CHAPTER XV
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF CLEMENCEAU
Strikes and anarchist troubles, however, formidable as they were in the North and in the South, were by no means the only serious difficulties which Clemenceau had to cope with, first as Minister of the Interior and then as Premier. The danger from Germany, as he well knew, was ever present. Anxious as France was to avoid misunderstandings which might easily lead to war, eager as the Radical leader might be to enlarge upon the folly and wickedness of strife between two contiguous civilised peoples, who could do so much for one another, it was always possible for the German Government to put the Republic in such a position that the alternative of humiliation or hostilities must be faced. Less than a year before Clemenceau accepted office, the German Kaiser himself had taken a most provocative step in Morocco, the object of which can now be clearly seen. Germany had no real interests in Morocco worthy of the name. Several years later the German Minister of Foreign Affairs pooh-poohed the idea that Germany, distant from Morocco as she was, with only 200 Germans in the country, and not more than £200,000 worth of yearly commerce, all told, with the inhabitants, could be concerned about political matters in that Mohammedan kingdom.
With France the case was very different. Algeria was adjacent to the territories of the Sultan of Morocco, and, if the wild tribes on the frontier were stirred up against the infidel, the most important French colony was threatened with serious disturbance. It was all-important for France, therefore, that there should be a government at Fez strong enough and enlightened enough to keep peace on the border. Clemenceau, who had always been so stern an opponent of colonial adventures, and had overthrown several Cabinets which he considered were prone to encourage harmful exploits, had himself spoken out very plainly about Morocco. Long before capitalist interests were involved on any large scale the French ownership of Algeria necessitated a definite Moroccan policy. This again brought with it the obligation of constant pressure upon the Sultan to induce him to consider French interests. These interests could be harmonised with those of Spain and Great Britain, and were so settled by special agreements in April, 1904, just a year before the German Emperor’s coup de théâtre startled the world. France’s special interests in Morocco were thus recognised all round, and Germany, far from raising any objection, expressly disclaimed any desire to interfere, so long as “the open door” was left for German goods. But the general antagonism between France and Germany was a matter of common knowledge.
It was natural, therefore, that the Sultan of Morocco, alarmed lest French attempts to introduce “order” and “good government” into his realm might end, as it had always done elsewhere, by destroying his independence, should appeal to the Kaiser, who had proclaimed his sympathy for the Moslem, to help him against the less sympathetic infidel. For a long time these appeals fell upon deaf ears. Even when the Kaiser visited Gibraltar, after an interview with the King of Spain, he refused pressing invitations to cross the Straits and meet envoys of the Moroccan potentate at Tangier. This was in March, 1904. But in March, 1905, when everything looked peaceful, the Kaiser went to Tangier in the Hohenzollern, landed with an imposing suite, met the uncle of the Sultan, who came as a special envoy to the German Emperor, and addressed him in the following terms:—
“I am to-day paying my visit to the Sultan in his quality of independent sovereign. I hope that under the sovereignty of the Sultan a free Morocco will remain open to the peaceful competition of all nations, without monopoly and without annexation, on the footing of absolute equality. The object of my visit to Tangier is to make known that I have decided to do all in my power to effectually safeguard the interests of Germany in Morocco. Since I consider the Sultan an absolutely free sovereign, it is with him that I desire to come to an understanding on suitable measures for safeguarding these interests. As to the reforms that the Sultan intends to make, it seems to me that he must proceed with much caution, having regard to the religious feelings of the population, so that public order may not be disturbed.”
Such was the declaration of the German Emperor. What gave special point to his address was the fact that at that very moment a French delegation was at the capital, Fez, in order to obtain necessary reforms from the Sultan, and was meeting week after week the most obstinate resistance from him and his Government. It was obviously open support of the Sultan in his refusal to accept French representations, and a declaration of hostility to France on the part of the Kaiser. Nothing more arrogant or offensive can well be imagined. France, from the Socialist point of view, was wrong in her attempt to instruct the Sultan how to deal with a state of things which undoubtedly threatened the peace of Algeria, but the Kaiser’s intervention after such a fashion was wholly unwarrantable, and threatened the peace of the world.
What was the meaning of this extraordinary display of Imperial diplomacy and Prussian direct action? There were statesmen—Sir Charles Dilke was one—who believed that the German Emperor was really devoted to peace, and that no war could take place in Europe so long as he lived. There was a general feeling in England to the same effect, largely engineered by Lord Haldane and others of like nature, whose spiritual or political home was in Germany. But all can see now that this was an illusion. The only difference between the Kaiser and the most aggressive and bloodthirsty Junker or pan-German was as to the time and season when the tremendous Central European and partially Mohammedan combination that he had formed should commence the attack. William II wished to wait until the road had been so completely prepared for the aggressive advance that victory on every side would be practically certain. The Junker party, with which the Crown Prince identified himself, were in a hurry, and the Emperor could only keep them in good humour by these periodical outbursts which enabled him to pose as the dictator of Europe.
All through, the Kaiser’s real ambition was that which he occasionally disclosed in a well-known drawing-room in Berlin. He would not die happy unless he had ridden at the head of the Teutonic armies as the Charlemagne of modern Europe. But this megalomania was only indulged in with his intimates. Elsewhere he stood forth as the rival of his uncle as the Prince of Peace. According to him, therefore, it was M. Delcassé who forced him to act in this peremptory way at Tangier; and efforts were made to convince all the Governments in Europe that the French Minister of Foreign Affairs had tried to boycott Germany out of Morocco. France, rather than take up the challenge, got rid of M. Delcassé. Thus the Emperor displayed his power for the appeasement of his Junkers, established a permanent source of difficulty on the flank of France, and gave the Mohammedan world to understand once more that Germany, not England, was the champion of Islam.
