FRANCE: Bids for the Pantheon

It has often been said that the Third Republic is dead. It has often been added, carelessly: good riddance. Last week, inside totalitarian Vichyfrance, two venerable Third Republicans suggested to the world, by their own conduct, that the democratic best of the Third Republic not only is worth restoring but will be restored. These two gentlemen, rising on their elderly legs to the stature of heroes, called Vichy a tyrant to its face, added that most Frenchmen felt as they did. The two were plump, kindly, three-times Premier Edouard Herriot, 70, President of the dissolved Chamber of Deputies, and white-bearded Jules Jeanneney, 78, President of the dissolved Senate. From retirement in their country homes, both near Grenoble, they sent a joint open letter to Chief of State Marshal Pétain and Chief of Government Pierre Laval.

With legalistic dignity the letter blasted Vichy’s dissolution of Parliament, by decree as of last Aug. 31, as a piece of black treachery. But the momentous gist of the letter was not a matter of legal niceties. Said Messrs. Herriot and Jeanneney:

“If . . . you try to draw France into war against our allies . . . do not make the foolish mistake of believing that you can win the adhesion of its spirit or its heart. . . . You have substituted unlimited dictatorship for guarantees that all civilized nations grant to accused persons. . . . Everywhere you have abolished the principle of elective representation. . . . You have wiped out general councils that reflected the wisdom of our provinces and you have substituted men of your own choice. . . . It is impossible for liberty to die in the country of its birth, from which it spread all over the world.”

Between these lines some observers thought they saw a signal that Vichy was about to go to war for Hitler. Said the New York Times cogently: “The cry of the old republicans is more than a cry against the final betrayal of French democracy; it is a cry to ‘our allies’ for help against the final betrayal of France to the enemy.”

The cry in itself was bound to go down in any history of political freedom. It took rank with the defiant speeches of Léon Blum and Edouard Daladier at their trials at Riom (TIME. March 2). Messrs. Herriot and Jeanneney had made strong bids for places in a restored republican Pantheon.

Edouard Herriot has long been a one-man collection of many of the most admirable French traits. He is the fat papa type, in warmth but not in stodginess. The son of an army officer, he is a profound amateur of music, a polished man of letters. His excellent lives of Beethoven and Madame Récamier may well outlive his political reputation.

As Mayor of the great textile city of Lyon, he gave it model administration for 35 years. In the Chamber and the Premiership he was a devoted internationalist, a “good European,” urging all aid to the young German democracy and to the League of Nations. But he was no easy optimist; he had sharp political eyes. Eight months after Hitler came to power Herriot said: “My opinion is that Germany desires a period of peace in order to prepare scientifically for war.” He was a leading advocate of Franco-Russian alliance against Hitler.

His convictions persisted, together with the boldness to make them public, after Vichy had begun to work its totalitarian way. Last year he spoke a loud democratic piece in the American Mercury. And last week it was announced that he had resigned from the Legion of Honor because Vichy gave the award posthumously to two French officers killed while fighting beside the Nazis in Russia.

Jules Jeanneney, who signed with Herriot, has had a long, conservative political career, which never took him higher than the Senate Presidency—until last week.