Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

CHAPTER VI

FROM GAMBETTA TO CLEMENCEAU

Medici, Mazarin, Riquetti-Mirabeau, Buonaparte, Gambetta—these names recall the great influence which Italians have had upon French affairs. Few, if any, nations have allowed persons of foreign extraction to lead them as France permitted the five recorded above. Much, too, as these Italians were affected by their French surroundings, there is something in them all quite different from what we regard as distinctively French intelligence and general capacity. Possibly that gave them their power of control. They had that faculty of detachment, of looking at the situation from without, which is so invaluable to anyone who has to play a great part in the world. Some of them could so far survey, as well as enter into, the peculiarities of the French mind that they could play upon its weaknesses as well as call forth its strength. Yet, with all their genius, the four men named failed to accomplish what they set out to achieve, and none left behind him amid his own immediate followers those who were capable of carrying on his work.

Léon Gambetta had but fourteen years of active political life, and during only eleven of those years was he in a position to make himself seriously felt. But what an amazing career this was of the grocer’s boy of Cahors who stirred all France to enthusiastic support or ferocious denunciation between 1871 and 1882! When William Morris died, the doctor who attended him was asked what he died of. “He died of being William Morris,” was the reply. Although Gambetta’s death was due to a pistol-shot received under circumstances never fully explained, it may be said that he also died of being Léon Gambetta. For his inner fires had burnt the man out. He crowded all the excitement and passions of a long lifetime into those stormy eleven years, and without some account of him and his efforts for the foundation of the Republic the story of Clemenceau is not complete.

Born in 1848 and enabled to come to Paris by the touching self-sacrifice of a maiden aunt who believed that her nephew’s confidence in his destiny to do great things would be realised, Gambetta was soon regarded as a leader among the young men of the Quartier Latin, who were in full revolt against the Empire. He distinguished himself by his easy-going, rough-and-tumble mode of life, his carelessness about study of the law which was to be his means of earning a livelihood, and his perfervid eloquence in the political circles which he frequented. Lawyer, journalist, bohemian orator of the clubs, strongly anti-Imperialist, he had much personal magnetism, but was not generally recognised as a man of exceptional ability. The few cases he had had in the Courts did not give him any considerable standing. Such was Gambetta when a number of Republican journalists were arrested on November 12th, 1868, for starting a subscription to erect a monument to M. Baudin, the Republican deputy who had been shot down in cold blood during Louis Napoleon’s massacre of the people of Paris on December 2nd, 1851—seventeen years before. Among these prisoners was the famous Delescluze, then editor of the Réveil. His counsel was Léon Gambetta. Gambetta’s speech was not merely a defence of his client, it was a scathing indictment of the Empire, from its foundation on the ruin of the Republic of 1848 by the coup d’état onwards. “Who,” the advocate asked, “were the men who ‘saved’ France at the cost of the death or transportation or exile of all her most eminent citizens? They were, to quote Corneille, ‘un tas d’hommes perdus de dettes et de crimes.’ These are the sort of people who for centuries have slashed down institutions and laws. Against them the human conscience is powerless, in spite of the sublime march-past of the martyrs who protest in the name of religion destroyed, of morality outraged, of equity crushed under the jackboot of the soldier. This is not salvation: it is assassination.” And this was no longer a press prosecution: it was the Emperor and his set of scoundrels who were now on their trial before the people of France and Europe.

The speech gave Gambetta great popularity and the opening into public life he desired. The cause itself was lost before the trial began. Delescluze was fined and imprisoned. “You may condemn us, but you can neither dishonour us nor overthrow us,” cried Gambetta. From that time forward he was regarded as a new force on the side of the Republic. His behaviour in the Corps Législatif, to which he was soon afterwards elected, justified this opinion. When the disasters of the Empire came Gambetta was one of the first to cry for Napoleon’s abdication and the establishment of the Republic, taking an active part in the foundation of the new order in Paris. It may be said that he worked side by side, though never hand in hand, with Clemenceau.

But those scenes of the downfall of the Empire in the capital, dramatic and exciting as they were, could bear no comparison with his bold escape from beleaguered Paris in a balloon and the magnificent effort he made to rouse the Provinces against the invaders. He failed to turn the tide of German victories, but he prevented the shameful surrender without a fight for the French Republic which many would have been glad to accept, and he, more than any other man, kept the flag flying, when Legitimists, Orleanists and Buonapartists were all doing their utmost to set on foot a reactionary government against the best interests of France. All this is part of the common history of the time. But we are apt, in looking back over that period of his activities, to underrate the almost superhuman energy he displayed, to attach too much importance to the mistakes he inevitably made, and to forget that his own countrymen were among his worst enemies in the work he undertook. Also, if the Empire had left the Republic one single really first-rate general at the disposal of France, the result might have been very different from what it was. There is such a thing as luck in human affairs, and luck was dead against Gambetta. All the more credit to him for never losing heart even in the face of continuous disasters and even betrayals. First as leading member of the Government of Defence, and then as virtual Dictator of France, Gambetta bridged over for the time being the bitter antagonism which separated Paris, the besieged seat of government, from the rest of France. Immediately on his arrival at Tours he created a new National Government out of the unpromising elements gathered together almost accidentally there. The fall of Metz and the threatened starvation of Paris, which might lead to surrender at any moment, made Gambetta’s own position desperate. The Paris Government, which apparently looked only to Paris, had failed to make a resolute effort to break through the lines of the German investment before Metz fell, and then lost heart altogether, refusing even to listen to any remonstrance from outside against a humiliating peace. Gambetta never gave way. Arrived at Bordeaux, he stuck to his text of carrying on the war, having in the meantime vigorously denounced the Government in Paris for its weakness. He and his fellow-delegates were deaf to the counsels of despair brought red-hot by members of the Government; but at last, overwhelmed by circumstances he could not control, the young Dictator resigned. After Paris had surrendered there was really no further hope, and those who voted in the new Assembly, as did Louis Blanc, Clemenceau and others, for the continuance of the war, did so more by way of protest against the apathy which pervaded the whole Assembly, and because foreign intervention in favour of France and against Germany seemed possible even thus late in the day, than because they saw at the moment any prospect of success.

Thus France lay prostrate at the feet of Germany, but at least Gambetta and the Republicans who acted with him showed their confidence that she would rise again. They were not responsible for the collapse of the French nation: undismayed by defeat they believed in Republican France of the near future.

Gambetta had created new armies out of disarray and disorder, and he had also aroused a fresh spirit which rose superior to disaster. The victory of the Republic in years to come over all the forces of reaction was largely due to the work done during Gambetta’s four months of dictatorship.