Meanwhile, German political, financial and commercial influence of every kind was making astounding advances, not only in France itself, but also in every country that might at the critical moment be able to help either France or Russia; while German armaments, military and naval, and German alliances for war were being worked up to the point which, if carried on for ten, or perhaps even for five years more, would have rendered the German power almost, if not quite, irresistible by any combination that could have been made in time against it. The Kaiser, in short, was playing a successful game of world-peace in order to make sure of playing at the right moment a successful game of world-war. Desperate as the conflict has been, it may have been fortunate for mankind that the Junkers, his son and the General Staff forced the Emperor’s hand.
When, consequently, Clemenceau took the lead in French affairs, he soon found that the sacrifice of M. Delcassé, the friend of Edward VII, to the pretended German injury had been made in vain. There was no intention whatever, either then or later, of coming to a really permanent settlement of outstanding grievances against France, although the position in Morocco was eventually used to gain great advantages in other parts of Africa. Germany was, in fact, a permanent menace to the peace of Europe and the world; but those who said so, and adduced plain facts to justify their contentions, were unfortunately denounced both by capitalists and Socialists in every country as fomenters of war. This insidious propaganda, which tended to the advantage of Germany in every respect, was already going on in 1906, when M. Clemenceau joined M. Sarrien’s Cabinet, and when he formed a Cabinet of his own. This was publicly recognised.
This is what M. Clemenceau said at Hyères, after some furious attacks had been made upon France in the German official newspapers; no German newspapers being allowed to print comments on foreign affairs without the consent of the Foreign Office: “No peace is possible without force. When I took office I myself was persuaded that all European nations were of one mind in wishing for peace. But almost immediately, without any provocation whatever from us, a storm of calumny and misrepresentation broke out upon us, and we were compelled to ask ourselves, ‘Are we prepared?’”
On October 23rd of the same year, M. Sarrien resigned, and M. Clemenceau formed his Cabinet. It comprised, among others, Messrs. Pichon (Foreign Affairs), Caillaux (Finance), Colonel Picquart (War), Briand (Justice and Education), Viviani (Labour), and Donmergue (Commerce). A more peaceful Cabinet could hardly be. M. Pichon, who took the place from which M. Delcassé had been forced to resign because he too strongly opposed German influence in Morocco and refused a European Conference on the subject as wholly unnecessary, was an old friend and co-worker with Clemenceau on La Justice, and had gone into diplomacy at Clemenceau’s suggestion. He had since held positions in the East and in Tunis, and he and Clemenceau were believed to be entirely at one in abjuring all adventurous colonial policy. M. Caillaux, at the head of the Department of Finance—people are apt to forget that M. Caillaux, now in gaol under serious accusation, was thus trusted by Clemenceau—was certainly not opposed to Germany, but even at that time was favourable to a close understanding with that power. Colonel Picquart, who now received his reward for having, though personally an anti-Semite, destroyed all his own professional prospects in his zeal to obtain justice for the Jew Dreyfus, was certainly as pacific a War Minister as could have been appointed. But what was more significant still, M. Briand, himself a Socialist, and the hero of the great inquiry into the separation of Church and State which had now become inevitable, was placed in a position to carry that important measure to its final vote and settlement; and M. Viviani, likewise a Socialist, became head of the new department, the Ministry of Labour. When I saw these two men, Briand, whom I remembered well as a vehement anarchist, and Viviani, who was a vigorous Socialist speaker and writer, in the Cabinet of which Clemenceau was the chief, I could not but recall the conversation I had with the French Premier sixteen years before.
Seated comfortably in his delightful library, surrounded by splendid Japanese works of art, of which at that time he was an ardent collector, M. Clemenceau had spoken very freely indeed. Of course, he knew quite well that I was no mere interviewer for Press purposes, and, indeed, I have always made it a rule to keep such conversations, except perhaps for permitted indiscretions here and there, entirely to myself. There is no need for me to enlarge upon his quick and almost abrupt delivery, his apt remarks and illustrations, his bright, clever, vigorous face and gestures. I put it to him that Socialism was the basis of the coming political party in France and that, vehement individualist as he might be himself, it was impossible for him to resist permanently the current of the time, or to remain merely a supremely powerful critic and organiser of overthrow. Sooner or later he must succumb to the inevitable and take his seat as President of Council, and to do this with any hope of success or usefulness he would have to rely in an increasing degree upon Socialist and semi-Socialist support.
To this Clemenceau answered that he was quite contented with his existing position; that he had no wish to enter upon office with its responsibilities and corrupting influence; while, as to Socialism, that could never make way in France in his day.
“Looking only at the towns,” he said, “you may think otherwise, though even there I consider the progress of Socialism is overrated. But the towns do not govern France. The overwhelming majority of French voters are country voters. France means rural France, and the peasantry of France will never be Socialists. Nobody can know them better than my family and I know them. Landed proprietors ourselves—my father’s passion for buying land to pay him three per cent. with borrowed money for which he had to pay four per cent. would have finally ruined him, but that our wholesome French law permits gentle interference in such a case—we have ever lived with and among the peasantry. We have been doctors from generation to generation, and have doctored them gratuitously, as I did myself, both in country and in town. I have seen them very close, in birth and in death, in sickness and in health, in betrothal and in marriage, in poverty and in well-being, and all the time their one idea is property; to possess, to own, to provide a good portion for the daughter, to secure a good and well dot-ed wife for the son. Always property, ownership, possession, work, thrift, acquisition, individual gain. Socialism can never take root in such a soil as this. North or south, it is just the same. Preach nationalisation of the land in a French village, and you would barely escape with your life, if the peasants understood what you meant. Come with me for a few weeks’ trip through rural France, and you will soon understand the hopelessness of Socialism here. It will encounter a personal fanaticism stronger than its own. Your Socialists are men of the town; they do not understand the men and women of the country.”
