Briand Defeated, Doumer Elected

Briand Defeated, Doumer Elected

Once every seven years the chic thing to do is to motor out from Paris to Versailles, taking in your Renault limousine a Senator. You are followed by 29 smart friends in eleven cars which should also contain two Deputies and Yvonne Printemps. You are perhaps the Baron de Rothschild--whichever one you like. With an air of going to Deauville for the Grand-Prix, you are off to the greatest race in France, "le Grand-Prix de I'Elysee," the election of the President of the Republic. Six thousand troops and 900 policemen surround and invest Versailles as though war were about to be declared. In the light green woods through which your car is flashing, batteries of artillery are concealed. A special train waits at the Versailles station to convey the President-Elect to Paris. It will not be used. The President-Elect will go by motor, as you are coming, but the special is ready with steam up, and soldiers guard its track. It waits. It pants. Gaudily uniformed, the Garde Republicaine waits to salute the President-Elect. Paris behind you is celebrating with a holiday. So is all France. Versailles as you enter it is so excited that even you, the Baron de Rothschild, jaded as you are, become excited too. As your motorcade sweeps up to the Hotel des Reservoirs the scene is of such animation, sparkle and smart push that even your party has to fight its way out to a table set for 40 on the terrace. It is 1 p. m. To elect a President of France takes hours and frantic hours, even though the people do not vote, only Senators and Deputies, three of whom you have brought. You and they are going to lunch --they scampering out to vote and scampering back as many times as necessary-- at least all afternoon, and the lunch may become dinner. Rumors are buzzing. Briand is the favorite, but dark horses often win. Your Senator might, the bearded old duffer! Other tables have begun to take straw votes. Briand has been elected 18 to 12, and Senator Paul Doumer, Speaker of the Senate, has been elected 8 to 6, but that was a small table. The first straw vote at your table last week was Briand 21, Doumer 20 and two for Jean ("***") Hennessy. Something queer about that, as your party was only 40. Your Senator, no friend of Briand, snorted that Briand's friends would beat him yet! Some of them, he said, were circulating in the lobbies U. S. newspaper clippings--all praising "Briand the Man of Peace," of course. "Disgusting! Have we met then to elect the President of the United States?" Germany and Austria elect their presidents by popular vote. Most other European republics follow the French plan; but in France alone the world of wealth and fashion makes the election a social event of the first magnitude, their Champagne luncheons crowding every hotel at Versailles. To hold a card to one of the narrow galleries surrounding the actual chamber in the Palace of Versailles where the President was elected last week--a chamber used for no other purpose and seldom shown to tourists--is to prove oneself potent. Last week the asparagus-loving U. S. Ambassador to France (see p. 43) and Mrs. Walter Evans Edge, the U. S. Minister to Switzerland and Mrs. Hugh Wilson, tried to crash the gallery with only one ticket among them. The doorman refused positively to let them in. Ambassador Edge had to circulate for some time among potent French friends before he finally wangled his party's entrance.

