FRANCE'S RULERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 95, 19 October 1906, Page 5

FRANCE'S RULERS.

RESIGNATION OF THE PREMIER. BIS PROBABLE SUCCESSOR. IPP.ES3 ASSOCIATION.! PARIS, 18th October. M. Sarrien, the French Premier, has been ordered rest by his medical advisers, and has intimated his intention of resigning. There is a concensus of opinion that President Fallieres will summon M. Clemenceau.

M. Jean Marie Sarrien, who succeeded >I. Rouvier as French Premier, is an old and tried Republican, having been Minister of Posts and Telegraphs in 1885, of the . Interior in 1897, and of Justice in 1898. . He was born, in 1840, at Bourbon Laney, in the department of Saone et Loire. He took part in the Franco-Prussian War, and was present in various engagements as captain in the Gardes Mobiles. In 1876 he was elected Deputy, and soon won his way to the front rank in the Chamber, where his voice was ever listened to with deference by friends and foes alike. It is to M. Sarrie» that the revision of the Dreyfus trial owed its inception, and but 'for his insistence both M. Brisson and M. Bourgeois, his colleagues, would have yielded to (ha wave of militarist passion which was determined that that dark mystery should never be- solved. After the fall of the Rouvier Cabinet in March last, M. Sarrien was of opinion that only a Ministry derived from the Left gave the best hope of security of tenure, and it was on that basis that he chose his colleagues. M. Georges Clemenceau, who is mentioned as the probable successor of M. Sarrien, is essentially a militant politician ; indeed, his whole "public career has been a succession of brilliant cam- j paigns conducted with courage, resource, ' and whole-souled determination. Born in the Vendee nearly sixty-five years ; ago, he was educated- for the medical profession. After spending several years in the United States he settled, in 1869, in Montmartre, and in the year following he was elected Mayor of that turbulent quarter of Paris. Here he played a notable part during the siege of the capital, and throughout the terrible days of the Commune. When Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas were seized and 6hojb by the infuriated populace, Clemenceau made a heroic but futile attempt to save them, and his act of courage nearly cost the young Mayor his own life, for the mob turned upon him with savage fury, and amid blows and cries of 'Traitor" he was driven from the Buttes of Montmartre. A day or two "later the Comite Centrale expelled him as a . suspected person. In 1876 M. Clemenceau was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Eighteenth Arrondissement, and soon became the leader of the Extreme Left. In this capacity he carried on a dauntless fight for amnesty for the Communards, and in 1880 he witnessed the triumph of his cause.