Stuffing Stockings

For ten years the right to export capital and invest it abroad has been denied to Frenchmen by the law of April 3, 1918. Evasions, numerous, have always been severely punished when detected. Last week this intolerable, emergency damaging of the flow of capital was ended by plump, jovial President Gaston Doumergue who signed a decree lifting the capital embargo.

Two factors made prudent and possible the act of M. le President: 1) The Bank of France now holds sufficient gold or foreign securities to redeem every centime of the national paper currency, apt to be presented, at its present value of 25 francs to the dollar; 2) So great is the reviving confidence of French peasants in securities payable in francs that they are now buying and stuffing them into stockings at such a rate that urban French capitalists are left with a legitimate surplus of capital for investment abroad. A further prop to French financial stability was set up, last week, by the lifting of the U. S. State Department's ban of more than three years standing against flotation on U. S. capital of French industrial loans.

Healthy was the complete calm amid which the French Chamber opened, last week, for its last sessions prior to the general elections in April. The Government of Premier Poincare won easily a vote of confidence of 310 to 227 on an issue of party politics which had been deemed dynamite-laden, and serene progress loomed in the Chamber while frenzied electioneering began outside.