FRENCH PRESIDENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1938, Page 7

FRENCH PRESIDENT

FIGURE IN PUBLIC LIFE FORMERLY A PEASANT DEVOTION TO COUNTRY The President of the French Republic (M Albert Francois Lebrun) might easily be taken for an Englishman in looks and temperament. Of medium height, with a smart military moustache and iron-grey hair, he is now aged nearly 69 years but looks 20 years younger. He has spent 40 years in French public life and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, he has never played an active role in party politics, although he has been a member of the Cabinet five times. He is a notable example of a man who, without influence by noble birth or wealth, but only by the devotion of his own talents to his country, has earned the highest honour that the Republic of France can bestow. 1 For six years he has kept a firm, impartial hand on the complicated fortunes of French politics, and has earned the respect of all political parties and the affection of the French public. He is a peasant by birth, a son of the soil, an ardent patriot, a simple, homely man whose scholastic attainments, allied to his strong, disciplined character, have enabled him in a lifetime of politics to reach every honour that the Third Republic can bestow. His home is not within the rigid

confines of the Elysee Palace or the official summer residence at Rambouillet presented by the State, but in his own native Lorraine.. President Lebrun is another of those famous Frenchmen who come from the eastern borders of France. He comes from the same stock and the same country as another famous President, M Raymond Poincare. M Lebrun was born, as his parents before him, in the Lorraine village of Mercy-le-Haut, in the Meuthe-et-Moselle Department. Here he has his farm home, abutting on that of his brother, M Michel Lebrun. BACK TO THE LAND When he is allowed to escape from the cares of State for a week or two each year he will be found ploughing his brother’s fields, living the life of his forebears. To the villagers and neighbouring farmers, he is just “Monsieur Albert.” This birth of husbandry and close-

ness to the soil of France explains perhaps why he is privately the most conservative of Conservatives, an intense nationalist, who, living on the frontiers of Germany, believes in and, since he has been in office, placed his political faith in a strong army. Until, at the age of 29 years, he entered practical politics as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he had been trained as an engineer, taking the highest honours that the famous polytechnique could give. But his qualities of independence and judgment were soon to mark him as a future leader of the French nation, After 11 years in the Chamber he obtained his first post in the Ministry, that of Minister for Colonies, in the Caillaux Cabinet, and it was here that he first showed those qualities of statesmanship that were later to send him to France’s highest office. As Minister for Colonies he braved unpopularity and solved the ugly situation of the Agadir crisis by ceding to Germany a large part of the French

Congo. His reward was a free hand in Morocco, which today is part of the great French colonial empire. SERVED IN WAR Under two other famous Premiers —M Poincare and M Doumergue —in successive years he retained the office of Minister for Colonies. Then came the war. He served — his engineering training standing him in good stead —as a major in the artillery and sappers until M Clemenceau, the “Tiger,” brought him from the front to make him Minister for Blockade.

; Then after peace had been signed . two years he was Minister for the Liberated Regions, and in this post he did more than any man to rebuild the ■ ruined villages, towns, and cities of . northern and eastern France. ; He was elected to the Senate for his native Department, and in due . course he became the natural choice for the Presidency of the Senate. In France, when one is President of the Senate, it is an unviolated tradition that one becomes President of the Republic for a term of seven years. So when M Paul Doumer was assassinated M Lebrun was elected President at a first ballot.