Universal Suffrage, General Secular Education, No Second Chamber, the Republican form of Government: those were the principal measures advocated by the extreme Left of the National Assembly, and these were advocated by Gambetta both at Bordeaux and when he took his seat at Versailles as one of the Deputies for Paris. But the Royalists were still in a majority, and were determined to take every advantage of their position while power still remained in their hands. Their object was to render Republicanism hateful. The object of their opponents was to show that no other form of government was possible and to prevent any other form from being established. Now that the Republic has been maintained for more than forty-seven years, under all sorts of difficult and dangerous circumstances, the obstacles which stood in its way at the start are sometimes under-estimated. Continuous agitation was needed to keep the country fully alive to the intrigues of the Royalists and Catholics. It was essential to put the misdeeds of the Empire and the real objects of the monarchists constantly before the public. No man in France was better qualified for this work than Gambetta, and he did it well, so well that the whole reactionary party was infuriated against him. There was no opportunism about him at this period, beyond the necessary adaptation of means to ends under circumstances which rendered immediate success impossible.

M. Thiers, in consequence of his horrible suppression of the Commune, was by far the most powerful public man in the country. He was acting, though a Constitutional Monarchist, as trustee for a provisional form of government which could not be distinguished from a conservative Republic. The longer this continued the better the chance of obtaining a Government which would not be conservative. It was of great importance, therefore, to keep M. Thiers on the Republican side, and this was made easier by the action of M. Thiers’ own old friends. So antagonistic was their attitude to the former Minister of Louis Philippe that, even when Gambetta supported the ex-Mayor of Lyons, a fervid Radical, M. Barodet, against M. Thiers’ eminent friend and coadjutor M. de Remusat, as representative of Paris, and the former won by 40,000 votes, Thiers never wavered in his decision to keep away from any direct connection with the monarchists. They therefore determined to upset the President, did so by a majority of 26 votes in the Assembly, and elected a President of their own in the person of Marshal MacMahon. This was on May 24th, 1873.

Reaction had won at Versailles. It remained to be seen whether it would win in the country. A “Ministry of Combat” for reaction, headed by the Duc de Broglie, was formed, and a Ministry of Combat it certainly proved to be. They were allowed no peace by their opponents, who never ceased to attack them all round, and they met these persistent assaults by attempts secretly to cajole and suborn public opinion. So the great combat went on. The majority remained a majority and rejected the Republic. It was useless. But in his anxiety to win speedily in conjunction with M. Thiers, Gambetta himself and his followers practised that very opportunism which he had previously denounced. A non-democratic Senate, which had always been opposed by Republicans, was enacted as an essential part of the Republican Constitution, and on February 25th, 1875, the French Republic was firmly established as the legal form of government by the very same majority that, in the hope of rendering any such disaster to monarchy impossible, had made Marshal MacMahon President and the Duc de Broglie Premier.

But it was a truncated Republic that Gambetta had thus obtained. What he had gained by political compromise he had lost in the enthusiasm of principle. A leader who desires to achieve great reforms must always keep in close touch with the fanatics of his party. They alone can be relied upon in periods of crisis, they alone refuse to regard politics merely as a remunerative profession. The compromise—for men of principle compromise spells surrender—of February 25th, 1875, was destined to be fatal to the democratic parliamentary dictatorship which Gambetta might have achieved by common consent of his party, had he pursued his original policy of democratic Republicanism through and through. He stunted the growth of his own progeny by helping to establish a Republicanised Empire. No doubt this averted friction for the time being, but it slackened the rate of progress, placed obstacles in the path of democracy, and destroyed public enthusiasm. By one of the strange ironies of political life, however, it so chanced that, nearly thirty years later, Clemenceau himself owed his return to Parliament to the institution of that same Senate the creation of which he had always resolutely opposed.

But during these years of reconstruction from 1871 to 1875 Clemenceau had been excluded from the Assembly and actively engaged in the work of the Municipal Council of Paris. There he did admirable service in consolidating the organisation of Parisian municipal life to which he had been instrumental in giving expression in legal shape as Deputy for Montmartre. Paris had become the bugbear of all the reactionists and law-and-order men. The capital was constantly referred to by them as if the last acts of despair of the irresponsible extremists of the Commune were the habitual diversions of the Parisian populace when allowed free play for the realisation of their own aspirations. The Parisians, in fact, according to these persons, were burning with the desire to destroy their own city in order to avenge themselves upon their provincial detractors and enemies. It was important to show, therefore, not only that Paris could manage her own affairs coolly and capably, but also that she could take a progressive line of her own which might give the lead to other French cities in more than one direction. This was precisely what the Municipal Council did, and Clemenceau, by his constant attendance and the continuous pressure he exerted as an active member of the Left of that body, prevented the Council from being used at any time as a centre of reactionist intrigue. By this means also he strengthened his personal influence in his own democratic district as well as in Paris as a whole. He took care likewise all the world should know that on the matter of the full restitution of Parisian rights and the return of the Assembly to the capital he was as determined as ever, and that in the affairs of general politics he was and always would be a thoroughgoing Radical Republican. Thus he was building up for himself outside the Chamber a reputation as a capable municipal administrator as well as a fearless champion of the public rights of the great city he had made his home. At the same time his local popularity, due to his thorough knowledge of social conditions and his advocacy of municipal improvements of every kind, added to his gratuitous service as doctor of the poor, gave him an indisputable claim upon the votes of the people when, after having become President of the Municipal Council, he should decide to offer himself for re-election to the Assembly.

And from February 25th, 1875, onwards, matters were taking such a turn that the presence of a thoroughly well-informed, determined, active and fearless representative of Paris became necessary. A leader was wanted on the extreme Left who should loyally support the moderate Republicans when they were going forward and have the courage to attack them when they seemed inclined to hesitate or go back. The success of the conservative compromise in the constitution of the Republic had strengthened the belief of the reactionary majority in the Assembly in their own power under the new conditions. Gambetta’s own moderation deceived them as to the real position in the country. They began to think that the Republicans were afraid not only of how they would fare in the elections to the newly constituted Senate, but that the result of the General Elections which must shortly be held would be unfavourable to their cause. The Prime Minister, M. Buffet, aided and abetted by the President, MacMahon, who never forgot that the members of the Right were his real friends, made full use of the Exceptional Laws and the State of Siege, which was still in force, to show the Republicans plainly what a reactionary majority would mean. The “Conservatives” and Imperialists had things all their own way. Democracy became a byword and Radicalism a vain thing.

With the Ministry at their command and the President in their hands, they needed only to obtain the control of the Senate to have the people of France entirely at their mercy. Then, with the army favourable, with whole cohorts of anti-Republican officials at their service, they might postpone the General Elections, maintain the state of siege permanently, and prepare everything for a monarchical restoration or a Buonapartist plébiscite. L’Empire républicanisé indeed!

M. Buffet, within a few months of the declaration of the Republic as the real form of government of France, spoke quite in this sense. Happily the forces of reaction fell out among themselves. They could not trust one another in any sharing of the booty which might fall to the general lot. Therefore, when the time came for nomination and election of the seventy-five members of the Senate to be elected by the Assembly, their intestine differences lost them the battle: one portion of their motley group even went over to the enemy. So the Republicans actually obtained a majority by the votes of their opponents. In this way the danger of the Senate as a whole being used against the Republic was averted and the Radicals had secured the first point in the political game. Yet, in spite of this preliminary success, the reactionists had a majority of the Senate of 300 when the limited votes of the country had been polled. But the Republicans in revenge gained a surprising majority at the General Elections for the National Assembly, such a majority that it might have been thought any further serious effort on the part of the anti-Republicans would be impossible and even that Gambetta’s previous policy of opportunism was unnecessary.

