Death of Briand

The real role of a leader is . . . organization which means pacification.

--Aristide Briand, 1903.

Religion is one of the strongest points of dissension among the French. . . . That is why I felt that it was on this premise, first, that peace should be realized.

--Aristide Briand, 1909.

Just one step toward peace means a great success if one is determined to take another step next day.

--Aristide Briand, 1917.

In Paris the heart of Aristide Briand, Europe's Great Pacifier, failed last week. A few days before what would have been his 70th birthday he died in his small bachelor home. He had been eleven times Premier of France. Called the Master Parliamentarian of Europe, he was also Europe's foremost orator. To the very end, his famed "cello voice" could rouse the French Chamber or Senate to tempests and transports of emotion--but he knew to a nicety how few were his friends.

The great heart of Aristide Briand broke, so France believes, when the Chamber and Senate in joint session and by secret ballot refused to elect him President of France last year, as they had earlier refused to elect Georges Clemenceau. Briand lingered on, even remained Foreign Minister until a few weeks ago, but his death was no surprise to his few real friends. Death, to Aristide Briand, meant the end. Like Fighter Clemenceau, Pacifier Briand had a minimum of belief in God and a future life, if he could be said to have any. Of the French Wartime "Big Three" only Marshal Ferdinand Foch went devout and confident to a Catholic's eternal life beyond the grave.

Jean Jaures, Boiling with life and radiating brilliance, Aristide Briand, the son of parents in comfortable circumstances, rushed upon the stage of France as a Socialist lawyer. By his flaming words the proletariat of Nantes was aroused in 1894 to declare, prematurely, a general strike. Through the odious Dreyfus scandal Briand and Clemenceau fought beside the Master Socialist Jean Jaures for the freedom of Captain Dreyfus. Jaures remained irreconcilably radical. Taking the constructive road of compromise, both Clemenceau and Briand had become Premier of France before citizen Jean Jaures was assassinated July 31, 1914. Explicitly predicting and clearly foreseeing the World War, Citizen Jaures had been working day and night to avert the conflict by visionary appeals to Socialists throughout the world to persuade their Governments not to fight.*

Peace, Peace, Peace. Expelled by Jaures' Socialist Party in 1906, Aristide Briand began his lifelong career of pacification. His first great act of statecraft was peacefully to disestablish the Roman Catholic Church while arranging for the continuance of its rites in France. When he first became Premier (1909), M. Briand significantly appointed himself "Minister of Interior and Worship." Ironically in 1910, Aristide Briand who in 1894 had incited a general strike, broke a threatened general strike of French railwaymen, pacified them.

France fought her furious battles of 1915-16 while the Great Pacifier was Premier of France, but Germany had invaded La Patrie. In 1917 secret peace overtures were made to M. Briand (no longer Premier) by German Civil Commissioner von der Lancken. These overtures M. Briand carried to French Foreign Minister Ribot who denounced them as a "snare."

After the War, Aristide Briand (who from childhood to old age always said he "wanted" to be a sailor or sea captain) sailed away from France, represented her at the Washington Conference. There, as his enemies charged ever after, "he failed to safeguard the interests of France" (i. e. he yielded enough to make the signing of the Washington Treaty possible).

Broadly speaking, the Great Pacifier remained French Foreign Minister from 1925 until a few months ago. Frequently, he was also Premier. Having no head for figures and proud of it, telling his constituents truthfully that he had never owned a stock or bond, Aristide Briand was not the man who saved the franc (Poincare) or steered French foreign policy through the shoals of Reparations (experts of the Bank of France). But more than any other man Aristide Briand did make Peace (he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926).

"Spirit of Locarno." In 1925 was held the Locarno Conference, and for years afterwards Franco-German relations were on a friendly basis called "the Spirit of Locarno." There was also the Thoiry Conference at which M. Briand and Dr. Stresemann, as they said, "embodied this spirit into something more concrete" (TIME, Sept. 27, 1926).

Dr. Stresemann died, and his death was perhaps the death knell of M. Briand (TIME, Oct. 3, 1929). But it was Depression and the breakdown of the Young Plan which gave a mortal wound to the Spirit of Locarno. No financier, M. Briand was not responsible and could do nothing when Peace turned out to be so largely a matter of economics. Old fashioned, the Great Pacifier lived and died supposing that diplomacy was a profession, whereas it now runs errands for the Machine Age.

As a pacifier at the very top of his diplomatic profession, Aristide Briand shot his last bolt when he proposed "The United States of Europe" (TIME. Sept. 23, 1929). This proposal he made at Geneva and at luncheon, as a gentleman proposes. Rare wines had been sipped and the assembled statesmen were toying with exquisite liqueurs, but Aristide Briand modestly said afterward that he proposed the United States of Europe "between a pear and some cheese."

The profoundest economists agree upon the Great Pacifier's proposal. By instinct, by an exercise of his powers of genius, he proposed what should indeed be done: The states of Europe should mutually cooperate as do America's 48 united States. Just now, as Aristide Briand goes to his grave, the Balkan states are hamstringing each other by embargoes murderous to trade, and Austria, last week, was about to enact the Death penalty for exporting money from Austria.

Famed German biographer Dr. Emil Ludwig wrote of the Great Frenchman just before his death: "Briand is above all else an artist who listens, learns and acts as children and women do--without a system, simply by instinct. . . . Most of his ideas, and certainly his best ones, have come to him suddenly."

The President of the Republic, Paul Doumer, whose election broke Aristide Briand's heart, came and stood for a while beside the cheap iron bed in the cheap flat, then, speechless with emotion, went away. Premier Andre Tardieu came and simple men and women came. Some of them knelt and kissed the left hand of Aristide Briand.

"I shaved him this morning, only this morning!" said Frederic. "M. Briand took my hand in his and asked how long I had been his barber. I replied, 'Ten years.' He smiled and said: I hope you will shave me for another ten years, Frederic.' "

"M. Briand died in my arms," said Dr. Emery. "We do not know the exact moment of his passing--he died so peacefully. He did not utter a single word."

In Geneva, where the Master Parliamentarian ruled so long, the League Assembly paused for 15 minutes at news of his death and its president, Belgium's Paul Hymans, said: "He was the glory of France, the incarnation of ideals of peace."

*A foe of German Marxian Socialism, French Jean Jaures said, "Our Socialism is French in origin, French in inspiration, and French in character!" He added, "Si noire patrie est menaces . . . nous serous des premiers a la frontiere pour defendre la France!"

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