteen days after the passing by the Reichstag of the legislation necessary to give effect to the Experts' Report and at the same time wants a definite, and we suppose more distant, date to be fixed for the evacuation of the Ruhr by French troops.
We do not doubt that this is the least that Germany can demand. The Experts made it perfectly clear that Germany could not possibly carry out the terms of their Report unless her economic unity was restored to her. She cannot even begin to make payments, since they depend in the first year entirely on a foreign loan, until she has the assurance that her unity will be restored to her on a definite date. But will M. Herriot or whoever is in charge of French policy be able to accept such terms as these ? It is hard for us in England to realize what an utter reversal of French policy this would mean, in fact though not in theory. What would M. Tirard, the French chief of the Rhineland High Commission, or General de Metz, his subordinate in the Palatinate, do if they received orders from the Quai D'Orsay to carry out such a policy of reconciliation ? For four years now these men, or others before them, have inflexibly carried out a policy which aimed at the complete absorption of the Rhineland by France. This has never been the policy of the French people, and probably not of the French Government, but it has been the policy of the men on the spot, and it is essentially this which has kept Europe in ferment since the War. The vital question is whether M. Herriot can really make an end of all this and start on a new basis of conciliation and co-operation. Certain it is that Germany with her incorrigible political and diplomatic stupidity, her blockheaded Nationalists, her hordes of embittered refugees from the Ruhr, will not make it easy for him. But with the solid support of every class and party in this country, and the active collaboration of Mr. Mac- Donald, he may succeed.
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