Perpetual Flux

Despatches concerned with the French fiscal crisis (TIME, Jan. 11 et ante) began each morning last week with a statement which rapidly became monotonous: "Since yesterday the situation has entirely changed."

The Original Situation. During the holiday recess of Parliament two schemes for the financial rehabilitation of France lay before the Finance Committee of the Chamber (TIME, Jan. 4).

The first was the Briand-Doumer plan, featuring the enactment of legislation which would levy much heavier "indirect taxes" Dec. 28).

The rival proposal was that of le Cartel des Gauches, the coalition of the left, headed by M. Herriot. It featured the tightening up of existing tax machineryThe "Socialist wing of the Cartel held a party caucus, and the delegates who attended voted, 1,766 to 1,331, against the party's supporting any Ministry whatever unless a majority of the Ministers should be Socialists. This was taken to mean that M. Herriot could not depend on the Socialists to support a Cartel Ministry with himself as Premier. The Cartel was declared split and probably impotent to oust M. Briand.

2) The next morning the Chamber assembled, after its recess, and amid thunderous applause re-elected M. Herriot its President. He received 300 votes out of a Chamber of 324. Nobody thought he could put his Cartel finance program through by any such majority; but M. Briand's prestige slumped. It was rumored that a Herriot-Caillaux Cabinet would replace the Briand-Doumer partnership, Doumer to vanish, Briand to return as Foreign Minister.

3) Rumors were shelved, as the Finance Committee of the Chamber played a concrete trick on M. Briand by voting to reject the keynote of the Briand-Doumer measure, the increased "indirect taxation." This was regarded as a body blow to Briand, since in order to overrule the Committee he would have to go before the Chamber on this one point alone. Nobody believed that even M. Briand could get the Deputies to stick an obnoxious tax stamp squarely on their constituents' cigarets without the enveloping camouflage offered by the Briand-Doumer scheme as a whole. The action of the Committee was supposed to reflect the temper of the Chamber. Surely now, M. Briand must yield.

4) M. Briand sent Finance Minister Doumer around to tell the Committee "imperiously and dictatorially" that, if it would not lay his scheme before the Chamber in toto, then there must come a showdown as soon as might be in the Chamber. War whoops were heard. "M. Briand is preparing for the greatest fight in his political career!"

5) M. Briand decided that the times were not immediately propitious for an open fight. His war whoops were unwhooped. M. Briand began to talk once more about "the Spirit of Locarno" and the advantages to be derived from a peaceful compromise. Late despatches reported that Premier Briand, M. Herriot and almost everybody else of any consequence were compromising.