MEN WHO RULE BRITAIN’S CLOSEST ALLY

Southland Times, Issue 23840, 10 June 1939, Page 13

MEN WHO RULE BRITAIN’S CLOSEST ALLY

France’s President And Ministers

By

A. L. BRIENT

IT is not easy to begin a review of France’s system of government. The subject presents such a variety of angles—historical, political and cultural.- In fact, France is a compendium of. civilization, with its perfections and imperfections, its glories and triumphs, its reverses and failures, its refinements and amenities, that we know today. Therefore, we accept France as a country to be respected and honoured; aye, and to be copied.

By whom and how is this paragon among the nations governed? A remarkable fact brought out in a. study of the French political system is that there is no written Constitution. The Napoleonic Emperors had their codes, the Bourbon and Orleans monarchies their “Chartes,” the Second Republic its written Constitution; but the Third Republic, which we now behold, is governed simply under a few statutes passed by the Legislature or under customs and conventions which are not expressed in any statute. One of these customs and obviously a highly important one, is that the President of the Republic presides over meetings of the Cabinet; which disposes of the generally held belief that he is purely a figurehead. When, therefore, it is said that the French President has in general much the same kind of position and powers as the British King, it must be borne in mind that no English monarch has been present at a Cabinet meeting since Queen Anne! Fifteen Presidents ANOTHER custom not enshrined in a Constitution is that the Chamber of Deputies (corresponding to the British House of Commons) is never dissolved except at the end of its legal term every four years. As a move in the process of “trial and error,” by which what there is of a Constitution has been built up, President MacMahon dissolved the Chamber in 1877. But he received such a rebuff at the general election that followed that the experiment has never been repeated. This, of course, enormously increases and preserves the power of the Chamber, sometimes, as we have seen lately, with unfortunate results. Hence the criticism: “In France the executive is too weak, the Legislature too strong.” In the 69 years of the Third Republic there have been 15 Presidents. Strange to relate only six have served their full seven-year terms—Emile Loubet, Armand Fallieres, Raymond Poincare, Gaston Doumergue, Jules Grevy and Albert Lebrun. Six resigned— Adolphe Thiers, Marshal MacMahon, Alexandre Millerand (under political pressure), Casmir Perier (he tired of the job), Paul Deschanel (became mentally afflicted), and Jules Grevy (he essayed a second term, but gave it up when a relative by marriage was charged with trafficking in Legion of Honour decorations). Two were assassinated—Sadi Carnot, in 1894, and Paul Doumer, in 1932. Felix Faure died a natural death while in office

The President can succeed himself, but up to this year only one had tried it, Jtiles Grevy, and, as we have seen, he lived to regret the venture. The present incumbent, Albert Lebrun, has just entered upon a second term, and everybody will wish him well the fulfilment of the additional seven years at the Elysee. In all probability, however, had the President of the Senate not this time been an old man, the usual custom of nominating him for the post would have been observed. But this can be said of Albert Lebrun; nobody else risked offering himself as a candidate to take up the running. President Lebrun, like many other leaders of the Republic, is a son of the

soil, the son of well-to-do farmers in Lorraine. After 40 years of politics in Paris he can still put his hand to the plough and make a good job of it, as he does at least once a year on his brother’s farm. As a young man he was a brilliant student of civil engineering. A prize-winner at the Academy of Sciences, he became a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, but later was associated with several leading concerns in heavy industry. He wrote a number of technical works on’' the salt mines in eastern France, on road construction, and so on. Entering political life in 1900, he was made Minister for the Colonies in the Caillaux Cabinet. Ten years afterwards he played an important part in the Agadir crisis, arising out of the German Kaiser’s claim to Morocco. It will be recalled that such was the state of apprehension in Europe over that incident that British soldiers, fearing a German invasion, stood guard over the railway bridges at the south of England throughout the 1911 summer. We remember, too, Mr Lloyd George’s sensational speech of warning to the Kaiser, delivered at the Mansion House in London. But M. Lebrun closed the incident when he conceded a large slice of French Congo to Germany in return for the abandonment of any designs on Morocco. Lebrun's Popularity DURING the Great War Georges Clemenceau, the “Tiger,” made M. Lebrun his Minister of Blockade and Liberated Regions, an exceedingly difficult post. In 1932 he was elected President by a clear majority over all his rivals put together. The Communists made a demonstration against him, regarding him as a die-hard Conservative, a sabre-rattling Big Army man. In the September crisis of last year they changed their minds. A man with a large family and many

I grandchildren, the French consider , their President the right kind of occupant of the Elysee, while his wife, a woman of great culture, but simple manners and kindness ,of heart, has helped to win popularity. This was enormously enhanced by the British Royal visit to Paris last year, when everyone agreed that the President and his charming wife “made a very good job of it.” When they paid a return visit to London only a few weeks ago the pair wOn the hearts of all Britons. M. Daladier, who as Prime Minister is M. Lebrun’s chief adviser, is not easy to describe. The French themselves, who should know him well, seeing that he has thrice filled the high office, call him “The Inscrutable” and “The Taciturn,” but he is also nicknamed “The Bull,” so that he must have dynamic qualities. If he has he reserves them for the purposes that he, undertakes to carry through in the quiet backwaters of his official quarters. He is not given to oratory, but his famous “Not a single inch of territory and not a single right” declaration the other day scared Signor Mussolini and those Italians who had hysterically cried out for “Corsica,” “Savoy,” “Nice” and “Tunis.” Prominent Ministers HE was born in the south of France in 1884, which may in part account for his strangeness to the Parisians, who look at the south as if it were a different world from their own. Anyhow, the British like him, and even Herr Hitler thinks a lot of him, in the same way that he does of Mr Chamberlain. In politics M. Daladier is a Socialist Radical, very much akin to a British Liberal.

M. Bonnet, the Foreign Minister, comes from the centre of France, and is quite at home in Paris society. Born in 1889, the son of a judge, he served in the Great War as a troop sergeantmajor. He entered the public service on demobilization, and was elected to the Deputies in 1925. Joining the Socialist Radical Party, his exceptional financial knowledge won early office for him, hut he was soon to develop a flair for foreign affairs, and it is at the Quai d’Orsay that he is most familiar to us. Sometimes the complaint is heard that he is a pro-fascist. But he manages to hold his position, and, as far as we are concerned, to use it very well. Perhaps it is his aristocratic bearing that makes him suspect of being over on the Right, when he should be at the Centre, where he belongs. I have little space left in which to try to do justice to M. Paul Reynaud, the Finance Minister. A member of the Alliance Democratique, the somewhat exclusive but leading Centre group, he is that freak combination lawyer-eco-nomist. And he has courage as well as ideas; heaps of it. They say that “he is too intelligent to be liked.” However, he is universally respected and admired as a financial technician. He is doing a stout job, the greatest perhaps in France today. Posterity will have no hesitation in admitting it. Was ever a tax collector popular in his own time?