Now the same M. Clemenceau, after a long struggle side by side with the Socialist Party, first in the Dreyfus case and then in the anti-Clericalist and Separation of Church and State movement, finds that events have moved so fast, in a comparatively short space of time, that he is practically compelled to take two active Socialists into his own Cabinet. This, too, in spite of the fact that his action in calling in the troops at Courrières and insisting upon liberty for non-strikers or black-legs had turned the Socialist Party, as a party, definitely against him. No more significant proof of the advance of Socialist influence could well have been given. That it was entirely on the side of peace and a good understanding with Germany cannot be disputed.
But this did not make the Morocco affair itself any less complicated or threatening. Notwithstanding the Conference which Germany succeeded in having convoked at Algeciras, and the settlement arrived at in April, 1906, after a sitting of more than three months, the condition of Morocco itself had not improved. The fact that the Conference gave France the preference in the scheme of reforms proposed and in the political management of Morocco, against the efforts of Germany and Austria, suited neither the Sultan nor the Kaiser. Troubles arose of a serious character. The French considered themselves forced to intervene. The old antagonism broke out afresh. So much so that the French Premier spoke with more than his usual frankness in an interview with a German newspaper in November:—
“The Germans have one great fault. They show us extreme courtesy to-day and marked rudeness the day after. Before this Morocco affair, feeling in France had much improved. Many of us thought an understanding with Germany very desirable, and I freely admit your Emperor did a good deal to engender this feeling. Then, although we had dismissed Delcassé, the German press attacked us. It went so far as to declare that you were to extort from us the milliards of francs necessary to finance an Anglo-German war. . . . I do not want to have any war, and if we desire no war we necessarily wish to be on good terms with our neighbours. If, also, our relations are unsatisfactory, we are anxious to improve them. Such is my frame of mind. Moreover, if I have a chance of doing so, I shall be glad to act on these lines. Of course it is imperatively necessary for us to be always strong and ready for all eventualities. That, however, does not mean that we want war: quite the contrary. To wish for war would mean that we were mad. We could not possibly carry on a war policy. If we did, Parliament would soon turn us out, as it did Delcassé.”
Nothing could be clearer than that. And what made the pronouncement more important even than the strong but sober language used was the fact that, after as before the Conference of Algeciras, there was really a great disposition among certain sections in France to come to terms with Germany, rather than to strengthen the understanding with England. The expression of this opinion could be frequently heard among the people. It was fostered, even in the face of the German press campaign against the Clemenceau Administration, by powerful financial interests and by Clerical reactionary elements which were at this time less hostile to Germany than to England.
Throughout, however, Clemenceau stood for the Entente with the latter power as the only sound policy for his country. In this respect he was at one with the old statement of Gambetta that a breach of the alliance with England would be fatal to France. For Clemenceau, therefore, who had more than once in his career suffered so severely for his friendship for England, to state that an understanding with Germany had been seriously contemplated was a striking testimony to the immediate tendency of the time at that juncture. Whether the whole of this fitful friendliness on the side of Germany was simulated in order to foster that remarkable policy of steady infiltration of German interests, German management, and German goods into France, with far other than peaceful aims, is a question which can be much more confidently answered now than at the period when this peaceful offensive was going on. Enough to say that the Clemenceau Ministry was not, at first, at all averse from a permanent arrangement for peace with Germany, so long as English animosity was not aroused.
It must be admitted, nevertheless, that French policy in Morocco was, in the long run, quite contrary to the views on colonial affairs which Clemenceau had so strongly expressed and acted upon hitherto. Whatever excuse may be made on account of the proximity of Morocco to Algeria, and the necessity for France to protect her own countrymen and secure peace on the border, the truth remains that the French Republic was allowed by her statesmen to drift into what was virtually a national and capitalist domination of that independent country, backed up by a powerful French army. Clemenceau in his defence of these aggressions recites those familiar apologies for that sort of patriotism which consists in love of another people’s country and the determination to seize it, which we Englishmen have become so accustomed to in our own case. If we didn’t take it, somebody else would. If we leave matters as they are, endless disturbances will occur and will spread to our own territory. A protectorate must be established.
But a protectorate must have a powerful armed force behind it, or there can be no real protection. National capital is being invested under our peaceful penetration for the benefit of the protected people. The rights of investors must be safe-guarded. Our countrymen—in this instance Frenchmen—have been molested and even murdered by the barbarous folk whom we have been called upon to civilise. Such outrages cannot be permitted to go unpunished. Towns bombarded. Villages burnt. Peace re-established. More troops. “Security of life and property” ensured by a much larger army and the foundation of civilised Courts. Protection develops insensibly into possession. The familiar progression of grab is, in short, complete.
That is pretty much what went on with Morocco, whose entire independence as a sovereign State had only just been internationally acknowledged. What is more, it went on under M. Clemenceau’s own Government, consisting of the same peaceful politicians enumerated above. No doubt the action of Germany against France and French interests, on the one side, and the support by England of France and French interests, on the other, hastened the acceptance of the “white man’s burden” which her capitalists and financiers were so eager to undertake; if only to upset the schemes of the Brothers Mannesmann in the troublous Mohammedan Sultanate. But it is strange to find Clemenceau in this galley. For, unjustifiable as were the proceedings of Germany at the beginning and all through, it is now obvious that France, by her own policy, put arguments into the mouth of the peace-at-any-price and pro-German advocates; that also she played the game of the Kaiser and his unscrupulous agent Dr. Rosen. This worthy had been in the employment of Prince Radolin, who thus described him: “He is a Levantine Jew whose sole capacity is intriguing to increase his own importance.” It was disgraceful of Germany to make use of such a man to stir up Morocco against France. But it was certainly most unwise, as well as contrary to international comity, for France to put herself in the wrong by an aggressive policy in that State. Especially was this the case when such a terrible menace still overhung her Eastern frontier, and, as events proved, not a man could be spared for adventures in Morocco or elsewhere.
