Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1934. THE BRITISH MODEL

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1934. THE BRITISH MODEL

The success with which M.. Doumergue has restored a large measure of calm and confidence to a troubled people and set its finances well on the way to recovery calls attention to one of the strange paradoxes of French constitutional .usage. On February 7he was invited by .President Lebrun "to form a.Cabinet which should be above party and be framed with a view to allaying the agitation and uniting the country for the needed reforms," and the reason why, when he accepted the call, he was .recognised by M. Poinca're and everybody else as "the only man equal to the task" is that he had achieved a remarkable popularity during the seven years of his Presidency. But if the position had been reversed, if that talent for popularity had been revealed during seven years of the Premiership—or, as so long a term might impose too severe a ,tax on the imagination, let us make it seven months —it is virtually certain that an asset otherwise invaluable for any politician would have been fatal to his candidature for the Presidency. After, the elections of 1924 M. Millerand, a strong President, who had ideas of his own and desired to enlarge his powers, was faced with a hostile majority which set to work to make his position impossible. They left him no alternative except, with the Senate's consent, to precipitate new elections, or to arrange for the adjournment of Parliament. Ho did not dare such an extreme step, writes Mr. Sisley Huddleston in "Franco and the French," which would have aroused public anger, and he was obliged to quit the Elysce without more ado. Thereupon tho Bloc dcs Gaudies elected aa President on June 13, 1924, a safe man who would have no pretensions to be other than a figurehead—M. Doumergue. Two greater men than Millerand are mentioned by Mr. Huddleston as having suffered a similar, though not an identical, discomfiture from their strength. Clemenceau formed his "Victory Cabinet" at the age of 76, and saved France and therefore the Allies from collapse in the World War. He afterwards became one of the "Big Three" at the Peace Conference, and probably was the biggest of them all. But the man who had been big enough to crush the defeatists—a word, by the way, which French patriotism has since, at the instance of Marshal Joffre, refused admission to the Dictionary of the Academy—and to carry his battered and almost broken country to victory was too big a man to serve it as President when the War was over. He was the hero of the nation, says Mr. Huddleston, and when, at tho beginning of 1920, he should liave been made President of the Eepublie ou the retirement of M. Poinearc, the politicians looked inquiringly at each other, whispered that M. Clemenceau was arbitrary and uncontrollable, and suddenly decided that such a man, popular and self-willed, could not bo trusted in the post of President. He was, to Ms bitter disappointment, driven out of public life at the very hour of his triumph. If we have the story rightly it was the Duke of Wellington who, when he or his windows were stoned on Waterloo Day, remarked: "D—d funny day to choose." As Clemenceau's Victory Cabinet took from November 16, 1917, to November 11, 1918, to complete its task the politicians of Fiance could hardly have chosen a day for his dishonour that would not have hit some "d—d funny" anniversary. Let us hope that the blow was softened for their victim by some share of the Duke's stoic humour. But even with the experience of Clemenceau and Millerand before their eyes the great men of France had not learnt their lesson. "The greatest European of all," as Sir Austen Chamberlain, his partner in the honours of Locarno, called him, and a man who was almost as great in peace as Clemenceau had proved himself in war, fell into the same trap and suffered the same dishonour. I have always found it inexplicable, writes Mr. Huddleston in tho "Christian Science Monitor," June 18, 1032, that the friends of Aristide Briand, with the fate of Clemenceau fresh in their memories, should have allowed him to go to certain defeat in tho secret ballot for the Presidency. Briand was popular, no doubt; but that was the greatest reason against his election. Mr. Huddleston hastens, however, to remove the impression that the Presidents of France are all nonentities. He instances M. Poincare having shown the finest qualities in office, and then he returns to the statesman with whom we are particularly concerned and whom in our first extract he had left standing on the threshold of his office. They (the Presidents), Mr. Huddleston continues, may become extremely

popular during their occupancy of; the Elysoe, as did Gaston Doumergue. But their popularity must not bo prior to' thoir election. They must bo tactfulj in tho use or1 their power. . . . On the whole, though French Presidents have been singularly unfortunate, and few have sorvod thoir full time —Loubct, Falliores, Poincare, and Douincrguc are exceptions—the National Assembly has chosen precisely the right typo of men —mon who have been quietly efficient, not too closed identified with parties, not too authoritative iii their manner, not in opposition to the successive Governments and Parliaments. This strange slory of the working of one aspect, of the French Constitution has both a personal and a general interest. It illustrates the lucky process by which M. Doumeiguc, having been first elected lo an oflicc for which the essential requirement was "a safe man who would have no pretensions to he other than a ligurehead," has developed into a rudder which has kept the ship of Slate on her true course in very perilous seas, and even supplied her with a considerable share of her motive power. But the constitutional evolution which is"illustrated at the same time is also of great interest, because it is on the British model that the Constitution of the French Republic, especially in regard to the Presidency, was framed, and a further recourse to this model was proposed by M. Doumergue himself a few days ago. The founders of the Constitution of 1875 had no intention of setting up an autocrat in the President's chair. They dared not even arm him with the drastic powers of the American President. Following their British model they gave their President powers resembling those of a constitutional monarch, but limited his term to seven years, and to prevent his acquiring from direct contact with the people an authority that might upset the balance of the Constitution they rejected popular election and substituted an election by an absolute majority of votes cast in the National Assembly, that is to say, in a joint sitting of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. It is from this system of indirect election that the mischief described by Mr. Huddleston arises. In a country like Great Britain, where parties are few, clear-cut and well disciplined, such a system might presumably be made to work, but in France where these conditions arc conspicuously absent, and the fear and jealousy of the strong man, whom in some other circumstances the public are apt to worship, are active, and the politicians have their fling, the result is otherwise. But serious as is the loss to any democracy, and not least to France, of unnecessarily limiting its supply of talent and character, the abuse in question is not on a scale to justify a broadcast appeal for prompt action from the head of a National Government. The two most fundamental political maladies from which France is suffering appear to be the unlimited powers which members enjoy of proposing votes of credit, and the fatal obstacle to the Premier's leadership and discipline which is presented by his inability to obtain a dissolution except under conditions so difficult that they only have been realised once in more than half a century. For correction of the second of these M. Doumergue issued his appeal on Tuesday. It is a remedy which is so simple and so powerful that there seems to be no reason why it should not work as well on one side of the Channel as on the other,