New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-04-26

effectiveness. From the first. as the people
representative. he was called the "Caruso OF
the Chamber" and Caruso, the greatest vocal
drawing card. he has remained in city ana
hamlet.
During election time few spectacles can be
more interesting than a public meeting any
where in France; the recreation hall OF
public school filled to overlooking with peas
ants. artisans and bourgeois, men and WON
en-, who made their dinner Of hunk OF
bread a piece of cheese and tumbler OF
wine, standing beside the kitchen table, IN
order to be on time for an oratorical feast.
At the head of the hall a platform is thrown
up where the chairman and his officers take
their seats after being elected by the assem-
bly, There from in front of the chairman's
table, the speaker faces his critics; for critics
they are, not so much Of ideas as Of oratory,
that art most commonly understood and ap-
preciated in France. Among a tumult OF
jeers and cheers, babel Of laughter and
protest, while fists are clenched and ready for
action, the speaker has to hold his own, and
woe unto him if he does not Vivian has
always held his own, not so much with what
he said as with the voice that said it. There
is an almost hypnotic power in that voice.
Speech on the Separation Law
Withal, there is only one patent instance
when Vivian let himself be carried beyond
his written text. IL was when, as Minister OF
Labor he addressed the Chamber on the
obligation of the state to provide the neces-
sites of subsistence to every citizen, to give
him Immediately what politicians, since the
Revolution, had promised him for a distant
future. Here Vivian, the ardent supporter
of the Separation law, let himself go to say:
From the soul of the people all faith in a
life to come has been uproOted torn out by
US. The delusion, the unreal vision Of a para
disc above, is gone. And now we say to the
toiler whose tagging footsteps never halt till
the setting Of the sun; to him who, crushed
beneath the labor Of his day, sheds tears Of
wretchedness and misery Behind those roll
ing clouds at which you gaze so wistfully and
with such high hope and longing, there are
only empty dreams and no heaven! Magnih-
cent indeed was the gesture with which, be-
fore that mans eyes we put out the lights Of
heaven and extnguished golden CLEANS never
to be rekindled. And like the infatuated
fools we are, we think our task is ended,
though it has but begun"
A wave of indignation swept over France,
anti-clerical indeed, but hiding under sur
face of scoff it's inrooted spirituality from
which the war alone could tear the veil
Vivian, realizing his mistake promptly
amended it in his speech before the Senate,
when he said that the governments only OBJ
ject was to keep the Church of Rome from
meddlng in state affairs, and that it bowed
to the true believer. No more was needed to
restore popular confidence in the man whose
chief talent it is to smooth things over, to
give wise counsel, to organize political move
ments and to keep up an esprit de corps.
At the height of the scandal around Call
laux-that governmental shield of the de-
faulter Kochette-when serious troubles were
brewing in France and greater ones beyond
her frontiers, President Poincare could find
no man better fitted to cope with the situa-
ton than Rene Vivani, who thus was called
TO the Premiership a couple of months before
the war broke out.
President and Premier found themselves in
Russia, discussing with Frances ally the pos
siblites of the Austro-Serbian tangle when
the thunder clouds gathered threateningly;
and they hurried home on the good ship
France. Then it was that Jaures the ideal
istic internatonalist, pledged his support to
Vivani, regretting his frantic opposition to
the three years military law, passed through
Viyiani's efforts only a little more than a
year before, and as Jaures now conceded. al
most too late.
On the 3lst of July Jaures was murdered.
but his party honored his pledge, and thus
Vivian, finding no opposition to his rallying
cry of "Save France!" was able to form what
every Frenchman now points to with pride
"The Sacred Union"
The Workman's Friend
But, better than any other. Viviani himself
knew that he was man of makeshfts, of
excellent compromises; an improviser lacking
the genius of durable constructiveness, and
that France at war needed builder. So, with
unselish patriotism, he surrendered his high
Office into the hands of one better equipped
for the needs of the moment. But his success
sor, BRAND, knew the value of Viviani in
council as well as the confidence of the
masses in the "workman's friend" and offered
him Cabinet post under him, which Viviani
accepted out of the same loyal love for
France that made him bear up under the loss
of his young son, who fell in Lorraine, in the
first month of the war, and encourage the re-
turn to the front of his oldest son, a barris-
ter like himself, who was wounded in the
early fighting and invslided home
Under the present Premier, Alexandra
Ribot, Viviani is serving with the same I'M
daunted fervor that wrought him place in
the hearts of the French people, and when
peace comes and laurels are awarded to the
worthy Rene Vivani will be among the first
to receive his leaf of bay.