service to two years. The law of 1889 had provided a general service of three years, with an extensive system of dispensations accorded to persons for domestic reasons, or because they belonged to certain categories of students, such citizens being let off with one year’s service with the colours or being entirely exempted. The new law exacted two years’ service from every Frenchman, no one being exempted save for physical incapacity. Under the act of 1905 even the cadets of the military college of Saint Cyr and of the Polytechnic had to serve in the ranks before entering those schools. Anti-military doctrines continued to be encouraged by the Socialist party, M. Hervé, the professor who had been revoked in 1901 for his suggestion of a military strike in case of war and for other unpatriotic utterances, being elected a member of the administrative committee of the Unified Socialist party, of which M. Jaurès was one of the chiefs. At a congress of elementary schoolmasters at Lille in August, anti-military resolutions were passed and a general adherence was given to the doctrines of M. Hervé. At Longwy, in the Eastern coal-field, a strike took place in September, during which the military was called out to keep order and a workman was killed in a cavalry charge. The minister of war, M. Berteaux, visited the scene of the disturbance, and was reported to have saluted the red revolutionary flag which was borne by a procession of strikers singing the “Internationale.”
During the autumn session in November M. Berteaux suddenly resigned the portfolio of war during a sitting of the Chamber, and was succeeded by M. Etienne, minister of the interior, a moderate politician who inspired greater confidence. Earlier in the year other industrial strikes of great gravity had taken place, notably at Limoges, among the potters, where several deaths took place in a conflict with the troops and a factory was burnt. Even more serious were the strikes in the government arsenals in November. At Cherbourg and Brest only a small proportion of the workmen went out, but at Lorient, Rochefort and especially at Toulon the strikes were on a much larger scale. In 1905 solemn warnings were given in the Chamber of the coming crisis in the wine-growing regions of the South. Radical-Socialists such as M. Doumergue, the deputy for Nîmes and a member of the Combes ministry, joined with monarchists such as M. Lasies, deputy of the Gers, in calling attention to the distress of the populations dependent on the vine. They argued that the wines of the South found no market, not because of the alleged over-production, but because of the competition of artificial wines; that formerly only twenty departments of France were classed in the atlas as wine-producing, but that thanks to the progress of chemistry seventy departments were now so described. The deputies of the north of France and of Paris, irrespective of party, opposed these arguments, and the government, while promising to punish fraud, did not seem to take very seriously the legitimate warnings of the representatives of the South.
The Republic continued to extend its friendly relations with foreign powers, and the end of M. Loubet’s term of office was signalized by a procession of royal visits to Paris, some of which the president returned. At the end of May the king of Spain came and narrowly escaped assassination from a bomb which was thrown at him by a Spaniard as he was returning with the president from the opera. In October M. Loubet returned this visit at Madrid and went on to Lisbon to see the king of Portugal, being received by the queen, who was the daughter of the comte de Paris and the sister of the duc d’Orléans, both exiled by the Republic. In November the king of Portugal came to Paris, and the president of the Republic also received during the year less formal visits from the kings of England and of Greece.
One untoward international event affecting the French
ministry occurred in June 1905. M. Delcassé (see section on
Exterior Policy), who had been foreign minister longer
than any holder of that office under the Republic,
resigned, and it was believed that he had been sacrificed
Resignation of
M. Delcassé.
by the prime minister to the exigencies of Germany,
which power was said to be disquieted at his having, in connexion
with the Morocco question, isolated Germany by promoting the
friendly relations of France with England, Spain and Italy.
Whether it be true or not that the French government was
really in alarm at the possibility of a declaration of war by
Germany, the impression given was unfavourable, nor was it
removed when M. Rouvier himself took the portfolio of foreign
affairs.
The year 1906 is remarkable in the history of the Third
Republic in that it witnessed the renewal of all the public
powers in the state. A new president of the Republic
was elected on the 17th of January ten days after the
triennial election of one third of the senate, and the
M. Fallières president of
the Republic.
general election of the chamber of deputies followed
in May—the ninth which had taken place under the constitution
of 1875. The senatorial elections of the 7th of January showed
that the delegates of the people who chose the members of the
upper house and represented the average opinion of the country
approved of the anti-clerical legislation of parliament. The
election of M. Fallières, president of the senate, to the presidency
of the Republic was therefore anticipated, he being the candidate
of the parliamentary majorities which had disestablished the
church. At the congress of the two chambers held at Versailles
on the 17th of January he received the absolute majority of 449
votes out of 849 recorded. The candidate of the Opposition was
M. Paul Doumer, whose anti-clericalism in the past was so
extreme that when married he had dispensed with a religious
ceremony and his children were unbaptized. So the curious
spectacle was presented of the Moderate Opportunist M. Fallières
being elected by Radicals and Socialists, while the Radical
candidate was supported by Moderates and Reactionaries. For
the second time a president of the senate, the second official
personage in the Republic, was advanced to the chief magistracy,
M. Loubet having been similarly promoted. As in his case,
M. Fallières owed his election to M. Clémenceau. When M.
Loubet was elected M. Clémenceau had not come to the end
of his retirement from parliamentary life; but in political
circles, with his powerful pen and otherwise, he was resuming
his former influence as a “king-maker.” He knew of the
precariousness Of Félix Faure’s health and of the indiscretions
of the elderly president. So when the presidency suddenly
became vacant in January 1899 he had already fixed his choice
on M. Loubet, as a candidate whose unobtrusive name excited
no jealousy among the republicans. At that moment, owing
to the crisis caused by the Dreyfus affair, the Republic needed
a safe man to protect it against the attacks of the plebiscitary
party which had been latterly favoured by President Faure.
M. Constans, it was said, had in 1899 desired the presidency of
the senate, vacant by M. Loubet’s promotion, in preference to
the post of ambassador at Constantinople. But M. Clémenceau,
deeming that his name had been too much associated with
polemics in the past, contrived the election of M. Fallières to the
second place of dignity in the Republic, so as to have another
safe candidate in readiness for the Elysée in case President
Loubet suddenly disappeared. M. Loubet, however, completed
his septennate, and to the end of it M. Fallières was regarded as
his probable successor. As he fulfilled his high duties in the
senate inoffensively without making enemies among his political
friends, he escaped the fate which had awaited other presidents-designate
of the Republic. Previously to presiding over the senate
this Gascon advocate, who had represented his native Lot-et-Garonne,
in either chamber, since 1876, had once been prime
minister for three weeks in 1883. He had also held office in
six other ministries, so no politician in France had a larger
experience in administration and in public affairs.
On New Year’s Day 1906, the absence of the Nuncio from the presidential reception of the diplomatic body marked conspicuously the rupture of the Concordat; for hitherto the representative of the Holy See had ranked as doyen of the ambassadors to the Republic, whatever the relative seniority of his colleagues, and in the name of all the foreign powers had officially saluted the chief of the state. On the 20th of January the inventories of the churches were commenced, under the 3rd clause of the
