The Popular Front in France: Prelude or Interlude?

Abstract

“Frenchman, too conservative to go communist, too anarchistic to like fascism, what are you going to do with yourself?” Thus was concluded a penetrating diagnosis of contemporary social trends in France published about a year ago. It is significant that such a survey should have come from the pen of a brilliant young journalist belonging to what may be called the post-war generation. For, whatever else recent dramatic developments in French public affairs may portend, there is no doubt that political control is passing to a new set of leaders, as well as, perhaps, to new ideologies.France is now twenty-two years removed from the outbreak of the World War. Men born as late as 1900 are approaching middle age. Among the eighth of the population now over sixty years of age, only a handful of persons remain who can remember the Franco-Prussian War. Most of the men who were directing national policy through the World War and the peace settlement have died—Clemenceau, Poincaré, Briand, Painlevé, Barthou, Viviani, and Ribot.