It was at this election of 1876 that Clemenceau was returned again for the 18th Electoral District of Paris to the National Assembly as a thoroughgoing Radical Republican, and took his seat on the extreme Left under the leadership of Gambetta.

Marshal MacMahon, the President, was a good honest soldier who served his country as well as he knew how, but was quite incapable of understanding the new forces that were coming into action around him. The Parisians were never tired of inventing humorous scenes in which he invariably figured as the well-meaning pantaloon. Everybody trusted his honour, but all the world doubted his intelligence. He was by nature, upbringing and surroundings a conservative in the widest sense of the word. Radical Republicanism was to him the accursed thing which would bring about another Commune of Paris, if its partisans were given free rein. Although, therefore, incapable of plotting directly for the overthrow of the Constitution he had pledged himself to uphold, he was liable to yield to influences the full tendency of which he did not discern. Thus it happened that he allowed himself unconsciously to become the tool of the highly educated and clever Duc de Broglie, who was undoubtedly a monarchist and, what was still worse, a statesman imbued with the ideals of clericalism and of the Jesuits—precisely those powers which the growing spirit of democracy and Republicanism most feared. It was this growing spirit and its expression in the National Assembly that the Prime Minister, M. Jules Simon, who succeeded de Broglie had to recognise and deal with. Gambetta was still the leader of the Republican Party, and with him for this struggle were all the more advanced men, including Clemenceau, who afterwards stoutly opposed his policy of opportunism and compromise. M. Jules Simon, finding the majority of the Assembly in favour of steady progress towards the Left, was quite unable to check the movement in this direction or to refuse the legislation to which the Republican demands of necessity impelled him. The President could not see that an extremely moderate man, such as Jules Simon undoubtedly was, would not have taken this course unless he had been convinced that the Republic had to be in some degree republicanised if serious trouble were to be averted. In short, Marshal MacMahon felt that the floodgates of revolution were being opened, and forthwith knocked down the lock-keeper. In other words, he sent for M. Jules Simon and talked to him in such a manner as gave the Premier no option but to resign. Resign he did. Thereupon France was thrown into that turmoil of peaceful civil war ever afterwards known as the Coup du Seize Mai. The Duc de Broglie, with a trusty phalanx of seasoned reactionaries and devotees of priestcraft, again took office, regardless of the fact that the majority of the Chamber was solid against them all. Even with the most strenuous support of the President of the Republic, the de Broglie Ministry never had a chance from the first. They were in a hopeless minority, and their attempt to govern, on the basis of MacMahon’s reputation and the support of the priests, could not but result in failure, unless the Marshal himself were prepared to risk a coup d’état. This the Duc de Broglie and his followers were ready to attempt, but it was useless to embark upon anything of the kind so long as the President held back.

Then came the famous division, following up a most violent discussion, which for many a long year formed a landmark in the history of the Republic. Three hundred and sixty-three Republicans declared against the President’s Ministry of reaction and all its works. But Marshal MacMahon still would not understand that in his mistaken attempt to override the National Assembly in order to save France from what he believed would be an Anarchist revolution, he himself, with his group of monarchists and clericals, was steadily impelling the country into civil war. The action taken against Gambetta, then at the height of his vigour and influence, for declaring in his famous phrase that, in view of the attitude of the Chamber, the President must either “give in or get out,” made matters still worse. The President’s manifestoes to the Assembly and the country also only confirmed the growing impression that a sinister plot was afoot against the Republic itself, in the interest of the Orleanists.

This was a much more serious matter than appeared on the surface. In the six years which had passed since the withdrawal of the German armies and the suppression of the Commune, France had become accustomed to the Republic and to the use of universal suffrage as a democratic instrument of organisation. Great as were its drawbacks in many respects, the Republic was, as Gambetta phrased it, the form of government which divided Frenchmen the least. The people, who comprised not only the enlightened Radical Republicans of the cities, but the easily frightened small bourgeoisie and the peasantry, could now make the Assembly and the Senate do what they pleased. They were not as yet prepared to push those institutions very fast or very far, but they were unquestionably moving forward and were in no mind whatever to go back either to Napoleonism, Orleanism or Legitimism. France as a Republic was becoming the France of them all.

When, therefore, the 363 deputies who voted against the Duc de Broglie’s rococo restoration policy and Marshal MacMahon’s constitutional autocracy stood firmly together, sinking all differences in the one determination to safeguard and consolidate the Republic, there could be no real doubt as to the result. Those 363 stalwarts issued a vigorous appeal to the country, and the issue was joined in earnest at the General Elections. Gambetta, meanwhile, was the hero of the hour, straining every nerve for victory, exhausting himself by his furious eloquence, and the other advanced leaders did their full share of the fighting. In all this political warfare Clemenceau was as active and energetic as the fiery tribune himself, and as one of the framers and signatories of the great Republican appeal identified himself permanently with the document which recorded, as events proved, the decision of France to be and to remain a Republic.

Although it did not seem so at the time, the President played completely into the hands of the Republicans by the Message he sent to the Assembly and the Senate just before the prorogation he had so autocratically decreed. Here is a portion of it:—

The elections followed. It is difficult to exaggerate the advantage which is given in a French General Election to the party in power at the time. An unscrupulous Minister of the Interior has at his disposal all sorts of devices and machinery for helping his own side to victory. He can bring pressure of every kind to bear upon individuals directly or indirectly dependent on the Government of the day, and the whole official caste may be enlisted on behalf of the administration in control. This is the case ordinarily and in quiet times. But here was a direct stand-up fight between Reaction and Clericalism on the one side and Republicanism and Secularism—for that was at stake too—on the other. Both Marshal MacMahon and the Duc de Broglie honestly believed that they were doing their very utmost to preserve France from rapine and ruin. Every Radical Republican of the old school or the new was to them a bloody-minded Communard in disguise, veiling his instincts for plunder with eloquent appeals for patriotism and humanity. It is easy for the fanatics of conservatism and reaction thus to delude themselves. And once self-deceived they lose no chance of imposing their own wise and sober views upon the misguided people! So it happened in this case. Never were the powers of the Government in office strained to the same extent as in these elections of 1877—the elections which followed on the “Seize Mai” stroke of MacMahon. Not an opportunity for coercing, cajoling and intimidating the voters was missed. In every urban district and rural village throughout France the State, the Church, the Municipality, the Commune were used to the fullest extent possible to obtain a vote favourable to the de Broglie Ministry. Swarms of priests and Jesuits buzzed around the constituencies, and promises of an easy time of it in this life and the next if things went the right way were made in profusion. If the Republic could be beaten by the forces of reaction it would be beaten now! Gambetta had predicted that the 363 would return to the Assembly as 400. This was not to be. But in view of the tremendous efforts made to stem the tide of progress, not only by promises, but by serious threats wherever threats might tell, the wonder is the Republicans were so successful as they proved to be. In spite of all that the President and the Prime Minister and the Catholic Church and the Jesuits—who were fighting for the right to remain in France—and the curés and the State functionaries, and all that the agencies of aristocratic, monarchist and Buonapartist—more particularly Buonapartist—corruption could do, the Republicans returned to the Chamber with a substantial majority of upwards of 100 votes. This victory was universally recognised not only in France but throughout Europe as irrefragable evidence that the French people had finally decided for a Republic, and had dealt at the same time a serious blow to the Church.