The war between rival Sultans and the attack upon the French settlers at Casablanca could not justify such a complete change of front. Jaurès, in fact, was in the right when he denounced the advance of General Amadé with a strong French army as a filibustering expedition, dangerous in itself and provocative towards Germany. But Clemenceau supported his Foreign Minister, Pichon, in the occupation of Casablanca, which had been heavily bombarded beforehand, and, on February 25th, declared that France did not intend to evacuate Morocco, neither did she mean to conquer that country. He had, he averred, no secrets, and, as in the matter of the anarchist rising in the South, said he was ready to resign. This was evidence of impatience, which was harmful at such a critical period in French home and foreign affairs. It looked as if Clemenceau had been so accustomed to turn out French Governments that he could not discriminate even in favour of his own! But the Chamber gave him a strong vote of confidence, and he remained at his post.
There were two important developments in foreign affairs going on during this year, 1908, of which the difficulties in Morocco, serious as they were, constituted only a side issue. The one was open and above-board: the other was known only to those who kept very closely in touch with German politics.
The first was the rapid improvement in the relations between France and Great Britain, for which Clemenceau himself and King Edward VII were chiefly responsible. We are now so accustomed to regard the Entente as part and parcel of English foreign policy that it is not easy to understand how bitter the feeling was against Great Britain which led important Frenchmen to take the view of an agreement with Germany spoken of above. English domination in Egypt, to the practical exclusion of French influence and control even over the Suez Canal; English conventions with Japan, checking, as was thought, that legitimate French expansion in Asia by which M. Jules Ferry had hoped to counterbalance the defeats of 1870-71; English settlement of the irritating Newfoundland Fisheries question; English truculence and unfairness in the infamous Boer War; English antagonism to Russia, France’s trusted ally and heavy debtor—all these things stood in the way of any cordial understanding. It may well be that only Clemenceau’s strong personal influence, supported by his nominee President Fallières, prevented steps being taken which would have been fatal to the revival of genuine good feeling between the Western Powers. The following passage in the Encyclopædia Britannica does no more than justice to Clemenceau’s services in this direction:
“M. Clemenceau, who only late in life came into office and attained it when a better understanding with England was progressing, had been throughout his long career, of all public men in all political groups, the most consistent friend of England. His presence at the head of affairs was a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French relations, so far as they could be protected by statesmanship.” This tribute in a permanent work of reference is thoroughly well deserved.
Happily, too, his efforts had been earnestly supported long before, and even quietly during, the Boer War, by Edward VII, as Prince of Wales and as King. But this very connection between the French Radical statesman and the English monarch was the subject of most virulent attacks. It was, in fact, made the groundwork of an elaborate accusation of treachery against Clemenceau, who was represented as the mere tool of Edward VII in promoting the permanent effacement of France. The King was an English Machiavelli, constantly plotting to recover for the British Empire, at the expense of France, that world-wide prestige which the miserable Boer War and the rise of German power on land and sea, in trade and in finance, had seriously jeopardised. A book by the well-known M. Flourens, written at this time to uphold that thesis, went through no fewer than five editions. Here is the pleasing picture of the late King presented for the contemplation of the Parisian populace by this virulent penman:
“Edouard VII montait sur le trône à l’age où, si l’on consulte les statistiques, 75% des rois sont déjà descendus dans la tombe. Il sortait d’une longue oisiveté pour entrer dans la vie active a l’époque où, dans toutes les carrières et fonctions publiques, les hommes font valoir leurs droits à la retraite.
“S’il y avait un conseil de revision pour les rois, comme il y en a un pour les conscrits, il eût été déclaré impropre au service.
“L’obésité déformait son corps, alourdissait sa marche, semblait, sous le développement des tissus adipeux, paralyser toute activité physique, toute force intellectuelle. Sa figure, contractée par la douleur, trahissait, par moment, les souffrances qu’une volonté de fer s’efforcait de maîtriser, pour dissimuler aux yeux de ses sujets la maladie qui, à cet instant même, menaçait sa vie.
“A voir sa corpulence maladive, on ne pouvait s’empêcher de se rappeler les paroles que Shakespeare met dans la bouche d’un de ses ancêtres, à l’adresse du fameux Falstaff, le compagnon dissolu des égarements de sa jeunesse: ’songe à travailler, a diminuer ton ventre et a grossir ton mérite—quitte ta vie dissolue! Regarde la tombe, elle ouvre, pour toi, une bouche trois fois plus large que pour les autres hommes!’
“De tous côtés, les lanceurs de prédictions, depuis le fameux archange Gabriel jusqu’à la non moins fameuse Mme. de Thèbes, s’accordaient pour entourer son avènement des plus sinistres prévisions, pour annoncer sa fin prochaine et l’imminence d’une nouvelle vacance du trône d’Angleterre.
“Symptôme plus grave! Les oracles de la science n’étaient pas moins menaçants que les prophéties des devins. Deux fois, les pompes de son couronnement durent être décommandées, deux fois les fêtes ajournées et les lampions éteints. Les hôtes princiers, convoqués a grands frais de tous les points du globe, pour participer à ces réjouissances, attendirent, dans l’angoisse, l’annonce d’une cérémonie plus lugubre.
“La volonté d’Edouard VII triumpha de toutes ces résistances. Il déclara avec une indomptable énergie que, coûte que coûte, il était décidé a ne pas descendre dans la tombe avant d’avoir posé sur sa tête, avec tout l’éclat, avec toute la solennité traditionnels, aux yeux des représentants émerveillés de tout son vaste empire, aux yeux de l’Univers jaloux, la couronne de ses Pères, sa double couronne de Roi et d’Empereur, que les mains avides de la mort semblaient vouloir lui disputer.”
