PAUL DESCHANEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 73, 27 March 1920, Page 17

PAUL DESCHANEL.

FRANCE'S BEAU BRCMMELL t PRESIDENT. Dapper, fastidious, precise in appearance, so also in mind, is Paul Desehanel. who has just been elected President ot France in succession to M. Poincare, says a "Daily Mail" correspondent. In his younger days he was the ultraexquisite of young Paris, and we of the same veneration regarded him with some awe as a kind of modern Beau Brummell. But with all his care for an extremely attractive appearance, none of us in the Paris of that day ever for one moment regarded young Desehanel as merely a 6upcr-"knut." He had perhaps the acutest brain and the subtlest critical judgment of any young man of his generation. We all foretold for nim a great career. He has probably had exactly the career he wished for in those young ambitious days. After many years I saw him at Versailles just after he had been elected head of tho State of France. He is still at sixty-three just the same brilliant, self-confident young man. ' Xo Frenchman is better dressed or has more graceful manners. The small, finely shaped head is grey now, but the brain within it is just as subtle and fastidious and essentially Parisian as ever. To those who have not encountered in official life the quite extraordinary force of moral courage of which Paul Desehanel is possessed, it must seem, strange to reflect that on Jul* 26, 1594.J he fought a duel with M. Clemenceau! I The years have given Paul Desehanel wisdom", and he possesses in high degree the art of governing men without seeming to govern. He is tact itself, but beneath the most attractive suavity he can be firm as steel. He was President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1898 to 1002 and again; from 1912 to 1920, and iv the minds of most present-day French politicians he remains the type of what a President of the Chamber should be. i Throughout his public life Paul Des-| chanel has displayed judicial rather than executive qualities, a line and '■statesmanlike breadth of view rather than great initiative. These are pre-! cisely the qualities which in the minds of many have marked him out for years as a President of the French Republic. There are Borne who say that in this! case the father made tbe. man. Cer-' tainly old Desehanel, the great professor of literature, was one of the great intellectual forces in the Paris of our day. From that wonderful and wellstored mind, humorous, wise, buoyant young Paul learned much. But Paul Desehanel is much more than the son of his father. His sixteen published books deal more with j political philosophy than with literature, ! although his tastes are wide and his zest for new ideas inexhaustible. But j while the father was a philosopher of! the lecture hall and the study, the son is a philosopher of the great world. He is an Academician, but contemporary humanity is his chief study. He i 3 intensely human and he is typically French. Paul Desehanel has never made an enemy, and that fact alone will help him to make a good President Morelover, this quiet dapper little man will be more than a good President. France ! may be quite sure that he will be a i strong one too. »