But, obvious as this was to everybody else, the respectable old soldier who had been a party to all this reactionary turmoil was still unconvinced of the error of his ways! He repeated the formula of the Malakoff fortress: J’y suis, j’y reste. But the Republicans were more tenacious than the Russians. They resolved to dislodge him, political Marshal though he was. A resolution was passed by the Assembly to inquire into corrupt practices during the election. It was a challenge to battle, and signed by such men as Albert Grévy, H. Brisson, Jules Ferry, Léon Gambetta, Floquet, Louis Blanc and Clemenceau.

A great debate, lasting several days, followed, in which de Broglie defended himself in a high-handed manner against the fervid denunciations of Gambetta. A Committee of Inquiry was nominated and the arena of the struggle changed to the Senate, which presently, as might have been expected from its reactionary character, gave a small vote of confidence in the Marshal and his Ministers. Nevertheless the feeling in the country was such that even MacMahon could not hold on. De Broglie resigned, and the Marshal evolved—almost from the depths of his inner consciousness—an “extra-Parliamentary Cabinet” which might have been called “The Cabinet of Men of No Account.” But these were so unknown and so incompetent that all France made fun of them; and the will of the old Marshal, which nothing else could conquer, was broken by ridicule. In December, 1877, the President of the Republic saw that unless he appealed to the army, as the Buonapartists vigorously incited him to do, an appeal which more than probably the army itself would have rejected, there was no course open to him but the alternative which Gambetta had pointed out as being the Marshal’s inevitable destiny if he kept within the limits of law and order—to give in or get out. The old soldier of the Empire gave in, and did his country a service by accepting the rebuff which he had courted: a moderate Republican Ministry under the Premiership of M. Dufaure took office. MacMahon himself remained President of the Republic until January, 1879 (when he was succeeded by Jules Grévy), but his reactionary power was broken and France entered on a moderately peaceful era of recognised Republicanism. Gambetta was the acknowledged leader of the Republican majority; and Clemenceau, after this first taste of victory, now began that fine career of destructive, anti-opportunist Radicalism and semi-Socialist democracy which made him for many years the most redoubtable politician and orator in the Republic. The Radical-Socialist Clemenceau stood next in succession to the Opportunist Gambetta.

CHAPTER VII

THE TIGER

When a political leader in the course of some fifteen years of Parlamentary life has upset, or has helped to upset, no fewer than eighteen administrations and has always refused to take office himself, that leader is likely to have created a few enemies. When, in addition to these feats of destruction, he has during the same period secured the nomination and election of three Presidents of the Republic and has thus proved an insuperable obstacle to the realisation of the legitimate ambitions of the most important public men in France who were not elected, it is clear that personal popularity was not the object he had in view. It is impossible for the ordinary politician or journalist to judge fairly a man of this sort. Politics in modern Europe is an interesting game and, quite frequently, a remunerative profession. Party interests sap all principle and the attainment of personal aims and ambitions in and out of Parliament is, as a rule, quite incompatible with common honesty. Instead of Court intrigues and backstair cabals there are nowadays lobby “transactions” and convenient sales of titles and positions arranged, for value received, at private meetings. That is as far as democracy has got yet. It is all an understood business, often complicated with more flagitious pecuniary dealings outside.

Republican Government, or Constitutional Government, means, therefore, the success or failure of vote-catching and advantage-grabbing schemes, quite irrespective, from the public point of view, of the merits of the proposals which are put forward. Honest enthusiasts, who really wish to get something done for the benefit of the present or the coming generation, are only useful in so far as they act as stokers-up of public opinion for the profit of the political promoter of this or that faction. Steam is needed to drive the machine of State. Men of real convictions furnish that steam. But they are fools for their pains, all the same. Half the amount of energy used in the right direction would gain for them place, pelf, and possibly power, which is all that any man of common sense goes into politics for. Anybody who carries high principle and serious endeavour into political life is not playing the game. Everybody around him wants to know what on earth he is driving at. The only conceivable object of turning a Ministry out is to get in. To turn a Government out in order to keep out yourself is an unintelligible and therefore dangerous form of political mania, or a persistent manifestation of original sin.

Clemenceau was found guilty on both counts. But he was the ablest public man in all France. Moreover, he was successful in the diabolical combinations he set on foot. The thing was uncanny. That he should begin by overthrowing other politicians was all in the way of business. But that he should go on at it, time after time, for year after year, while other and inferior men took the posts he had opened for them, was not to be explained by any known theory of human motives. If he had been a cranky religionist, now, that would conceivably have met the case. He might have been “possessed” from on high or from below. But Clemenceau was and is a free-thinker of free-thinkers: neither Heaven nor Hell has anything to say to him. Clearly it is a case of malignant atavism: Clemenceau has thrown back to his animal ancestry. What is the totem of the tribe which has entered into him, whose instinct of depredation pervades his every political action? We have it! He is of the jungle, jungly. His spring is terrific. His crashing attack fatal. He looks as formidable as he is. In short, he is a Tiger, and there you are. That accounts for everything!

When Clemenceau was re-elected Deputy for the 18th Arrondissement to the National Assembly, on October 14th, 1877, and took the active part in the renewed struggle with Marshal MacMahon already spoken of, Gambetta was the leader at the height of his power and influence, with a solid Republican majority of more than a hundred votes. But from this period he became steadily more and more Opportunist, which gained him great credit in Great Britain, and Clemenceau was thenceforth the recognised leader of the advanced Left. MacMahon having resigned, M. Grévy was elected President with the support of Gambetta.

From the first Clemenceau had vigorously opposed the establishment of a Second Chamber in the shape of a Senate divorced from a direct popular vote. This was a step calculated to hamper progress at every turn, and at critical moments to intensify those very antagonisms which it was Gambetta’s intention, no doubt, to compose entirely, or at any rate to mitigate. Clemenceau did not view the matter from Gambetta’s point of view. The Monarchists and Buonapartists were the domestic enemy, as the Germans had been and might be again the foreign enemy. The only sound policy for strengthening the Republic to resist both was to favour those measures political and social which would make that Republic, which they had established with so much difficulty and at such great cost, a genuinely democratic Republic. Any surrender to the reactionists and the clericals must inevitably dishearten those parties, now shown to be the majority of the whole French people, who were for the Republic and the Republic alone. Opportunism also gave the anti-democrats and intriguers a false notion of their own power, virtually helped them to carry on their underground agitations for a change of the new constitution, and provided them in the undemocratic Senate with a political force that might be turned to their own purpose.

