NEW BATTLES FOR OLD

The give and take between President Millerand and M. Herriot in France is something more than a clash between political opponents. It is that direct impact of radical and conservative policy which is the most significant fact in contemporary history.

The issue in France is constitutional as well as political. M. Herriot, given a majority in the recent elections, urges the revolutionary proposal that the President's term end at his party's defeat. This leader of the strong Radical Party also recently outlined his political beliefs. "The corner stone of all fiscal reform is the income tax." "The formula for the future is cooperative production." "I cannot admit that the wage-contract represents the final form of labor bargain." The lengths to which the party may go is suggested by the threat of a leading member who said. "If I am returned to the Chamber, comrades, I shall enter it with my pockets full of grenades."

Radical opinion in the United States is at present most effective outside of politics, but there is still the threat of a nondescript third party. The weight of authority seems temporarily to have sobered radical opinion in England, Italy, and Germany. One feels, however, there that radicalism is merely pent-up for the time being. In Russia where the former radicals have become in a way conservative, opinion comes principally from the extreme left. That wing now advocates a new calendar bringing one holiday in every five days and a new day of twenty-five hours.

Not all the radicalism, however, is so absurd as this, and much of it is still willing to support its convictions with "grenades". The forces are frankly, in the open and sharp, continuous conflict cannot easily be avoided.