His account of Edward VII reads curiously to-day, the more so when we recall the fact that M. Emile Flourens was at one time French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that, at the moment when the book first appeared, the King was frequently in Paris, and on good terms with Republicans of all sections.
After pointing out how scrupulously he had as Prince of Wales suppressed his political opinions, during his mother’s lifetime, even when his power, had he exerted it, might have been advantageous to his country, the French critic gives him full credit for having made the best of his life in many ways. He had travelled all over the world, had studied humanity and society in all shapes, had “warmed both hands before the fire of life” in every quarter of the globe. But, though his features as a private personage were familiar to everybody, he remained a sphinx, mysterious and unfathomable, even to his friends, in public affairs. He was well known to Parisians everywhere, and was as popular in working-class centres as in the most aristocratic salons. Paris was, in fact, the only city where he was at his ease and at home, where, in fact, he was himself. By far the most sympathetic Briton to Parisians who ever was in Paris, he exercised a real influence over all classes. They were kept carefully informed as to his tastes, his manners, his intimates, his vices and his debts, and were the more friendly to him on account of them. The warmest partisans of his accession, however, were his creditors, who were mortally afraid that his habits would not give him the opportunity for discharging his liabilities out of his mother’s accumulations.
The description of the position of the British Empire at the close of the Boer War was less flattering even than the personal sketch of its King and Emperor. “At this moment the astounded peoples had felt the Britannic colossus totter on its foundation, this colossus with feet of clay which weighs down too credulous nations by its bluff, by its arrogance, by rapine, by insatiable rapacity, which already grips the entire globe like a gigantic cuttle-fish and sucks its marrow through the numberless tentacles of its commerce, until the day when it shall subjugate the whole planet to its domination—always provided that it does not encounter on its way another still more powerful octopus of destruction which will attack and destroy it.”
Needless to say that this challenger of the British supremacy was the rising power of Germany. As an Englishman I admit the infamy of the Boer War, and recognise that our rule in India and Ireland has been anything but what it ought to have been. M. Clemenceau knew all that as well as we British anti-Imperialists do. But even in 1907-8 much had happened since 1900. Democracy was slowly making way in Great Britain likewise, and freedom for others would surely follow emancipation for herself. It was not to be expected that all Frenchmen should see or understand this. A nation which has under its flag a fourth of the population and more than a seventh of the habitable surface of the world can scarcely expect that another colonial country, whose colonies the British have largely appropriated, in the East and in the West, will admit the “manifest destiny” of the Union Jack to wave of undisputed right over still more territory. There was a good deal to be said, and a good deal was said, about British greed and British unscrupulousness: nor could the truth of many of the imputations be honestly denied.
It called, therefore, for all Edward VII’s extraordinary knowledge of Paris, his bonhomie, shrewd common sense, and uncanny power of “creating an atmosphere” to overcome the prejudice thus created against himself as a master of intrigue, and Clemenceau as his willing tool. Matters went so far that at one moment the King’s reception in his favourite capital seemed likely to be hostile, and might have been so, but for the admirable conduct of the high-minded, conservative patriot, M. Déroulède. But, luckily for France, Great Britain and the world at large, these difficulties had been overcome; and almost the only good feature in the trouble with Morocco was the vigorous diplomatic help France received from England—a good feature because it helped to wipe away the bitter memories of the past from the minds of the French people. The extremely cordial reception of President Fallières and M. Clemenceau in London, and the King’s own exceptional courtesy at all times to M. Delcassé, whom the French public regarded as the victim of German dictatorial demands, tended in the same direction. All the world could see that Clemenceau’s Administration had so far strengthened the Anglo-French Entente as to have brought it almost to the point of an alliance: nor thereafter was the Triple Entente with Russia, as opposed to the Triple Alliance, very far off.
At this same time, however, matters were going so fast in Germany towards an open breach that the only wonder is that the truth of the situation was not disclosed, and that Germany, quite ready, and determined to be more ready, for war at any moment, was allowed to continue her policy of pretended peace.
England and, to a large extent, France still believed in the pacific intentions of the Fatherland. Yet a meeting was held in Berlin of the heads of all the departments directly or indirectly connected with war, at which the Kaiser delivered a speech which could only mean one thing: that Germany and her Allies would enter upon war so soon as the opportunity presented itself, and the preparations, including the completion of the Kiel Canal (or perhaps before that great work had been accomplished), gave promise of a short and decisive campaign. Rumours of this address reached those who were kept informed as to what was being contemplated by the Kaiser, his Militarist Junker entourage and the Federal Council. Unfortunately, when the statement was challenged, a strong denial was issued, and the pacifists and pro-Germans, honest and dishonest, laughed at the whole story as a baseless scare.
How far it was baseless could be learnt from deeds that spoke much louder than words. Even thus early great accumulations of munitions of war were being made at Cologne, and the military sidings and railway equipments, which could only serve for warlike and not commercial purposes, were being completed. Six years before the war, all the work necessary for an aggressive descent on the West and for the passage through Belgium had been done.
Europe was comfortably seated over a powder magazine. M. Clemenceau might well discuss in London, when he came over to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s funeral, as Premier of France, how many hundred thousand men, fully equipped for war, England could land within a fortnight in North-Eastern France, should a sudden and unprovoked attack be made. But he got no satisfactory answer.
It is evident, therefore, that what with strikes, anarchist outbreaks, the troubles in Morocco, the menacing attitude of Germany—who, as Clemenceau put it, said, “Choose between England and us”—and the attempts to form an enduring compact with England, Clemenceau as President of Council, with all his energy, determination and versatility, had enough on his hands to occupy all his thoughts. But this did not exhaust the catalogue of his labours during his term of premiership.
