ROMANCE OF POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 57, 8 March 1932, Page 7

ROMANCE OF POLITICS

LONG AND VARIED CAREER

Briand, the most colourful figure in France, the persuasive member of more! than twenty Cabinet 3 and Premier in eleven, has just failed to reach seventy years of age. The man who secured the adoption of the principle of the general strike and then ruthlessly defeated a strike on the railways, causing all members of the strike committee to be arrested, who asked for an extension of military service as an answer to the ■German threat and later contrived to win the Nobel Peace prize, who separated Church and State and administered the new order himself to the entire satisfaction of the Chamber of Deputies, who virtually retired four times and each time came back obviously was exceptional. The shifting scene of French politics, with its incessant bargaining, its nice adjustments and need for shrewd calculation and penetrating judgment of men, was admirably suited to the display of his gifts of management and knowledge of tactics, the wider field of foreign affairs, to which he turned after 1915 and in which he showed himself at his fullest stature revealed him as a statesman of rank. There was only one Briand. Like many another aspiring French politician, the young man from Nantes began his career preoccupied with law and the Press. As a law student he, became associated with advanced movements in politics, writing for "Le Peuple" and using his pen in the service of the "Lanterne" and the "Petite Republique" before he founded "L'Humanite" with Jean Jaures. From the time of his victory for the principle | of the general strike, a victory gained at Nantes Workingmen 's Congress of 1894, Briand, young, vigorous, and I meteoric, was a recognised leader of the French Socialist Party. Yet' he cast off his affiliations to accept the portfolio of public instruction and worship in the Sarrien bourgeois ministry of 1906, four years after his repeated efforts had at last been crowned with a seat in the House of Deputies and soon after his brilliant triumph in carrying through the negotiations leading up to the new law without dividing the parties on whose support he relied, and with but "slight modifications of I the original plan. That' seat in the Cabinet cost him his membership of the Unified Socialist Party, but it was the forerunner of membership of twentyfour Governments yet un-created. HIS TIRST GOVERNMENT. Within three years Briand had formed his own first Government, embarking on a policy announced to be of "national understanding and tranquility" and then marked by severity in crushing a railway strike. Mobilisation of tho railwayman in the military service and dismissal of those who refused to obey were tho methods which Briand employed to end the dispute, but it cost him his Premiership, for the withdrawal of Viviani, France's war-time Premier, wio was then Minister of Labour, led to the Government's resignation. The next Cabinet, still led by Briand, was of more radical tendency, but it. fell after a brief life, Parliamentary disputes over a FrancoGerman agreement concerning Congo concessions being at the back of its failure. A portfolio of justice, under Poincare, a year of office in succession

to that politician when, he went to the Presidency, brought Briand to the war years.

The war found him in one of his periods of retirement,-, and Yiviani brought him out to membership of a government which was to be " fully representative of France." The Government fell in October, 1915, and Briand embarked on his new career as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ke-form-ing the Government, he took over direction of that Department which was to bring him his greatest fame. The new Ministry was wide in scope. It included a Socialist, a Catholic Conservative, and three former Premiers. But- the national character of the Government did not save Briand from beiag accused of lacking vigour in the praseeution of the war. By the end of the autumn of 1910 the Rumanian disaster and, the situation, in Greece exposed him to further attacks, and IBriand, sensing the dangers about him, took a drastic step. He re.-fbrmed his Cabinet and called in the experts. The technical, offices were, given over to nonjParliamentarians. But the failure was, merely postponed.. Lyautey,, the Minister of War, and the Chamber'disagreed and: after a vain, attempt.at fuirtfier reconstruction Briand' decided to! resign. OUT OP POLITICS. That, was a turning point in his cacreer: For the next, three, years, he took, practically no:pant,in, public affairs. A few speeches in the Chamber showed j that he was inclining; towards the- Left, j and\ in 1921. he was again called upon to form a Governments Again he took ehaige of foreign; affairs and. again' he met fierce attacks. His conduct at the Washington. Disarmament Conference exposed, him to the charge of sacrificing the interests.of his country, his.negotiations with Mr. Lloyd1 George for- an Angla-Freneh defensive pact provoked another storm. His position became untenable as he rapidly realised on his return to Paris at the hasty summons of MHHerand. Again a Briand Government resigned. But three years later, in April, 1925, he was once more Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Locarno, agreement of that year inereasect his influence enormously. He survived one change of government, and when another came it was Briand wh"o tobk over the office, of Premier. . A few jjifentha only, this time, marked his resumption of power. The House, threw out an important; financial measure and the Government went with-it. These were tile. days, of the financial crisis and the rapid' deterioration of the franc when the political1 scene changed; quietly. The rapid, alternations culminated i:i a coalition under Pbineare in1 which Briand had' his favourite portfolio, and he directed French policy on the Basis of "reconstruction and consoEdation." He received the NobeL Peace Prize ih company with; the other principal sigjnatories of the Locarno Pact,. Chamberlain and Stresemann.

Despite his break with tlie Left of a quarter-:of a century ago, Briand1 remained am advanced political thinker. In a time .of national stress in a, country less suarply limited by- conflicting interests :jmd multiplicity he might have achieved, much more. An. unequalled negotiator, and! finder of formulas to meet every ease, a man. of the vision to conceive a. Pan-Eiiropa, a man of singular ease of bearing and animation in speech and; of great: mental range, he v?as one of the outstanding figures of has time. Yet at the end he had bitterness. He led the government again, but he failed, to realise his final ambition- when France did, not elect him President in the. spring; of last. year.