French statesman, son of Émile Deschanel (1819–1904), professor at the Collège de France and senator; born at Brussels, where his father was living in exile (1851–1859), owing to his opposition to Napoleon III. Paul Deschanel studied law, and began his career as secretary to Deshayes de Marcère (1876), and to Jules Simon (1876–1877). In October 1885 he was elected deputy for Eure and Loire. From the first he took an important place in the chamber, as one of the most notable orators of the Progressist Republican group. In January 1896 he was elected vice-president of the chamber, and henceforth devoted himself to the struggle against the Left, not only in parliament, but also in public meetings throughout France. His addresses at Marseilles on the 26th of October 1896, at Carmaux on the 27th of December 1896, and at Roubaix on the 10th of April 1897, were triumphs of clear and eloquent exposition of the political and social aims of the Progressist party. In June 1898 he was elected president of the chamber, and was re-elected in 1901, but rejected in 1902. Nevertheless he came forward brilliantly in 1904 and 1905 as a supporter of the law on the separation of church and state. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1899, his most notable works being Orateurs et hommes d’état (1888), Figures de femmes (1889), La Décentralization (1895), La Question sociale (1898).—[Unattributed author].
During his absence from the presidential chair in the Chamber of Deputies after 1902, Deschanel carved out for himself a position of some political importance on the Committee of Foreign Affairs. He was president of this important committee when the Franco-German treaty of 1911, confirming the settlement of the Agadir incident, came before Parliament. He was re-elected deputy in 1910, and on May 23, 1912, he was chosen to succeed M. Brisson in the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies. He was maintained in this office by subsequent ballots in 1913 and 1914. His presidency of the Chamber was marked by much oratory of a literary nature, and by considerable dexterity in the treatment of the rowdy elements of the extreme Right and the extreme Left. He aimed at being the impartial Liberal Republican. During the World War he played a great part as the national orator. There were, indeed, few occasions of sorrow or of thanksgiving which his eloquence did not either lighten or intensify. He delivered orations more frequently than he made speeches. Whether it was to hold German infamy up to universal execration, to sing the splendours of the dead of France, to pay a glowing tribute to an ally’s achievements, or to console the widow and the orphan and spur on the living fighter, he always had at his command the delicate, if somewhat artificial, style of speech of the great Latins, which combined both the structure of the artist and the feeling of a man. Speech did not give to him a sufficient outlet for his literary gifts. He was prolific as a writer in reviews such as the Revue de Paris, the Revue Bleue, Revue Hebdomadaire and the Nouvelle Revue. His books number Figures de Femmes, Figures littéraires (both 1889), and a tribute to his political godfather Gambetta. His talents as a littérateur were recognized by his election to the French Academy on May 18, 1899. He married on February 13, 1901, Mdlle. Germaine Brice, and had three children.
It was a secret to none that M. Deschanel, throughout his long political life, nurtured one great ambition—he desired to become President of the republic. When in January 1920 M. Poincaré’s term of office came to an end, it was with some genuine reluctance that Clemenceau allowed himself to be put forward as a candidate in opposition to Deschanel. That reluctance was justified by results. In the preliminary party ballot Clemenceau was beaten, and withdrew his candidature. Deschanel was elected President of the republic by the National Assembly on January 17, 1920, by an overwhelming majority. His term of office opened brilliantly, but his health was unable to stand the strain of office. In May 1920, while on an official journey to Montargis, he fell unobserved from the presidential train, and though he found his way to a signalman’s box, and suffered no worse consequences than a nervous breakdown, he was temporarily incapacitated. His condition subsequently became such that on September 20, 1920, he was obliged to resign his office, and to leave Rambouillet, where he had sought the quiet necessary for the restoration of his health. He then went into a private nursing home at Rueil where he sufficiently recovered to be able to stand successfully for the Senate in the elections at the beginning of 1921, though he no longer took an active part in public affairs.—[George Jeffreys Adam].