It was more important all through, thought Clemenceau, to inspire your own side with confidence than to placate your opponents by half-measures. It was, in fact, not enough to eject officials who were known to be hostile to the Republic; it was still more essential to give such shape to the political forms and so vivify political opinion that even the most unscrupulous officials could not turn them to the account of reaction. Both steps were necessary to carry out a thorough democratic programme. In fact, the whole scheme of administration in France could not be permanently improved merely by substituting one set of bureaucrats for another. Much more drastic measures of a peaceful character were indispensable, and these Opportunism thwarted. Gambetta may not have given up his desire to carry these Radical measures in 1877 and 1878: he still retained and expressed his old opinions upon clericalism and its sinister influence. But he was no longer the vehement champion of the advanced party at Versailles, and the position which he had abandoned Clemenceau took up and pushed further to the front.

There was no matter on which the lines of cleavage between the Republicans and the reactionists were more definitely and clearly drawn than on the question of the Amnesty of the Communists. No man in the Assembly was stronger in favour of their complete amnesty by law than Clemenceau. This he showed in 1876, and in his powerful advocacy of the release of the great agitator and conspirator Blanqui in 1879. Every reactionary and trimming man of moderate views was bitterly opposed to a policy of justice towards the victims of the wholesale measures of repression formulated by M. Thiers and so frightfully carried out by General Gallifet and the Versailles troops in 1871. Even when measures of partial amnesty were passed, their application was nullified as far as possible by Ministers. It was part of an organised policy to frighten the bourgeoisie and peasants into another Empire. The reprisals of the Bloody Week and the transportations to Cayenne and New Caledonia had not by any means fully satisfied the enemies alike of the Commune and the Republic. So Clemenceau and his friends never ceased their attacks upon M. Waddington and others who took the rancorous conservative view of unceasing persecution of the men and women who, after all, were the first to declare the Republic. M. Waddington, as Premier, got a resolution passed by the Chamber in his favour. But this did not silence either Clemenceau’s friends or himself. Here, in fact, was a crucial case of his power of getting rid of an obnoxious Ministry even in the face of a Ministerial majority. The Tiger showed his claws and made ready to spring. But first he gave fair warning of his intentions. Nothing could be plainer than this: “Why has the Minister of Justice demanded a partial amnesty? Because he is anxious that the country should not forget the horrors of the Commune. But then, if you do not wish it to forget the horrors of the Commune, why do you desire that those who have been condemned should forget the horrors of its repression? Because for eight long years we have kept under cover the abominable facts at our disposal, you have thought yourselves in a position to trample on us! You say: We shall not forget the hostages and the conflagrations. Very well. I who speak here tell you: If you forget nothing, your opponents will remember too.”

The speech from which that passage is an excerpt was regarded as a distinct menace on Clemenceau’s part. It was followed up by the extreme Left with a series of interruptions, interrogations and denunciations which ended in the retirement of M. Waddington. He had his majority but he had no Clemenceau. So out went Waddington and his colleagues. In came M. Freycinet—“the white mouse.” “We have had,” said Clemenceau’s organ, La Justice, “in the Waddington cabinet a Dufaure cabinet without M. Dufaure. To-day we have a Waddington cabinet without M. Waddington. It is a botch upon a botch.” A nice welcome for M. Freycinet! A pleasing congratulation for the President, M. Grévy! The administration was regarded as a political monstrosity. It had two heads, M. Freycinet and M. Jules Ferry, one looking to the right and the other to the left. The friends of Freycinet could not stand Ferry: the friends of Ferry abhorred Freycinet. This new political marriage not only began but went on with mutual aversion. It stood at the mercy, therefore, of Clemenceau, who was less inclined to be merciful since the Premier declared himself bitterly hostile to the plenary amnesty proposed by the famous old Republican, M. Louis Blanc. Also on account of clerical tendencies. Out goes Freycinet, therefore, in his turn, and in comes M. Jules Ferry, with various clerical, educational and other troubles of his own hatching to clear up. Ministries, in short, were going in and out on the dial of Presidential favour like the figures of a Dutch clock. Clemenceau was getting his claws well into the various political personages all the time. As none of them had any blood to lose in the shape of principles there was no great harm done—except to the Republic! It was the perpetual immolation of a sawdust brigade. A keen critic of the period said of the Ferry Ministry—which was beaten on its proposal to postpone on behalf of education the reform of the magistracy and all that this carried with it in regard to the amnesty—that it wished to die before it lived. Down it went for the moment, and returned to place out of breath and half-ruined. But there the Ministry still was, and that by itself was something in those days of political topsy-turveydom, with Clemenceau and his party ever ready to assert themselves.

Thus the Republic stumbled rather than marched on, from the date of Marshal MacMahon’s resignation and the installation of M. Grévy as President up to the period of the declaration of July 14th, in remembrance of July 14th, 1789, and the Fall of the Bastille, as the fête day of the Republic after the passage of a practically complete amnesty. This was really a great triumph for all Republicans, as it put the Republic in its true historic relation to the past, the present and the future. With such a national fête day, with the certainty that Republicans, if they chose to keep united, could always command a large majority in the Assembly, the elections of 1881 might well have been a first step towards a thorough political and social reorganisation of the Republic. Unfortunately there were several causes of disunion. President of the Assembly though he was, and therefore excluded by his position as well as by M. Grévy’s prejudice against him from coming into immediate competition with M. Ferry for the Premiership, Gambetta was actively supporting the scrutin de liste, or political appeal to the whole country, against scrutin d’arrondissement, or local elections. This was regarded as a bid on his part for a clear Parliamentary dictatorship. Already on October 20th, 1880, Clemenceau had denounced the hero of the dictatorship of despair of 1871, fine as his effort had then been, as aiming at personal power ten years later. A victory at the polls gained through scrutin de liste would probably ensure him success in this venture.

Nevertheless, in spite of open and secret opposition, Gambetta had sufficient influence to carry the scrutin de liste through the National Assembly. But with the curious irony of fate he was defeated by a majority of 32 in the Senate which he himself had been so largely instrumental in forcing upon the Republic! This was on June 9th, 1881. Three months before, M. Barodet had brought forward a resolution backed by 64 deputies which, if carried, would have abolished the equality of rights between the Senate and the National Assembly, would have withdrawn the right of the former to dissolve Parliament, would have made the Chamber permanent like the Senate, would have modified the system of election of the second House; would have prevented the re-enactment of the scrutin de liste by again making the electoral law for the deputies part of the Constitution; and lastly would have summoned a Constituent Assembly in order to carry out these reforms. This whole project was discussed in the Assembly on May 31st. There was no mistake about Clemenceau’s attitude. He formulated a vigorous indictment against the Constitution of 1875 and attacked the Senate with great violence. The Constitution of 1875 was, he declared, a powerful weapon of war expressly forged for use against the Republic. The Senate with its anti-democratic method of election was a permanent danger to the State. It was not in any sense an element of stability but an element of resistance. “What is the use of talking of a brake on the machine or a weight to counterbalance popular opinion? Does not universal suffrage provide its own brake, its own regulator?” This time, however, Clemenceau missed his coup. M. Barodet’s motion was rejected and the conservative Republic rumbled on comfortably, though Clemenceau shortly afterwards very nearly toppled M. Ferry’s Cabinet over, the Ministers only securing a vote in their favour by a majority of 13 made up by their own votes.

