FRANCE: Boutonnier

Monday, Jul. 20, 1931

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Bald-headed Raymond Poincare's bristling white moustache and beard parted in a great smile last week as he moved about his country home Le Clos at Sampigny in the Department of the Meuse. For a long while he had been ill, but this, this news from Paris, was enough to make any man well! He had achieved the ambition of his lifetime, which was not to be called M. le President de Republique (as he had been), nor M. le President de Conseil (he had been that, also), but M. le Boutonnier des Avocats de France!

This title, which corresponds, but with more dignity and ceremony, to the presidency of the American Bar Association, he had coveted as long as he had practiced law. And he had practiced law long and diligently enough to be famed as Maitre Poincare before he became M. le President in 1913.*

^{*Maitre: title of all French avocats. French women lawyers,
however, are not maitresses, illustrated by the news last week that
Maitre Maria Verone and Maitre Marie Therese Moreau were unsuccessful
candidates for the Conseil de I'Ordre, the inner law circle which voted
the title batonnier to M. Poincare.}