From the kaleidoscope of French politics a myriad names are projected daily, hourly, upon the news. Amid this evanescence and confusion only a few personalities are really permanent. Since the War exactly ten Frenchmen have held the 4 Presidencies and 17 Premierships of that period.
PRESIDENTS
Raymond Poincarè (1913-1920), 66, lawyer, Senator, twice Minister of Finance, opened the Peace Conference, served for a year as President of the Reparations Commission, four times Premier. (See NEW CABINET.) His unquenchable patriotism, high courage, unflagging energy, and implacable hatred of Germany have never been questioned.
Throughout the War he was regarded in Allied countries as the vigilant apostle of preparedness to whom France owed her ability to resist the German hordes. At present the so-called "revisionist historians" are busy with piles of documents released from the secret archives of Austria-Hungary and Russia, on the basis of which M. Poincarè is charged with being the chief and successful arch-plotter of the World War.
Crimination and recrimination on his "guilt" seems likely to continue for a century at least. The "revisionist" position has just been briefly and crisply summarized by Professor Barnes of Vassar in his Genesis of the World War (Knopf, 1926).
Paul Eugene Louis Deschanel (1920), died in 1922 at 65, "the National Orator," several times President of the Chamber of Deputies, indefatigable spellbinding literateur, defeated Clemenceau for the Presidency largely by his ability to draw tears or laughter from any audience at will.
Foreigners remember M. Deschanel chiefly because—on May 24, 1920—he leaned from a window of the Presidential train, fell out clad in pajamas, suffered a nervous breakdown, resigned the Presidency on September 20.
Alexandre Millerand (1920-1924), 67, a lawyer of Clarence Darrow calibre, for 40 years a Deputy, the outstanding World War French War Minister, subsequently Commissioner-General for Alsace-Lorraine, a lifelong champion of decentralized government, pugnacious, obstinate, cursed by a lack of political foresight, prominent in the die-hard political Right, forced to resign the Presidency when Herriot succeeded in forming the Coalition of Left Parties.
Pierre Paul Henri Gaston Doumergue (1924—to the present), 63, "first Protestant and lucky 13th President of France."
M. Doumergue has been nicknamed "Le President qui rit." His smile is infectious. He speaks with all his heart and his heart is good, sensible, generous. A sturdy Gascon of Nîmes, he loves an occasional bull fight. "They please me," he once declared with habitual caution, "more than do some other spectacles that are supposed to be pleasant." The "other spectacles" included nothing not mentionable. M. Le President, though a bachelor, is accounted among the most celibate of that ilk.