A soldier's mother in France

No statesman is so great that he is admired and supported by his entire community. Monsieur Clemenceau, the splendid prime minister of France, who has done so much in a few short months to unify his nation and to bring the allied armies together under one commander-in-chief, is no exception to the rule. He has with him in the Chamber of Deputies the solid vote of the right and center, the conservative and moderate vote, and he has also some of the left or radical vote. He is opposed by the radical socialists only.

Some of the radicals with whom I talked in France urged me, if I were to understand the French mind, to see and talk with the leader of the opposition, Albert Thomas. So one morning I went, by appointment, to the modest apartment in the neighborhood of the Chamber of Deputies which is the home of Monsieur Thomas, and the center of activities of the radical socialists of France.

Accompanying me was Mademoiselle St. René Taillandier of the French foreign office, a young woman of exceptional intellect and an accomplished linguist. Speaking English as well as her native French, Mademoiselle St. René Taillandier agreed to go with me to interview Monsieur Thomas, lest any shade of meaning in what he said to me might be lost.

Monsieur Thomas speaks no English, and I, of course, have an imperfect knowledge of French. Whenever I failed to understand some idiom or figure of speech I halted the conversation until it could be interpreted into English.

I wanted to be fair to Monsieur Thomas and his political group. My previously conceived admiration for Clemenceau made me all the more anxious to understand exactly why he was so vigorously opposed. We talked for nearly an hour, and when I was down in the street again, walking along the glittering Seine, I said to my friend: “We have them like that in the United States, honest, sincere, intelligent idealists; with blinders on.”

Judging from what I saw and heard in the apartment of Monsieur Albert Thomas that morning, France must have a considerable group of such idealists. We were early for our appointment and waited for ten minutes in the reception room, which was more like an office, with a long table strewn with socialist literature and propaganda pamphlets, and around the walls a row of stiff cane seated chairs.

A little girl in a black cambric pinafore attended the door, which frequently opened to admit more visitors. During my talk with Monsieur Thomas the same little girl appeared half a dozen times bearing cards and notes. There is no doubt that Monsieur Thomas is the leader of a strong group.

The head of the radical socialists in France is a man of forty something, short, thickset, with blue, intelligent eyes behind steel rimmed spectacles. He has rather long brown hair, a beard of a lighter shade of brown.

His speech is quick and animated, with a little too much oratory in it. Every question I asked him was answered by a speech. It made me think of Gladstone of whom Queen Victoria said: “He addresses me as if I were a public meeting.”

I asked Monsieur Thomas to tell me the spirit of the French working people during the war. Were they wholeheartedly patriotic, or was there any of the industrial unrest that had made itself felt in England.

“Our French working class is more stable than the British,” he replied. “Every French man and woman worthy of the name wants the allies to win the war. In the Chamber of Deputies there have been only three men who have not shown themselves genuinely patriotic.

“Those three went to Switzerland and discussed the war with certain Germans. Their act was denounced by all other socialists as well as by the bourgeois deputies. The men have absolutely no following.”

“Is the French working class solidly socialist, or has it a majority of socialists?”

“It has not a majority in numbers, but the socialist element is very powerful, much more powerful than surface indications show. In time of strikes the party always wields great influence. It is impossible for a stranger to understand the extent of socialist opinion throughout France. Reading the newspapers would not convey the facts to the stranger, because unfortunately the press and the people here are not together.”

“Is your socialism revolutionary?” I asked.

“No, it is more philosophical than revolutionary,” was the reply. “The opinions of your President Wilson are almost exactly ours. His war aims as stated by him find absolute echo in the French popular mind. Much more so than in the mind of the government.” This with a flash and a gesture that spelled “Clemenceau” very clearly.

“We are not Bolsheviki, we are French,” he added with emphasis.

“I wish you would explain to me, if you are solidly in favor of a peace with victory for the allies, why your group, and especially you as leader, wanted to go to the Stockholm conference and discuss peace without victory with the Germans.”

Monsieur Thomas demurred a little at my way of putting the question, and right here I began to notice the blinders.

“It is true that I was and am warmly in favor of the Stockholm conference,” he began. “I regret very much that Mr. Gompers and the American Federation of Labor have misunderstood my attitude and my object in wanting to meet in Stockholm representatives of the workers of all nations. They seem to think that my object was to fraternize with the Germans. Not at all. My object was to tell the whole German people the allies’ war aims, and their stated terms of peace.

“The German people do not know these aims. The imperial government keeps the people in ignorance. The press censorship is so complete that the real terms on which we are willing to make peace have never been published. We can not get at the German people through their newspapers.

“We could have talked to them through the Stockholm conference, because even the censored press would have published the proceedings of that conference. The Germans then would have known the truth.”