CHAPTER XVI
END OF CLEMENCEAU’s MINISTRY
It is easy to be tolerant of the Catholic Church and Catholics in a Protestant country; though even in Great Britain, and of course only too sadly in the North of Ireland, there are times when the bitterness inherited from the past makes itself felt, on slight provocation, in the present. At such times of sectarian outburst we get some idea ourselves of what religious hatred really means, and can form a conception of the truly fraternal eagerness to immolate the erring brethren, nominally of the same Christian creed, which animated the true believers of different shades of faith, whether Orthodox or Arian, Catholic or Huguenot, in days gone by. Those who chance to remember what Catholicism was in Italy, the Papal States, or Naples, two generations ago—the Church then claiming for itself rights of jurisdiction and sanctuary, outside the common law—those who understand what has gone on in Spain quite recently, can also appreciate the feeling of Frenchmen who, within the memory of their fellow-citizens still living, and even themselves in some degree under the Empire, had suffered from Clerical interference and repression, when the chance of getting rid of State ecclesiasticism was presented to them at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Church had entirely lost touch with the temper of the time. Though it may have been impossible for the Vatican to accept the brilliant suggestion that the great men of science should all be canonised and the discoverers of our day should receive the red hat, as secular Cardinals, there was no apparent reason why a form of super-naturalism which had lived into and out of two forms of human slavery, and was passing through a third, should have been unable to adapt itself in some degree to modern thought. A creed which, in its most successful period, had conveniently absorbed ancestor-worship as part of its theological propaganda in China, need not, one would have thought, have found it indispensably necessary to the salvation of its votaries to cleave to all the old heresies, inculcated in days when criticism of the incomprehensible and unbelievable involved the unpleasant possibility of being tortured to death, or burnt alive.
Nor certainly could its worst enemy have predicted that the infallibility of the Pope would be invented and thrust upon the faithful, as a doctrine whose acceptance was essential to their spiritual welfare, in a period when it was being proved every day and in all departments of human knowledge that what was universally believed to be a certainty yesterday is discounted as a fallacy to-morrow. Nothing in all the long controversy about the Separation of Church and State in France produced a greater or more permanent effect upon intelligent Frenchmen than this preposterous claim of Papal infallibility. Explain it away, whittle down its significance by any amount of Jesuitical sophistry, and still this declaration that a mere man could never be mistaken, because he was the Vicegerent of God, shook the whole framework of Catholic domination, so far as any participation of the State in the matter was concerned. And the career and character of many of the Pope’s predecessors rendered the dogma more utterly preposterous to all who had even a smattering of the history of the Vatican than might otherwise have been the case. That John XXIII should have been infallible threw a strange light upon Catholic morality in its highest grades. Yet if Pius infallible, why not John?
What, however, had more practical effect in turning the scale of public opinion against the Papacy, its nominees and believers as servants and paid employees of the State, was the fact that in all the practical affairs of French life the Catholic Church, as represented by its ecclesiastical hierarchy, had taken the wrong side. Theoretical or theological difficulties would never have upset the regard of the French people for the National Church. But, time after time, the Clerical party ranged itself with the reactionists, throwing over all its wisest counsellors, whose devotion to the Church had never been questioned, when they advised standing by the cause of the people, and relied solely upon the judgment of bigoted Jesuits. Zola, whom these creatures hated, showed in his “Germinal,” thorough-going materialist as he was, what a noble part a priest of the Church could play, when the young ecclesiastic stands between the strikers who form part of his flock and the soldiers who are about to fire upon them. Individuals might thus rise up to and above the level of their creed, but the Church in France, as a whole, was represented by men of God who were a good deal worse than men of Belial. Nor was this all. They pursued a policy of relentless obscurantism. Their object was not to develop education but to stunt its growth: not to teach the truth but to foster lies. So manifest was the determination to take no high view of their duties that such a man as the venerable Dr. Leplay, a Catholic of Catholics whose religious convictions did not prevent him from becoming a master of the theories of Marx, lamented that his Church was proving itself wholly incompetent to cope with or to stem what, as a Christian, he recognised was the rising tide of infidelity.
Of this infidelity, the free-thinker and champion of secularism, Clemenceau, was a type and a prominent example. He saw the Church as a pernicious influence. His feeling towards it was even more vehement than that of Voltaire or Gambetta. “Écrasez l’infâme!” “Le cléricalisme voilà l’ennemi!” If thought was to be free, if Frenchmen were to be emancipated from superstition and intolerance, the power of the Catholic Church must be weakened and, if possible, destroyed. For him, in this matter, compromise was impossible. His begettings, his surroundings, his education, his profession, his political life all made him relentless on this point. Behind the Duc de Broglie, behind the persecutor of Dreyfus, behind the pretender Boulanger, behind reaction in all its forms hid the sinister figure of the unscrupulous power, working perinde ac cadaver against all that was noblest in France, against all that was highest in the ideals of the Republic. And if Clemenceau knew well that under all circumstances and at every turn of events the Catholic Church was the enemy of France and of himself, the Church had no doubt at all that Clemenceau was its most formidable foe in French political life.
Long before and after his defeat in the Var, in 1893, the Catholics never hesitated to join with their enemies, if only this combination would help them to overthrow Clemenceau. Whatever differences the French Premier might have with the Socialists on strikes and social affairs generally, on the matter of the separation of Church and State they were heartily at one. In fact, Clemenceau was even more uncompromising than they. The whole texture of his thought revolted against showing any consideration for a Church which, from his point of view, had been for centuries the chief and most formidable enemy of progress in France and the most capable organiser of attacks upon all democratic and Republican ideals.
The greatest names in French history are the names of those whom the Catholic Church has persecuted or martyred. Its leaders would resort to the same tactics now, and have only failed to do so because the power has slipped from their hands as the truths of science and the wider conceptions of human destiny have permeated the minds of the masses. There was no likelihood that, as Prime Minister, Clemenceau, the free-thinker and materialist, would be inclined to modify his opinions in favour of what might be regarded as statesmanlike concessions to the Right on ecclesiastical matters. The danger lay in the other direction. It was one of the remarkable incidents, in connection with his first tenure of the Presidency of the Council, that the final settlement of this important question of the relations of Church and State should come when he himself was at the head of the French Government.
