The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-04-16
THE PRESIDENTS
 .'F' OF FRANCE

While no president of France has ever been elevated to the lofty pre- eminence which the United States &C., cords to Washington, the great ma 5ority of Frenchmen honor Louis Adolphe Thiers as the greatest, as well as the first, of the executives of the Third Republic. In Marseilles, the city of his birth, and in Paris and other cities of France. the 120th birthday of Thiers will be celebrated today, and he will be lauded as the ''liberator of the territory"
 Thiers was president of France from 1871 to 1873, resigning the post in May of the following year. His successor, Comte de Marie Edina Pa trice Maurice MacMahoh, who had been created Marshal of France and Duke of Magenta. was a monarchist at heart, but the royalists were dis appointed in the hope that he would restore the Bourbons to their throne. Having tried to govern without ma jority in the Chambers, he was forced to resign in 1879. F. P. Jules Crews administration lasted from 1879 to 1887, when ! accusations against his son-in-law led to his resig- nation. Marie Francois Sadi-Carnot,
  sassinated by an Italian anarcist in
 1894. His successor. M. Casimer Pe- rier, resigned after having held the office a little more than six months. Felix Faure was president. from 1895 until his death in 1899. Emile Lou bet served his full term of seven years. as did his successor, Armand Fallierese. The latter gave way in 1913 to the present president, Ray mond Poincare, who is perhaps the most brilliant intellectually of the nine presidents of the Third Republic.
 Louis Adolphe Thiers. first in the hearts of his countrymen, was born at Marseilles on April 16, 1797. He was educated for the law, but his taste ran more to literature, and in 1921 he went to Paris and became a contribu- tor to The Constitutionnel, writing of literature, art, the drama, and poli- tics. While still young man he gained an international reputation through his History of the French Revolution" magnificent work which may still be read with pleas ure and profit
 As one of the founders and editors of The National, an opposition news paper, Thiers was the soul of the against the old line of Bourbons, and helped to put Louis Philippe on the throne. Under the new government he held several inn portant posts, and during that period he commenced to write the History of the, Consulate and the Empire" task which occupied him for more than a score of years.
 Under the second empire and the preceding republic he was known as a conservative republican,. He was the most formidable of the foes of the empire, although never violent or radical, and as such he naturally as- stunned the leadership in French af- fairs when the empire was battered into bits by German cannon. As the head of the provisional government it was the bitter task of Thiers to ar range peace with the relentless and ruthless German conqueror. He could not combat Bismarck's determination to make France friendless and help less, but, humiliating as the terms cept for the diplomacy and tact shown by Thiers in dealing with the Iron Thiers had also to com bat and crush the Paris commune, in order to save the country from an- archy. In the troubled years of re- his genius was of inesti- mable value to France, but, hated alike by the royalists and the radicals, he was compelled to resign in 1873. Four years later he spccumbed to a stroke of apoplexy at the age of eighty years.