New President

Drastic precautions against disaster while France elected her 14th President in succession to assassinated 13th President Doumer last week included six fire engines parked close to the Palace of Versailles lest it should ignite, 3,250 infantry men and 600 cavalrymen massed in the Palace courtyard, mobilization of all nearby military garrisons and a ceaseless roaring patrol of airplanes overhead.

Since the new Chamber elected last week cannot meet until June 1st it was the old Chamber, elected in 1928, which went to Versailles and sat in the National Assembly with the Senate to elect the new President. Several Communist deputies arrived in bright blue overalls and work shirts. Two Left Centre deputies arrived quarreling; one twice slapped the other's face. A senator and a deputy began a furious fist fight, blundered into War Veteran Deputy Louis Sevestre who has only one leg, knocked him down. But leading Paris papers called the proceedings "among the quietest in years, out of respect and homage to M. Doumer."

As expected, the National Assembly on the first ballot elected as the 14th President of France the President of the Senate, peasant-born Albert Lebrun, 60, who like President Hoover has been a mining engineer. Out of 826 ballots cast President Lebrun received 633, the Socialists gestured by throwing away 114 ballots on the obscure secretary of their party Paul Faure, scattered friends of former Premier Paul Painleve (who announced that he did not choose to run at the last moment) gave him twelve votes, the Communists cast eight for Communist Leader Marcel Cachin (who lost his Chamber seat in the earlier election last week), and finally 59 members of the National Assembly dropped blank ballots into the ornate, Napoleonic urn. Cried President Lebrun of France, soon after his election: "In the most ambitious dreams of my childhood I never dared hope to attain to such heights. I am extremely proud of the confidence of the nation. ... I will strive to carry forward the exalted tradition set by President Doumer."

Said Premier Tardieu, who as acting President had invested President Lebrun: "The post of President is one of honor and danger, as is shown by the odious assassination of President Doumer."

Together President Lebrun and Premier Tardieu then motored to Paris where M. Tardieu presented his Cabinet's resignation. Since the new Chamber will have a Left Centre majority, President Lebrun seemed bound to call on Edouard Herriot, most potent Left Centrist (see p. 20), to form a Cabinet soon, but meanwhile the President asked Right Centrist Andre Tardieu to carry on pending the assembling of the new Chamber in June.

President Lebrun, diligent and plodding, has been a respected work horse under such outstanding premiers as MM. Clemenceau and Poincare. Soon after his election to the Senate he served on the League of Nations' mixed commission on armaments. Comfortably obscure, he is the sort of man Frenchmen like to have as President, for in France the President has few powers, many formal duties.

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