When M. Briand’s measure for the complete laicisation of the Church so far as the State was concerned was introduced into the Chamber, he pointed out in his report that the proposal for complete separation was not dictated by hatred or political prejudice, nor did it involve anything at all approaching to the change in the relations of property when, at the time of the French Revolution, the Church owned one-third of the total wealth of France. This Act was the assertion of definite principles which were necessary in order to secure for the State full mastery in its own country. Freedom of worship for all. No State payment to ministers of any creed. Equitable management of Church property taken over by the towns and Communes.
The Bill, after considerable debate in the National Assembly, was passed by a large majority. In the Senate M. Clemenceau denounced the settlement as too favourable to the clergy. His criticism was as mordant as usual. But he neither proposed an amendment nor voted against the Bill, which passed the Senate without even the alteration of a word, by a greater proportional majority than it did in the Lower House.
This, it might have been thought, would have been the end of the matter for Clemenceau. He had done his full share towards putting the Catholic Church out of action, and might have been contented, as Premier, with any further settlement that M. Briand, the member of his own Cabinet responsible for this important measure, and M. Jaurès, the powerful leader of the Socialist Party, might come to in regard to the properties of the Church, about which there had been much bitter feeling. But Clemenceau has the defects of his qualities. The Pope had refused to permit his clergy to avail themselves of the excellent terms French Republicans, Radicals and Socialists had been ready to accord to them. He had issued two Encyclicals which could certainly be read as intended to stir up trouble in the Republic—which, in fact, had brought about some disorder. When, therefore, everything seemed arranged on this prickly question of valuations and appropriations, Clemenceau could not resist the temptation to show the unsatisfactory nature of the entire business to him. It was one of those moments of impulse when “the Tiger” could not refrain from giving free play to his propensities, at the expense of his own kith and kin, failing the presence of his enemies to maul. It was thought that the Ministry must come down; for both M. Briand and M. Jaurès took this outburst amiss. But a conversation in the lobby brought the great irreconcilable very sensibly to a compromise, and Clemenceau failed to give the Catholics the malicious enjoyment they anticipated. It was a strange ebullition which exhibited the perennial youth of this statesman of the unexpected.
In other directions than social affairs and Morocco, where he unfortunately relied upon the Right more than upon the Left in the Assembly for the support of his Administration, Clemenceau proved that his claim to act as the advocate of reform as well as the upholder of order was no pretence.
Whatever may have been its alleged deficiencies in some respects, Clemenceau’s first Ministry was by far the most Radical Government that had held office under the Republic. And the boldness and decision which he and his Cabinet displayed in dealing with what they regarded as Anarchist action—it is fair, perhaps, to recall that Briand himself had first achieved fame as an Anarchist—on the part of the workers, they also put in force, when high-placed officers, with a powerful political backing, tried to impose their will upon the State. Thus the navy, as has too often happened in French annals, had been allowed to drift into a condition which was actually dangerous, in view of what was going on in the German dockyards, and the probable combination of the Austrian and Italian fleets, with German help, in the Mediterranean. At the same time, admirals were in the habit of acting pretty much as they saw fit in regard to the fleets and vessels under their control. Consequently, important men-of-war had been wrecked time after time, and more than one serious accident had occurred. In almost every case also, so powerful was the esprit de corps, in the wrong sense, that the officers in command at the time were exonerated from blame. There was, therefore, a strong public opinion in favour of something being done to improve both the fleet itself and the spirit which animated its commanders. Admiral Germinat, a popular officer with, as appears, a genuine loyalty to his profession and a desire to remedy its defects, thought proper to write a very strong letter to a local service newspaper, making a fierce attack upon the general management of the navy, without having given any notice of his views either to the Minister of Marine or the Prime Minister.
Thereupon, M. Clemenceau at once put him on the retired list. Immediately a great hubbub arose. The very same people who had approved of Clemenceau’s policy, in regard to those whom they called anarchist workmen, were now in full cry after the President of Council, for daring to deal thus drastically with a man who, however his good intentions may have been and however distinguished his career, was beyond all question an anarchist admiral. The matter became a question of the day. It was brought up in the Senate amid all sorts of threats to the stability of the Government. M. Clemenceau, as usual, took up the challenge boldly himself. His speech was so crushing that the whole indictment against the Ministry collapsed. The evidence of indiscipline on the Admiral’s part, not only on this occasion but on several others, and the declaration that Admiral Germinat would not be excluded from the navy, when he had purged his offence and when his services would be advantageous to the country, settled the matter and strengthened the Ministry.
By acquiring the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest and combining it with other Government railways, the Ministry made the first important step towards nationalisation of railways. Clemenceau defended this measure on grounds that would be, and were, accepted by Socialists; but events have shown in this particular case that a good deal more is needed than the establishment of another department of State bureaucracy to render the railways a national property really beneficial to the community. As carried out in practice, the acquisition of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest has rather set back than advanced the general policy of railway nationalisation in France.
A more important measure was that introduced by M. Caillaux and, amazing to say, passed through the Assembly, for a graduated income-tax. How this majority was obtained has always been one of the puzzles of that period. There is no country in the world where a tax upon incomes is more unpopular than in France, and from that day to this, in spite of the desperate need for funds which has arisen, this tax has never yet become law. But it was a genuine financial reform and creditable to the Government. The Socialists supported it, though in itself it is only a palliative measure of justice in purely bourgeois finance. From this period dates the close alliance between the Socialists as revolutionaries and M. Caillaux as the adventurous financier and director of the Société Générale, which later produced such strange results in French politics, and intensified Socialist hatred for M. Clemenceau. But at this time M. Caillaux, with the full concurrence and support of the Prime Minister, was attacking all the bourgeois interests in their tenderest place. The wonder is that such a policy did not involve the immediate fall of the Ministry. Quite possibly, had Clemenceau remained in office, it might have become a permanent feature in French finance. Boldness and boldness and boldness again is sometimes as successful in politics as it is in oratory. Although, therefore, to attack pecuniary “interests” of a large section of the nation is a far more hazardous enterprise than to denounce eminent persons or to overthrow Ministries, this move might then have been successful if well followed up.
