A FOUL CRIME.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21639, 9 May 1932, Page 6

A FOUL CRIME.

Those curious people who attempt to read a mystical significance in numbers will doubtless find their superstitions strengthened in the knowledge that M. Paul Doumer, who has been struck down by an assassin, was the thirteenth president of the third Republic in France, and took office on the thirteenth day of a month. But the wise majority, who have learned with surprise and horror of the assassination of the President, will seek in vain for any acceptable explanation of the act which has deprived France of a well-loved figurehead. The fact, indeed, that M. Doumer was an unsensational character, practically unknown abroad until he defeated M. Briand jn the presidential ballots in 1931, makes his assassination the more remarkable. There is, so far, only one tenable theory—that the Russian who killed him is of unbalanced mind, his own assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. An assassination is always an act of folly, sometimes, unfortunately, attended by the most farreaching effects. The world will not quickly forget that the curtain to the greatest military tragedy in history was rung up by the hand of an assassin at Sarajevo in June, 1914. It is not, however, to be expected for a moment that M. Doumer’s murder has international significance, save as an occasion for widespread indignation and regret. The reason which the assassin is reported to have given for his deed is, to say the least, fantastic. The act must remain one of sheer folly, executed by a man who, after the habit of political maniacs, shows neither excuse nor remorse for his crime. It would be idle to suggest that by the death of M. Doumer France has suffered an irreparable loss. The President presents no subject for such eulogies, such heartfelt expressions of regret as marked the passing, a few months ago, of M. Briand. It is a somewhat ironical circumstance that his death should have occurred so soon after that of the great internationalist whose end, it was freely suggested, was hastened by his defeat in the presidential election. French presidents are usually chosen for the very qualities that do not make a national hero. Clemenceau was defeated by the comparatively unknown Deschanel; Doumergue, Loubet and Fallieres are all modern examples of a negative type which has established a sort of presidential dynasty of mediocrities in France. M. Doumer had proved himself a capable administrator abroad; he had presided with acceptance in the Senate; he was possessed of those homely virtues as husband, father and country-lover which the French, contrary to the teachings of the novelists, most warmly admire. His death removes, in a deplorably tragic manner, one who, during an association with Paris extending back. to the siege of 1870, of which he had vivid recollections, rendered to his country service that was useful if unheroic.