There is little fear a Christmas and the New Year will Kead to any shortage of wine just yet, The alleged drought—in America has considerably damaged the wine export trade of France, but ix far front having annihilated its ax some small set-off it must be admitted that nearly every Americ who escapes from Ameri himself during his period of to consume as much good French before the Iand of back again. The general change in manners.since the war also helps to keep consumption ively, for nowadays. people give! champagne to their guests who in fold days would oily have offered well. oficial figures for the This year's wine crop promises
vintages of the South of France and Algeria are expected to total about 70 million barrels, Anyone who expects that lower prices will result. must still be suffering from Christmas optimism. The wink growers of France are very solid! syndicalized, and everyone knows that organizations of this sort are merely modern versions of the first tribal system—they consist several people banding themselves together to protect themselves. The other day 200 wives of bakers des-ended upon a French Minister and said that the price of bread should not be lowered until the price of flour was lowered. A few months ago, when. the: price of flour wa Iowered, four or five hundred bakers sent a' deputation to the xame wretched servant of the Republic, and said that before they lowered the price of bread for a silly reason ike that they would sce him further, or words to that effect. So the world wags, from Christmas to Christmas, and mostly acts as a tail to wag the poor old dog called the Too Few Babies Two or three years ago the positive spate of expenditure which sweeps Paris along from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day was Ditterly resented by the indigent unemployed that they made threatening little parties outside night restaurants, which growled discon tingly at the diamond-bright folk. who had Rolls-Royees waiting to take them from one magnum" of champagne to another. There practically no unemployment France now, but biting poverty does remain, and Parliament is being ask-fed to attend in particular to. question of big families, Depleted of her manhood by war, with a birth. rate that was steadily falling long before 19i4;, with marriages boce ing rarer, and an uncomfortable*raie of infant mortality, France hae the most urgent need of babies. Napa Joon tuck his own methods of eom=
Dating the shortage of boy and youth caused by his own bloody campaigns, In these days Franco too" much afraid of another Napoleon to accept really drastic legislation even on a point like this, The Napoleonic laws pro-teeting men" from the necessity of supporting their illegitimate offsprinie have been whittled away to nothing. The womanhood of France wae learned by a century of pinching and difficulty that the ideal life with bunch of babies round her is not to be found outside fairy-tales.
'A married mother who hax two children feels that he hax done her duty by. the State; an unmarried nother seldom has are applicable top of ae few ax three, Monsieur Cadic, a deputy, b+ trying to enlarge the amount of bin xlven tw the strugulinge families where mall ems pruh up At present the happy of an enarginge family may so much as) francs & year present exchange, just over aut Monsieur Calle wants the sum quadrupled, which would cost the State something: lees in poor relief, but not all the sum. ved of new by. pointing out that among 19 sters of the pres Cabinet they could only must Street Accidents an odd thing that while ents are increasing at fatal ones are dim ishing in number. There were nearly double the number of deaths caused b have jumped in two veal ryme thousand to one hund-twenty-seven thousand, Apart from the suffering caused, tone must remember that almost all these represent some kind of disturbance in the economics of employers private families, This problem of the Paris streets ie rapidly nee coming almost ae serious as if it vere some little local civil war, The win traffic artery of Paris, the Grands Boulevards, is now xo cone gested that it is much quicker to walk along it than to drive; and it driv 20° that sonietimes tha has not yet occurred to one taxi-
longest way round is the short-jest way there.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.