"Cheer for Briand but Vote for Doumer." The Salle du Congres, where Chamber and Senate met last week as the National Assembly, is shaped like an oblong box, the rostrum being at the centre of one of the longer sides. Behind the rostrum is a stately backdrop for the show, a wall against which brown columns stand like sentinels with ornate Corinthian caps. Around the other three sides of the room galleries rise tier on tier. A magnet for every eye is the great green-&-gold Voting Urn. As everyone knows, Aristide Briand, twelve times Prime Minister of France, Foreign Minister for the past six years,-- "Man of Locarno," winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1926), co-author of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, author of the scheme for the United States of Europe, greatest orator and Master Parliamentarian of France, failed of election as President of the Republic last week, although only five days earlier he had obtained a vote of confidence from the Chamber 430 to 52. The defeat of Aristide Briand, not the victory of Paul Doumer, was the event of the day. France has dozens of Doumers, small and intensely nationalistic bourgeoisie who have become Senators. She has only one Briand, stooped, untidy, sleepy-eyed and droop-mustached --world-great. When he reached Versailles last week it was seen that Br'er Briand had submitted to one of the few decent haircuts he has ever had. Even the mustache that has drooped and wandered where it would for years had been neatly trimmed, sleeked down. The Great Man wore a sack suit which had actually been pressed! His valet hovered in the offing with a hatbox and a suitcase. Out of the box could come a high silk hat, and out of the case a full dress suit. Put these clothes on Briand and-- you would have the President-Elect--voila! It was the valet's great and tragic hour. Afterward Frenchmen cynically said: "Briand's friends all cheered for him-- but many voted for Doumer. Comprenez? The vote of confidence in the Chamber was public, the vote for the President secret. Briand could not hold his 'friends'." This personal factor must be given due weight. But larger reasons why the Man of Peace was defeated are to be found in Germany. Had Adolf Hitler not won over 6,000,000 votes on a platform of "Scrap the Treaty of Versailles" (TIME, Sept. 22), much might have been different at Versailles last week. M. Briand ignored Herr Hitler last year, continued his peaceful rapprochement with Germany. But half the shopkeepers in France had been scared out of their wits. The Hitler threat had time to fade and blend, but suddenly came the threat of Anschluss (TIME, March 30, April 6). Dr. Julius Curtius, the German Foreign Minister, negotiated with Austria a plan for a Zollverein (customs union) with Germany, in such heavy-handed fashion that everyone knew Anschluss (a political union) to be his object. France mortally hates & fears to see her former enemies unite. Had the late, great Dr. Gustav Stresemann remained German Foreign Minister, he would have been smart enough to keep Anschluss dark for a few more months, until after the French election. But Stresemann the First is dead, there is no second. German diplomacy is back to bungling. Too late many German papers fervently mourned Briand's defeat last week. Groaned Berlin's famed Tageblatt: "A black day!" "France," declared the industrialist Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, "has decisively disavowed peace politics." The Vossische Zeitimg, leading German organ of "Liberal intellectuals,'' moaned: "There is no one in Europe to succeed him. Should he make good his word and resign as Foreign Minister [see p. 22], the loss would be irreparable--and not to France alone. The era of peaceful post-War politics has ended today with a shrill note of discord." Doumer is Elected. Even before balloting began last week, Paul Doumer was "the Second Citizen of France," that is to say, Speaker of the Senate, a post of as much and little dignity as that of U. S. Vice President. It is of record that three Second Citizens have been elected First Citizen of France. It is also of record that, although French Senators are much older as a class than French Deputies, all Senator Presidents have completed the full term of seven long years and no Deputy President has (one died, one was assassinated, three resigned). M. Doumer is 74, the oldest Senator and the oldest man elected President since Adolphe Thiers at the same age was chosen First President of the Third Republic in 1871. For all his three-score-and-14 years, M. Doumer is mighty spry. He comes from Auvergne, the high, central, flint-rock "Coolidge Country" of France. Frugal to the point of acute parsimony, he eats table d'hote lunches vin compris (wine included), and it is said that his favorite restaurant makes a small reduction because M'sieu Doumer never drinks the free wine. With his white spaded-beard glistening, his old figure spry as a centenarian parrot, Speaker Doumer of the Senate took up his gavel last week as Speaker of the National Assembly which was to elect him President. Twenty-five years ago, when he was Speaker of the Chamber, the National Assembly gave him 371 votes for President, electing Armand Fallieres by 449 votes. Deliberately M. Doumer opened the dictionary on the Speaker's desk at random. A Communist Deputy was shouting ''Long Live the Soviets!" And others were shouting him down. That was unimportant. With invincible bourgeois calm, M. Doumer noted that he had opened the dictionary among words beginning with "L." He made this vital fact known. The alphabetical vote began. With Coolidge luck, Doumer had stumbled on the most appropriate letter of the entire 26. Leader by alphabetical right of the "L's," Prime Minister Pierre Laval of France advanced first with his white ballot toward the Urn. The ballot was taken from the Prime Minister by the presiding teller, held aloft and dropped in the sight of everyone into the first and only important Urn. A brown ball was then given to M. Laval who dropped it into a second urn for checking purposes. Total ballots must equal total balls. One by one minute after long minute for two hours, Senators and Deputies came forward to ballot and ball until the entire 901 had voted. Cheers for each popular parliamentarian echoed as he balled. But the great Senator-mathematician, Paul Painleve, twice Prime Minister of France, did not receive his cheer. Startled by the silence, he shot a darting glance, then smiled. The great comedienne, the wife of Dramatist-Actor Sacha Guitry, the peerless Mile Yvonne Printemps had just entered the gallery. Everyone was too busy looking at her to cheer.

