other powers had abandoned gold and were beginning to move out of depression.

France alone

was holding firmly to a deflationary policy and sinking ever deeper into economic stagnation.
Meanwhile, the paramilitary formations of the authoritarian Right were holding their parades with
impunity. On the Left, a new unity was growing, as anger and frustration mounted at the
impotence of French democracy and the spreading influence of fascism. The Socialists had
joined with the Communistswhile the Radicals limped more hesitantly behindto forge the
Popular Front that in the year following was to lead France into the most tumultuous and
decisive period of its entire interwar history (see
Chapter 9, V).

SCANDINAVIA: THE MIDDLE WAY

The Role of the Smaller Democracies: The Belgian Language Question

From 1919 to 1939, the smaller democracies of Western Europe impinged only rarely on the
wider sphere of international and ideological contention. Most of the time they followed their own
course, secure in the conviction of unquestioning acceptance of the democratic way of life by
the vast majority of their people. Of the large nations of Europe, Great Britain alone was as
firmly settled in the electoral and parliamentary mold as were the Low Countries, Switzerland,
and Scandinavia.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, Switzerland had lived almost without a historythat
is, in the sense of wars, political reversals, and major divisive issues. Split as they were among
four nationalities and two religions, the Swiss knew that their survival in unity depended on
mutual forbearance. They realized that the only way to hold the nation together was through
constant compromise and the maintenance of a delicate equilibrium among the interests of
diverging languages and creeds. Politics and elections in Switzerland thus tended to become
formalized; their main function was to ensure the national consensus by perpetuating the tacit
compromises on which the federal system ultimately rested.
In the Netherlands also, inherent conservatism kept the country in the old political
routines, but no similar national unity prevailed in neighboring Belgium. Like Switzerland,
Belgium was linguistically divided. Roughly half its population spoke French; the other half
spoke Flemish, a local variety of Dutch. Unlike the Swiss, however, the Belgians had never
granted equality to the different national languages. French had ruled supreme as the language
of the aristocracy and of business, of education, the law courts, and the administration. Only
very slowly and after long parliamentary struggles was the Flemish-speaking population
permitted to use its own language for all its public concerns.
Between 1922 and 1932, this battle was substantially won. But a minority of the
Flemings still remained dissatisfied. Linked as they were by speech not only with the Dutch but
with the Germans directly across their borders, they began to succumb to the blandishments of
Nazi propaganda. Fascism never won real political power in Belgium
The Great Depression, 19291935 207