“What makes you think that the censored press of Germany would have been permitted to publish the proceedings of the Stockholm conference?” I asked. “It was not permitted to publish the war aims speeches of President Wilson or Mr. Lloyd George.”

“Why,” exclaimed Monsieur Thomas, with what appeared to me a childish innocence, “their own loyal Germans would have attended as delegates, and of course the people would insist on hearing their reports.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I admit that such a conference with the enemy, at a time when the allied armies are engaged in killing that same enemy on the battle-field, would be morally and sentimentally a grave thing. But I am certain that the advantages would have outweighed the disadvantages. All the French socialists, except a group on the right, agree with my point of view.

“After the war the working classes in all the countries will have to stand together, will have to have a common programme, that they may force their point of view on the governments. The Stockholm conference would have furthered that solidarity. I regret that the American working class can not see that.”

I turned the question to the Russian collapse.

“Ah, Russia, a great mystery, is it not? When you think she is about to commit a treachery you see a Brousiloff offensive. When you think she is about to be sublime you behold the Brest-Litovsk surrender. Anarchy! But Russia is too great to fall permanently.

“Why are not France and America there now, helping poor, wounded Russia? All we do is to send a message to the Moscow soviet: ‘Russia will emerge.’ Mon Dieu!”

“To whom would you offer your help, Lenine and Trotzky?” I asked. “Do you think that we can help the Russian people through men who are daily delivering them piecemeal to the Germans?”

“Oh, I do not think Lenine and Trotzky are exactly German agents, although it is evident that they took German money,” was the extraordinary reply. “They are not traitors, they are fanatics. They see nothing except their propaganda. Here was money offered them, money they needed for their propaganda. German money—true, but what of it? They would take any money!”

Monsieur Albert Thomas evidently could not see that men who would take German money were incapable of being honest leaders, sincere prophets, or anything in the world but liars, thieves and traitors. No man can exist half crook, half honest.

“They see nothing but their propaganda.” That is a perfect description of Monsieur Albert Thomas and all the other misguided idealists who walk with blinders obscuring their eyes. They think and talk as though unaware that the world around them was in flames.

On a battle-front of seventy-five miles our allied soldiers are enduring such hardships, are performing such miracles of labor, are suffering such wounds, such horrible mutilations, that no imagination can compass the facts. Every day some of these heroic men give their blood, their beautiful young lives for the freedom of the world.

They die for our liberty without a murmur. And while they are suffering and dying, a whole section of the community in every allied country continues to ignore them for one or another fatuous dream.

In France when these dreamers beat at the Chamber of Deputies to be allowed to go to Stockholm, Clemenceau answered them: “I understand your idealism, and I share it. But where we differ is that I am under no illusion regarding the reality of facts.”

The only important fact in the world is that we are fighting the greatest war in history, “in order that government of the people, for the people, and by the people shall not perish from the earth.” Nothing else matters. Nothing. Every other question is a side issue, something to be considered and acted upon after we have won the war.

In this country we have our Bolsheviki who would take advantage of the fact that our best beloved, our sons, are fighting, giving their lives in a far land, to seize power for their “class.” We have fanatics whose paranoia finds expression in “radical” magazines. We have propagandists who find supreme satisfaction in going around the country making defeatist speeches, and we have a public which exclaims in horror when one of these talkers is arrested and given a well-merited prison sentence.

We have lawmakers, men in Congress, whose devotion to their propaganda is so limitless that they are willing to risk losing army appropriations, delaying the progress of the war, in order to hasten a little the prohibition campaign.

We have theorists who can not think very much about the war because they are so occupied with getting on good terms again with a people who never were honestly on good terms with anybody except themselves. After all these years of slaughter these theorists would smilingly get together with the men who willed the slaughter and talk about a league of nations, a society to abolish war.

“A league of nations!” exclaimed Clemenceau to the Unified Socialists of France, led by Albert Thomas. “What will a league of nations mean without Germany? I for one will not let Germany in. You would do so, and on what guarantees? Ask Belgium!”

What are we Americans, those of us who walk without blinders, who see and know the awful realities of the hour, going to do about the class fanatics, propagandists, egotist individualists, the sentimental theorists, big and little? They are traitors to the world that is struggling to be free. Whether they know it or not, they are traitors. They fight side by side with Attila.

Rather, they are the camp followers of the Hun, for they rarely do any fighting. When justice overtakes them they nearly always throw up their hands and cry “Kamerad.” They almost invariably claim that they didn’t mean to be disloyal.

The only thing to do with these people is to snatch the blinders from their eyes and make them look at the reality of a world at righteous war. As soon as one defeatist comes within the law, seize him, imprison him. Whether he is an I. W. W. criminal or a university professor, or even a United States senator. Keep on doing it. Treat women exactly as the men are treated. It wouldn’t take long before the blinders would begin to fall without assistance.