Looking back to that period when the whole Constitution seemed almost certain to go into the melting-pot and come out again in a thoroughly democratic shape, it is remarkable to notice how, in spite of the efforts of Clemenceau, M. Naquet and other democrats, the Republic of compromise has steadily adhered to its old machinery. Why the cumbrous and often reactionary Senate, elected in such wise as to exclude democratic influence, should have been maintained for more than forty years is difficult to explain. But nations, as our own belated and unmanageable Constitution proves, when once they have become accustomed to a form of government, are very slow indeed to adapt it to rapidly changing economic and social developments. This, it may be said, suits the English turn of mind with its queer addiction to perpetual compromise. But the French are logical and apparently restless. Yet their Constitution remains an unintelligible muddle. Their real conservatism overrides their revolutionary tendencies except in periods of great perturbation. Thus the Opportunist Republic of Gambetta, which ought to have been a mere makeshift, has held on, with partial revision, for more than forty years. Fear of the monarchists on one side and of the Communists, afterwards the Socialists, on the other has kept Humpty-Dumpty up on his wall.

The elections of 1881, conducted as they were amid much excitement, gave the Republicans of all parties a crushing majority—a majority in the Assembly greatly out of proportion even to the total vote. There were five millions of votes for Republicans against 1,700,000 for the various sections of monarchists. The Republican deputies in the Chamber, however, numbered 467 to only 90 “conservatives.” According to the returns, this was a victory for the Government and its chief, M. Jules Ferry, especially as the Prime Minister had arrived at some understanding with Gambetta, who at this time had become extremely unpopular with the democracy of Paris. But those who were of this opinion reckoned without the question of Tunis and, above all, without taking account of the difficulty of facing the criticisms of the irreconcilable Clemenceau. Clemenceau had always opposed a policy of colonial adventure. This of Tunis was from his point of view not only adventurous but dangerous. Tunis had been offered to France in an indefinite way at the Peace-with-Honour Congress of Berlin in 1878. But the policy of expansion pushed on by financial intrigues did not take shape at once. When it did it was serious enough, for France not only had to deal with troubles in Algeria itself, with the natural opposition of the Bey of Tunis to French interference and annexation, but Italy took umbrage at the advance, regarding Tunis as specially her business, Turkey was by no means favourable, and there was even a possibility that Germany might stir up trouble for purposes of her own. Moreover the whole business had been extremely ill-managed, not only by the Government itself but by M. Albert Grévy, the brother of the President, who was the Governor-General of Algeria. This personage, on account of his Presidential connections, could neither be censured nor replaced. So credits were asked for, troops were moved, a railway concession granted—everything as usual, in short, when annexation is being prepared.

Clemenceau quite rightly denounced the whole mischievous business as the policy of intriguers and plutocrats, and demanded an inquiry into the affair from the first. He did not measure his phrases at all. French blood and French money, sadly needed at home, were being wasted abroad. M. Ferry, to do him justice, fought hard for his policy of colonisation by force of arms. His attacks upon the extremists who criticised him did not lack point or bitterness. Discharged officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and returned Communards from Noumea who composed the public meetings and irregular assizes that condemned him, M. Ferry, “as is fitting, kicked aside with his boot.” As to Clemenceau, if he had allowed matters to take their own course in Tunis, what a tornado of malediction would have raged around them from that orator! “I can hear even now the philippics of the honourable M. Clemenceau.” Clemenceau did not get the inquiry he demanded. But on November 10th M. Ferry retired, so badly had he been mauled in the fray. It was a win, that is to say, for Clemenceau, who by his speech on November 9th again overthrew the Government in spite of the cordial support of Gambetta. What made this victory of Clemenceau and the extreme Left the more astounding was the fact that the Treaty concluding the “first pacification” of Tunis had been confirmed on May 23rd by a majority of 430 to 1. Clemenceau was that one. Six months later, therefore, he had his revenge. The expédition de vacances, which had developed into a guerre de conquête, cost M. Jules Ferry his Premiership, notwithstanding this unheard-of majority. The Tiger at work indeed!

So now at last, in spite of M. Grévy’s ungrateful conduct towards him, in spite likewise of the rejection of the scrutin de liste, Gambetta became President of the Council instead of President of the Chamber. He was still at this time in the eyes of all foreigners the most eminent living French statesman. In England particularly his accession to office was received with jubilation in official circles. It meant, so said Liberals like Sir Charles Dilke, who were then in power, a permanently close understanding between France and England, a joint settlement of the troublesome and at times even threatening Egyptian question, as well as a fair probability of the arrangement of other thorny problems between the two countries. But in order to accomplish all this Gambetta must carry the Assembly, the Senate and the bulk of his countrymen with him, and control a solid Republican party, even if Clemenceau and his squadrons still hung upon his flank. Gambetta, however, had shaken the confidence of the country. It was no longer Clemenceau and his friends only who accused him of aiming at supreme dictatorial power. The public in general suspected him too. Nor did his immediate friends, either old or young, do much to destroy this unfortunate impression.

Truth to tell, Gambetta was not the man he had been a few years before. He looked fat, even bloated, unhealthy and sensual. His magnificent frame had undergone deterioration. A brilliant French journalist cruelly comparing him to Vitellius, as a man of gluttony and debauchery combined, summed up his career against that of the extraordinary Roman general and Emperor who had played so many parts successfully, as soldier in the field and as courtier in the palace, and wound up in derision of Gambetta with the terrible phrase, “Je te demande pardon, César!” And over against this self-indulgent and fiery man of genius was a very different personage, who had taken up the rôle which had once been that of the great tribune of the French people. Spare, alert, vigorous, always in training, despising ease and never taken by surprise; equal, as he had just shown, to fighting a lone hand victoriously, yet never despising help in his battles even from the most unexpected quarters—what chance had Gambetta against such a terrible opponent as Clemenceau? None whatever. Down he went, after a Premiership of but sixty-six days. Many believe that, finding the situation too complicated, and relying still upon obtaining the scrutin de liste later—as indeed came about some time after his death—Gambetta deliberately rode for a fall. Certain it is that M. Spüller, who had Gambetta’s complete confidence, gave this explanation of his intentions three weeks before his defeat in the Assembly.

Gambetta, with all his great reputation, being overthrown, straightway his old Secretary of 1871, de Freycinet, came again to the front. The affairs of Egypt, always with Clemenceau’s genial assistance, made short work of him. The Anglo-French Condominium having fallen through and England having thought proper to suppress a people “rightly struggling to be free,” de Freycinet was anxious to reassert the claims of France in Egypt after a fashion which threatened unpleasantness with Great Britain. Whatever Clemenceau may have thought privately of English policy at this juncture, he would have none of that. His arguments convinced the Assembly that French intervention in Egypt against England would be dangerous and unsuccessful. France, said Clemenceau, had neither England’s advantages nor England’s direct interests in Egypt. France is a continental, not a great sea power. Her apprehensions are from the East. Do nothing which may drive England into the arms of Germany.

