Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-09
Ere ACH PRESIDENCY
Getting Into Line for the
Approaching Election.
LoUBET'S SUCCESSOR
FAvoRITE CANDIDATES AND THE
OZARK HORSES"
Personal Characteristics Of Fallieres,
.oUBET'S SUCCESSOR
Personal characteristics Of Fallieres,
Doumer, Bourgeois and Brisson'-
The Interests Of "The Block"


Special Correspondence of The Star
PARIS, November 20. 1905.
President Loubet's term Is ending. In
the middle of February the $50 deputies and
300 senators of the French republic Will
assemble In the grandose palace Of the for
mer kings Of France at Versailles in order
to elect another president for seven years.
There are no candidates. 1t is consider
ed bad taste even for hot favorites ike
Fellieres Doumer, Bourgeois or Deschenel
to SO much as confess an ambition. UP
to the hour Of election good taste, COM
mands that they say: who thinks of me ?
1 have never dreamed Of it. There are so
many others better fitl'
Only one thing will catch them-devotion.
Devotion TO the republic. II belong to my
friends, my party and the republic!'
Another characteristic is the number OF
parties. There are:
The conservatives, including the few roy
alists and Bonapartists still left in parlia-
ment.
The moderate republicans. to whom Ribot
and Deschenel belong.
The radicals like Doumer, with whom
President Loubet Is classed. and the So
cialsts proper.
For a royalist or Bonapartist to get in
would be nothing less than revolution;
and, generally. it is clear that no conserva-
tive can be elected president In the same
way no pure socialist has chance-for
example, Jaures.
idea of Present Constitution.
I have said there are no candidates. !
might almost say there is no presidential
election. Long ago, when Mcmahon was
whooping 1t up and the French remem-
bered their prince president become Empe-
rxho OF
president, Grevy, sketched out the idea Of
the present constitution that the people
cannot be trusted to elect their president.
1.-THE fact OF his election by the people
gives a president excessive force he SAID
"If he knows how to be popular, IL he be
victorious general, or a scion of one OF
the families formerly ruling in France, II
commerce languishes, If the people suffer
how do you know that such president
may not arrive at upsetting the republlc?'
declared Bonapartist, and Paul Deroulede,
who Is a republican admirer of the Amer-
can constitution. fight for the plebiscfte
which would risk the upsetting to place the
presidential election In the peoples hands;
but against all such novelties there are the
watchers on the threshold-and their num-
Der is $50.
They are the combined deputies $3.50 and
senators 900, to whom the constitution
gives the sole and uninstructable right to
meet as an extra and homogeneous body
and elect the president by a majority vote.
President Loubet was elected by 4S3 out OF
was rushed in by 430 votes, to keep out
Brisson, who had a faithful 361.
Keep your eye on this majority-every-
thing Is in 1t. 1t Is the very same majority
and week out, the final arbiter of every
act of the French government BY the doc
trine of the 'impersonal executive" French
presidents have let themselves become q
figure head and the land is governed by their
ministers. But If you think those ministers
are independent, you are mistaken. A SIM
Pile gesture calls them into being. The
slightest frown destroys them. Whose ges-
ture and whose frown Is so all-powerful?
Why, the gesture and the frown of that ma
jority of deputies and senator's again.
Something About ''The Black
Really the question with every American
in Paris is how a majority of SO well-ie-
fined q coterie, once getting into power,
could ever lose it. 1t has at its orders
every means of power in the French state
excepting, perhaps, the judiciary; and the
''dessaississement' law, against which Sen
ator Fallieres reported and which neverthe-
less coolly took the Dreyfus case from one
court and put 1t in another, shows the force
of that perhaps" Indeed, the only warn
ing history has for such majority is that
of the Kilkenny cats, who by the fact OF
being thrown too exclusively together dis
appeared into thin air when each had eaten
UP the other.
This majority exists. It has name. It
calsocialists and socialists, and 1t has held
together seven years already
Now you see why-should the block con-
tinue solid-no moderate republican can
otherwise perfectly apt, like Deputy Ribot,
Senator Charles Dupuy, Senator Meline
and Deputy Paul Deschenel Deschenel,
however, is on the borderland between mod
crates and radicals He Is heightened, dec
orative and popular, having been for a
long time president OF the chamber OF
deputies. Should the block fall into the XII
kenny error and the majority swing slight
~ toward moderation. young as he is, Des-
chenel might have chance.
VIII It? Probably not There IL too
much good eating In power to tempt the
block to cannibalism: suave jiu-titsu AT the
most Will be applied to individuals-upon
that other Irish principle: If you see a
hat little higher than the others. hit 1t.
It Is the only conservative motto Of +he
radical-socialist block.
A Few Of the Favorites.
Among the blocks radicals proner he
who has been oftenest Jiu-jitsued is nroh-
ably Senator Fallieres, against whom II ia
now remembered that he would have
ourbed the power Of the push when he re-
ported in favor of free judiciary. sev.
eral times his head had poked up as pres,-
dent or the senate, and each time It got lie
proper crack. favorite in the betting Is
Leon Bourgeois Of the scrubland between
radicals and radical-socialists. His head
Is dangerously himh. Doumer of the sans
complexion, Is the new president of the
chamber Of deputies. AS such his election
was direct triumph for his group. which
tnclines toward moderation. 1t was the
greatest split that ever threatened the
block. As a presidential candidate Doumer
is greatly feared, and 1t Is charged that
he is backed by President Loubet himseIf
who had him preside the other day at fhs
monster banquet Of $1,000 mutualists in
place of Fallieres, who ought to have had
1t as president of the senate Doumer is
so dangerous that he may be elected to get
him out of the way.
If Senator Fallieres should become presi
dent they say that he would give the PAL
ace Of the Elysee the air of a Swiss presi-
dents house. Simple and modest II, his
tastes, he abhores worldly pomps. Then.
why, 1t Is asked, would he be president
Pomp is all that remains to that high or
fee Felix Faure understood 1t, and had
he not been cut off in the blossom Of his
designs he would have been hunting the
red deer with horses horns and hounds AT
the head of a chase as brilliant as that of
the late Francis l. He would have moved
his court from Versailles to Fontaineblea,,
and from Blois to Compiegne and done no
great harm.