Comedy before tragedy. P-for-Painleve before B-for-Briand. When Bachelor Briand advanced to vote it was noticed that ladies in the gallery cheered particularly hard. The National Assembly cheered, but not enough of it, although those who cheered Briand fairly split their gullets. They were of the Left-Centre and Left. Enemies of the Foreign Minister professed to know then, for a certainty, that he had been beaten, and this may have influenced later votes. There was all the way from B to K to go yet. M. Briand as he voted glanced up expressionless at M. Doumer, and he expressionless looked down. After B, then C, then D-for-Doumer who jerkily leaned forward and voted, cheered by the whole Right-Centre, Right and a sprinkling of others. Tediously the vote went on & on. When it was over, 45 minutes more were taken to count it, check and double-check. The count: Paul Doumer 442 Aristide Briand 401 Jean Hennessy 15 Marcel Cachin 10 Gaston Doumergue 7 Paul Painleve 2 Scattered 20 Blank 4 Total 901 Thus on the first ballot nobody got a majority of over half the votes, the necessary minimum to elect. But M. Doumer had failed to win by only seven votes. M. Briand by 48. The result, to a practiced parliamentary eye, was decisive--for a large block of centre National Assemblymen were known to have pledged themselves to vote on the second ballot for whomever received most votes on the first. M. Briand promptly withdrew his candidacy, and soon after left Versailles for Paris where, as he admitted, "feeling a little faint," he went early to bed. At Versailles the vote proceeded again from "L." Smart luncheons lengthened into weary dinners. At 8:30 p.m. Paul Doumer was elected 13th President of France by 504 votes, at least two score more than necessary. It was of no interest to anybody except Senator Pierre Maurrad that he was runner-up with 334 votes. The Left, after Briand left, had to vote for someone. M. Doumer, as President of the Assembly, was already in his dress suit. His valet's work was done. Triumphantly the President-Elect left Versailles, saluted by the Garde Republicaine. He motored directly to Paris, directly to the Elysee Palace of President Gaston Doumergue, which, after June 13, will be the Palace of President Doumer, the "gue" being dropped. Doumer and Doumergue publicly shook hands, then retired into the Presidential drawing room and shut the door. Paul Doumer was born March 22, 1857, son of a railway gang foreman at Aurillac. His father died, and aged 14 he went to Paris where his mother did scrubwoman's work and such. He was apprenticed to a jeweler, graduated as an engraver of medals. By the time he was 21, Engraver Doumer had studied enough nights to be graduated at the University of Paris, became Professor Doumer of mathematics. His throat would not stand the strain of lecturing, and he became Editor Doumer of the journal Voltaire. Meanwhile he had married "for love," his wife bringing no dot. But poor Husband Doumer managed to do everyone proud by becoming private secretary to Charles Floquet, Speaker of the Chamber and later Prime Minister. In 1888 Deputy Doumer was elected. In 1895, aged 38, he became Finance Minister Doumer under Prime Minister Bourgeois. He championed the income tax (then considered dangerously radical) until the Bourgeois Cabinet ignominiously fell. M. Doumer at this time was personally in debt. He had just prestige enough left to get himself "kicked downstairs" as Governor General of French Indo-China. La bas he saved his money, governed 17,000,000 natives in approved martinet fashion, and returned with such an incontestably sound record that the Nationalists (conservatives) put him in as Speaker Doumer of the Chamber in 1905. Once again, when he failed of election as President of France in 1906, his political fortunes ebbed and he became President Doumer of a bank. During the War he served on this & that commission. In 1921 he accepted Prime Minister Briand's invitation to become Finance Minister Doumer 2nd for a year, and in 1925-26 (again under Briand) he was Finance Minister Doumer 3rd. Like the bon bourgeois and banker that he is, Doumer 3rd included in his budget repayment of 17,500,000,000 francs to the Bank of France sooner than the Bank of France had expected to get it. The Bank of France is an institution semipolitical and its semi-permanent officials have great influence in the long run. Paul Doumer is without taint, a water drinker who has paid his debts, and encouraged France to pay hers. He is sound. He typifies the meek and the industrious who inherit the earth. When his limousine entered Paris from Versailles last week the fickle populace--who pelted President-Elect Loubet with potatoes in 1899--cried "Vive Doumer! Vive Doumer!" Doubtless Doumer and Mme Doumer will live out his term. They have outlived five of their eight children, including four sons whom Father Doumer "gave to France" and later made the subject of a best-selling War book The Book of My Sons.

Retiring President Gaston ("Gastounet") Doumergue said last week: "I shall reread Robinson Crusoe--the joy of my youth! Ah, Messieurs, there is a book which awakens a taste for long voyages." In short, Gastounet expects to travel, have fun.

* Except in the two-day Herriot Cabinet of 1926.

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