What was much worse, the same colonial expansion which had been carried out in Tunis was now followed up in Tonquin, Annam and Madagascar, at great expense and to little or no advantage. Clemenceau still opposed this entire policy on principle. Ferry thought France would recompense herself for the disasters of 1870-71 by these adventures: Clemenceau was absolutely convinced to the contrary. “Why risk £20,000,000 on remote expeditions when we have our entire industrial mechanism to create, when we lack schools and country roads? To build up vanquished France again we must not waste her blood and treasure on useless enterprises. But there are much higher reasons even than these for abstaining from such wars of depredation. It is all an abuse, pure and simple, of the power which scientific civilisation has over primitive civilisation to lay hold upon man as man, to torture him, to squeeze everything he has in him out of him for the profit of a civilisation which itself is a sham.” There could be no sounder sense, no higher morality, no truer statesmanship than that. Clemenceau had aspirations that France should lead the world, not by unjustifiable conquests over semi-civilised populations, but by displaying at home those great qualities which she undoubtedly possesses. His attacks were inspired, therefore, not by personal animosity against Jules Ferry or any other politician, but against a megalomania that was harmful to his country and the world. Unfortunately, Clemenceau could not, this time, persuade the Assembly or his countrymen to recognise the dangers and disadvantages of expansion by conquest in the Far East, until the disaster of Lang Son and the demand for additional credits enabled him to push the perils of such a policy right home. Then M. Ferry was once more discharged, practically at Clemenceau’s behest.

So matters went on, Clemenceau striving his utmost, in opposition, to enforce the genuine democratic policy of abstention from Imperialism abroad and strengthening of the forces of the Republic at home which the successive Opportunist Administrations in power refused to accept. In each and every case, Tunis, Tonquin, Annam, Madagascar and Egypt, he considered first, foremost and all the time what would most benefit Frenchmen in France, and refused to be led astray by any will-o’-the-wisps of Eastern origin, however gloriously they might disport themselves under the sun of finance. But now came a still more awkward matter close at home. There are not the same facilities for shutting down inquiries into the financial peccadilloes or corrupt malversations of public men in France as there are in England. Monetary scandals will out, though political blunderings may be glossed over, as in the cases of the Duc de Broglie, M. Jules Ferry and M. Albert Grévy. The President, M. Grévy, was very unfortunate in his relations. His brother, the Governor-General of Algeria, had shown himself dreadfully incompetent in that capacity. But M. de Freycinet, M. Jules Ferry and the whole Ministerial set had entered into a conspiracy of silence and misrepresentation, throwing the blame of his mistakes upon anybody but the Governor-General himself, in order to uphold the dignity of the President quite uninjured. Now, however, the President’s son-in-law, M. Wilson, was found out in very ignoble transactions. He was actually detected in the flagitious practice of trading in decorations, the Legion of Honour and the like, not for what are considered on this side of the Channel as perfectly legitimate purposes, the furtherance, namely, of Party gains or Ministerial advantages, but in order to increase his own income. The thing became a public scandal. Those who could not afford to buy the envied distinctions were specially incensed. But out of regard for the President, out of consideration for their personal advancement in the future, because when you start this sort of thing you never know how far it will go, because other Ministers in and out of office had had relations of their own addicted to similar trading in other directions—for all these reasons, good and bad, nobody cared to take the matter up seriously.

Nobody, that is to say, except that tiger Clemenceau. He actually thought that the honour of the Republic was at stake in the business: was of opinion that a President should be more careful than other people in keeping the doubtful characters of men and women of his own household under restraint. And he not only thought but spoke and acted. M. Rouvier, who was then Premier, felt himself bound to stand by the President and exculpated him from any share in the affair. This made matters worse. For M. Grévy, when the whole transaction was fully debated, could not withstand the pressure of public opinion against him; Clemenceau carried his point and the President resigned. Thereupon M. Rouvier thought it incumbent upon him to retire too, though Clemenceau took pains to tell him that this was a concern purely personal to the President and not a political issue at all. There was consequently a Presidential Election and a new Ministry at the same time. So great was Clemenceau’s influence at this juncture that although three of the most prominent politicians in the Republic were eager for the post, he, out of fear of the election of the irrepressible expansionist M. Ferry, persuaded the electors to favour the appointment of the able and cool but popularly almost unknown M. Sadi-Carnot—who turned out, it may be said, quite an admirable President up to his outrageous assassination.

By this time Clemenceau had fully justified his claim to the distinction of being the most formidable and relentless political antagonist known in French public life since the great Revolution. As he would never take office himself and was moved by few personal animosities, he stood outside the lists of competers for place. He had definite Radical Republican principles and during all these years he acted up to them. He was throughout opposed, as I have said, to compromise. He fought it continuously all along the line. Moreover, he had a profound contempt for politicians who were merely politicians. “I have combated,” he said, “ideas, not persons. In my fight against Republicans I have always respected my party. In the heat of the conflict I have never lost sight of the objects we had in common, and I have appealed for the solidarity of the whole against the common enemy of all.”

As, also, he triumphantly declared in a famous oration against those who were engaged in sneering at Parliamentary Government and the tyranny of words, he was ever in favour of the greatest freedom of speech, and even stood up for the commonplace debates which often must have terribly bored him. “Well, then, since I must tell you so, these discussions which astonish you are an honour to us all. They prove conclusively our ardour in defence of ideas which we think right and beneficial. These discussions have their drawbacks: silence has more. Yes, glory to the country where men speak, shame on the country where men hold their tongues. If you think to ban under the name of parliamentarism the rule of open discussion, mind this, it is the representative system, it is the Republic itself against whom you are raising your hand.”

A great Parliamentarian, a great political Radical was Clemenceau the Tiger of 1877 to 1893. He, more than any other man, prevented the Republic from altogether deteriorating and kept alive the spirit of the great French Revolution in the minds and in the hearts of men.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RISE AND FALL OF BOULANGER

The relations of Clemenceau to General Boulanger form an important though comparatively brief episode in the career of the French statesman. Boulanger was Clemenceau’s cousin, and in his dealings with this ambitious man he did not show that remarkable skill and judgment of character which distinguished him in regard to Carnot and Loubet, whose high qualities Clemenceau was the first to recognise and make use of in the interest of the Republic. Boulanger was a good soldier in the lower grades of his profession, and owed his first important promotion to the Duc d’Aumale. This patronage he acknowledged with profound gratitude and even servility at the time; but repaid later, when he turned Radical, by what was nothing short of treacherous persecution of the Orleanist Prince. Boulanger went even so far as to deny that he had ever expressed his obligations to the Duke for aid in his profession, a statement to which the publication of his own letters at once gave the lie.

