THE STABILITY OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC

THE FOREIGN OFFICE BAG. BY LUCIEN WOLF

There is something changed in France. That
must be the judgment of every one who scrutinises, closely and intelligently, the election of M. Raymond Poincare to the Presidency of the Republic. And the change is not only of interest to Frenchmen; it is also of profound European significance. In two respects the election is strikingly differentiated from all its pre
decessors. First, we have the unusual calm amid
which it has been conducted, and the total absence of violent political emotion by which it has been saluted. Secondly, we have in M. Poincare what we have never had before—a national figure and not the colourless nominee of wirepullers or party com
promises. What does this mean? It means that the
Republic has now finally emerged from the struggle for life, inasmuch as the great questions which were vital to
it have been settled. For that reason it is now possible for the
nation to take a larger view of the Presidency, and to place in it the best man—and more particularly one who will worthily embody the inter
national activities and duties of France—without danger to the Constitution.
In one form or another the
Reactionary peril has embittered every previous Presi
dential election, and more than once has necessitated the choice of a comparative nonentity.
It was scotched but not killed by the seize mai. It revived in the Dreyfus controversy and the Clerical conflict, and it was responsible for the un
chaining of political passions which marked the elections of M. Loubet and M. Failures.
But to-day these passions are dead. Church and State have teen divorced for good. The attempt the other day to revive the Dreyfus bogey failed dis
mally. A whole corpus of ultrademocratic laws have finally shaped the Third Republic, so that kicking against it is now hopeless. This is why everybidy has gladly acquiesced in the election of M. Poin
care as representing at once the ripest fruit of French democratic statesmanship at
home and those nobler traditions of external policy on which the majority of Frenchmen, irre
spective of party, are eager to
unite. The spectacle of a France thus at peace within
herself, and consequently able to bring all her force to bear on great international problems as they arise, marks a real tournant d’histoire. Hitherto the strong arm of France has been too
often paralysed at moments of crisis for Europe by intestine discords. Such discords may, of course, recur at inconvenient moments; but, at any rate, the materials for them arc no longer abundant or of an absorbing seriousness. And this New France has another characteristic which
is very welcome. It is a sober France, a France without panache, a little less generous, perhaps, than
it used to be, but on that account all the steadier, a France vowed to peace and eminently European. All this is writ large in the election of M. Poincare.
But, it may be asked, is there any scope under
the French Constitution for so strongly marked an individuality as that of M. Poincare?
Will he not find himself just as helpless as poor M. Casimir-Perier, just as much of a figure-head as his worthy predecessor, M. Fallieres? The
truth is that the powers of the President, though closely hedged in by the theory of Ministerial responsibility, and more particularly by the inter
and co-operate with meetings of the Cabinet, he has ample scope for his statesmanship.
The Constitution intended the President to be a sort of trustee of national interests in the face of fleeting Cabinets, and a President who realises his duties in this respect and who wields a high personal authority and knows how to exercise a tactful initiative, need never be amere figure-head.
M. Hanotaux’s testimony on this head is all the more valuable, inasmuch as he speaks as an ex- Minister of considerable experience, and as a politician of a somewhat conservative bias. Nor does his testimony stand alone. M. de Lanessan,
who is also an ex-Minister, has been saying almost the same thing in his admirable campaigning articles in the Siècle.
This, indeed, is the explana
tion of the otherwise inexplicable opposition to M. Poincaré’s candidature which the extreme Radicals under MM. Clemenceau, Combes and Monis sought to organise among the Republican parties. There was not, and could not have been, any political motive for this opposition. M. Poincare was one of themselves. He is essentially democratic, secular, and social. He voted for the Associations Law and the Sepa
ration of Church and State. But the best proof that the hostility to him was not political is afforded by the fact that the candidate selected by the extreme Radicals to run against him, and recom
mended by them to all the Republican parties, was a col
league of his own, who had collaborated and acquiesced in all the eminently Radical work of his cabinet. M. Pams, how
ever, had the merit of being a somewhat colourless person, a political hewer of wood and drawer of water, who might be relied upon to do nothing with adequate dignity so long as he was not told to do something else. M. Pams, in a word, represented docility, while M. Poincaré embodied the “dictator
ship of persuasion” which, in the eyes of the extreme Radical,
i s undistinguishable from Cæsarism. The fact that M.
Poincaré was clearly the choice of the nation, and that the nation wanted a more active Presi
dent, did not weigh with his enemies. French Radicals are
not the only politicians of their school who dislike referendums and have a sneaking kindness for sinecures.
With these domestic aspects of the Election
the foreign observer is less concerned than with their incidence on the international situation of France. M. Poincaré himself, in returning thanks for his election, did not fail to emphasise its significance in this respect: “A strong France
and continuity of Foreign Policy. ” These are to be among the chief watchwords of the Poincaré Presidency. They are of excellent augury for the general peace.
pretation given to it during the struggle between Marshal MacMahon and the Chambers, are very much what the President likes to make of them. In this respect he resembles our own Constitu
tional Monarchs, whose personal influence has never been a negligible quantity in our politics. So true is this, that when the other day certain French newspapers put forward a demand for the enlargement of the powers of the President, M. Hanotaux, in an illuminating article, resisted
it on the ground that, by his right to choose his own Prime Minister, and to preside over
THE OLD RÉGIME AND THE NEW: THE EVE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The Radical congress to choose a candidate for the French Presidency, in succession to M. Fallières, was held in the gilded halls of the Petit Luxembourg, Deputies and Senators descending in relays to record their votes in the old Luxembourg Chapel, where the figure of the Deity, throned in glory and surrounded by
celestial harps, looked down upon this strange combination of Church and State.