The General was, in fact, vain, ostentatious and unscrupulous. But having gained popularity among the rank and file of the French army by his good management of the men under his command and his sympathy with their grievances, he was appointed Director of Infantry, and in that capacity introduced several measures of military reform and suggested more. A little later, circumstances led him into close political harmony with the Radicals and their leader. At this juncture Clemenceau seems to have convinced himself that good use could be made of the general, who owed his first great advance to Orleanist favour, without any danger to the Republic. Having, as usual, upset another short-lived Cabinet, Clemenceau therefore exercised his influence to secure his relation the post of War Minister in the new Administration of M. Freycinet. This was in January 1886. At first he was true to his Radical friends and carried out the programme of army reforms agreed upon between himself and Clemenceau, thus justifying that statesman’s choice and support. The general treatment of the French conscript was taken in hand. His food was improved, his barrack discipline rendered less harsh, his relations to his officers made more human, his spirit raised by better prospects of a future career. All this was good service to the country at a critical time and should have redounded to the credit of the Radical Party far more than to Boulanger’s own glorification. This, however, was not the case. All the credit was given to the General himself. Hence immense personal influence from one end of the country to the other.

Practically every family in France was beneficially affected, directly or indirectly, by Boulanger’s measures of military reform, and thanked the brave General for what had been done. Not a young man in the army, or out of it, but felt that his lot, when drawn for service or actually serving, had been made better by the War Minister himself. So it ever is and always has been. The individual who gives practical expression to the ideas which are forced upon him by others is the one who is regarded as the real benefactor: the real workers, as in this instance Clemenceau and his friends, are forgotten.

One of the incidents which helped to enhance Boulanger’s great popularity was what was known as the Schnäbele affair. This person was a French commissary who crossed the French frontier into Alsace-Lorraine to carry out some local business with a similar German official which concerned both countries. He was arrested by the German military authorities as not being in possession of a passport. This action may possibly have been technically justifiable, but certainly was a high-handed proceeding conducted in a high-handed way. At that time France was constantly feeling that she was in an inferior position to Germany, and her statesmen were slow to resent small injuries, knowing well that France was still in no position to make head against the great German military power, still less to avenge the crushing defeats of 1870-71. When, therefore, Boulanger took a firm stand in the matter and upheld in a very proper way the dignity of France, the whole country felt a sense of relief. France, then, was no longer a negligible quantity in Europe. M. de Bismarck could not always have his way, and Boulanger stood forth as the man who understood the real spirit of his countrymen. That was the sentiment which did much to strengthen the General against his opponents when he began to carry out a purely personal policy. He had inspired the whole nation with a sense of its own greatness.

He was then the most popular man in the country. He stood out to the people at large as a patriotic figure with sound democratic sympathies and an eminent soldier who might lead to victory the armies of France.

Thenceforth Boulanger gradually became a personage round whom every kind of social and reactionary influence and intrigues of every sort were concentrated. To capture the imposing figure on the black horse, to fill him with grandiose ideas of the splendid part he could play, if only he would look at the real greatness and glory of his country through glasses less tinted with red than those of his Radical associates, to inspire him with conceptions of national unity and sanctified religious patriotism which should bring France, the France of the grand old days, once more into being, with himself as its noble leader—this was the work which the fine ladies of the Boulevard St. Germain, hand in hand with the Catholic Church, its priests and the cultivated reactionaries generally, set themselves to accomplish. From this time onwards the mot d’ordre to back Boulanger went round the salons. Legitimists, Orleanists and Buonapartists were, on this matter, temporarily at one. Each section hoped at the proper moment to use the possible dictator for the attainment of its own ends. Thus Boulanger was diverted from the Radical camp and weaned from Radical ideas even during his period as War Minister in M. Freycinet’s Cabinet. So subtle is the influence of “society” and ecclesiastical surroundings upon some natures, so powerful the effect of refined and charming conversation and genial flattery delicately conveyed, that men of far stronger character than Boulanger have now and then succumbed to it. Only devotion to principle or ruthless personal ambition can hold its own against such a combination of insidious forces dexterously employed—and women of the world and Jesuits are both very dexterous—when once the individual to be artistically trepanned permits himself to be experimented upon. Boulanger, though not devoid of cleverness, was at bottom that dangerous description of designing good fellow who all the time means well; and he fell a victim to the delightful women and clever adventurers around him. He himself was probably not aware that he had passed over to the enemy until the irresistible logic of events and his changed relations with his old friends proved to him how far he had gone.

M. Rouvier, a shrewd and cynical politician of the financial school, saw through the General, understood how dangerous he might become, and refused to accept the ex-Minister of War into the Cabinet he formed on the fall of Freycinet. But Boulanger had now so far established himself personally that neither a political check nor even general ridicule affected his career. Even his duel with M. Floquet, a farce in which General Boulanger made himself the clown, could not shake him. Floquet was a well-known Radical of those days, who had been a fellow-member of the League of the Rights of Man with Clemenceau at the time of the Commune. Boulanger was a soldier, accustomed to the use of arms all his life, and reported to be a good fencer. Floquet, quite unlike his old friend of years before, scarcely knew which end of his weapon to present to his opponent, so inexperienced was he in this sort of lethal exercise. When, therefore, the duel between the two men was arranged, the only point discussed was how small an injury would Boulanger, in his generosity, deign to inflict upon his Radical antagonist, in order that the seconds might declare that “honour is satisfied.” No doubt Clemenceau himself, who acted as one of Floquet’s seconds on this occasion, took that view of the matter.

What actually occurred was quite ludicrous. Floquet, duly instructed thereto by his own friends, stood, good harmless bourgeois as he was, like a waxwork figure, with his rapier stuck out at arm’s length straight in front of him. No science there. But there was still less on the other side. Boulanger, to the amazement of Clemenceau and everybody on the ground, in what appeared to be a sudden stroke of madness, immediately rushed at Floquet and his rigid skewer and, without any such elaborate foolishness as the laws of fence enjoin, carefully spitted his own throat on the point of Floquet’s weapon. Honour was thus satisfied and ridicule began. But ridicule did not kill.

No sooner was Boulanger cured of his self-inflicted wound than he went on much as he did before. Having ceased to be Minister for War, he was sent down to command an army corps at Clermont-Ferrand. According to all discipline, and regulations duly to be observed by generals at large, this kept the man appointed out of Paris. Not so Boulanger. He visited the capital at least twice. Thereupon he was deprived of his command and his name was removed from the Army List. That, by the rules of war and politics, ought to have finished him. But it didn’t. The Radicals and Republicans had still no idea what an ugly Frankenstein they had created for themselves. True, Clemenceau had declared definitely against his own protégé the moment he saw the line he was taking; but he underrated entirely the position to which Boulanger had attained, not only among the reactionaries but in the hearts and minds of the French people. For Boulanger, now gifted with a free hand, went into the political arena at once, and was a candidate simultaneously for the Nord and the Dordogne: provincial districts with, of course, a totally different sort of electorate from that of the capital, where the brav’ Général with his fine figure on horseback was already the hero of the Parisians. He was elected and sat for the Nord.