On March 8th, in this year 1909, Clemenceau unveiled a statue to the Radical Minister Floquet, with whom he had worked for many years. The revolutionary Socialists announced their intention of demonstrating against him on this occasion. They objected to him and his administration on account of the expedition to Morocco—in which Clemenceau had certainly run counter to all his previous policy on colonial affairs—on account of cosmopolitan finance, Russian loans and the shooting down of workmen on strike. It was the last that occasioned the bitterest feeling against him, and this was really not surprising.
Clemenceau had made the workers’ liberty to strike in combination secure, but he did not use the power of the State against the employers, who, in the mines especially, could on his own showing be considered only as profiteering trustees under the State. Also, he refused to all Government servants the right to combine or to strike. This disinclination to take the capitalists by the throat, while using the official power to restrain the workers, had a great deal more to do with the menacing attitude of the Socialists than Morocco or finance. However, there was no disturbance. Clemenceau took advantage of the occasion to deliver a speech which was in effect a powerful defence of the idealist Republicanism of the eighteenth century against the revolutionary Socialism of the twentieth.
The French Revolution is deified by nearly all advanced Frenchmen. Its glorification is as much the theme of Jaurès and Vaillant as of Gambetta and Clemenceau. Bourgeois revolution as it turned out to be, owing to economic causes which neither individualists nor collectivists could control, orators of the Revolution overlook facts and cleave to ideals. Thus Clemenceau told his audience that the French Revolution was a prodigious tragedy, which seemed to have been the work of demi-gods, of huge Titans who had risen up from far below to wreak Promethean vengeance on the Olympians of every grade. The French Revolution was the inevitable culmination of the deadly struggle between the growing forces of liberty and the worn-out forces of autocracy without an autocrat. Yet, said he, the Revolution itself was made by men and women inspired with the noblest ideals, but educated, in their own despite, by the Church to methods of domination, condemned also by the desperate resistance of immeasurable powers to prompt and pitiless action followed by corresponding deeds of brutal reaction. The people who had just shed torrents of blood for the freedom of the world passed, without audible protest, from Robespierre to Napoleon. Yet the Revolution is all of a piece. The Republic moves steadily on as one indissoluble, vivifying force. Compare the France of the panic of 1875 with the France of to-day. Her position is the result of understandings and alliances and friendships based on the authority of her armed force. France has resumed her position in Europe, in spite of a few weak and mean-spirited Frenchmen, whose opposition only strengthened the patriotic enthusiasm of the nation at large. The history of the Republican Party had been one long consecration of the watchwords of the French Revolution. Liberty of the Press. Liberty of public meeting. Liberty of association. Liberty of trade unions. Liberty of minds by public schools. Liberty of thought and religion. Liberty of secular instruction. Liberty of State and worship. Laws had been passed for relief of the sick. A day of rest had been prescribed for all. Workmen’s compensation for injury had been made imperative. The Income Tax had been passed by the Assembly. “The Revolution is in effect one and indivisible, and, with unbroken persistence, the work of the Republic goes on.” A fine record! So argued Clemenceau.
Notwithstanding all the mistakes which Socialists so bitterly resented, this was a great victory for the Republicans and for the Administration of which Clemenceau was the head. Not the least important claim to national recognition of good service done was the establishment of the Ministry of Labour, over which Viviani, the well-known Socialist, presided. The pressure of events, as well as the pressure of the Socialists themselves, might well have pushed the Radical-Socialist Premier farther along the Socialist path.
Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, and, from more than one point of view, for the nation, M. Clemenceau had another of those strange fits of impatience and irascibility which he had exhibited more than once before. The political antagonism between M. Clemenceau and M. Delcassé was of long standing, and was intensified by personal bitterness. During his tenure of the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs, a position which he had held for seven years, in successive Administrations of widely different character, M. Delcassé had been subjected to vehement attacks by the leader of the Radical Left. His policy in relation to Morocco had been specially obnoxious to M. Clemenceau. That policy M. Clemenceau had most severely criticised at the time when M. Delcassé was stoutly resisting that extension of German influence in Morocco which led to the Foreign Minister’s downfall and the Conference of Algeciras, that M. Delcassé had refused to accept. The relations between the two statesmen could scarcely have been worse; but hitherto the Radical leader had carried all before him.
Now came a dramatic climax to the long struggle. A debate arose in the French Assembly on the condition of the navy. It was admittedly not what it ought to have been. M. Picard, the Minister of Marine, made a conciliatory reply to interpellations on the subject of promised immediate reforms and even complete reconstitution. But this was not enough for M. Delcassé. The Assembly was not hostile to M. Clemenceau, and certainly had no desire to oust his Administration; yet M. Delcassé’s direct attack upon the Premier brought the whole debate down to the level of a personal question. Nevertheless, what he said was quite legitimate criticism. M. Clemenceau had been a member of the Commission of Inquiry on the Navy, and could not get rid of his responsibility for the present state of things. The great critic of everybody and everything was open to exposure himself. He who had enjoyed twenty-five years of running amuck at the whole political world was now being called to account in person as an administrator. So far M. Delcassé. Clemenceau retorted that M. Delcassé had himself been on the Naval Commission of 1904. He was full of great policies here, there and everywhere. What had they resulted in? The humiliation of France and the Conference of Algeciras. Clemenceau was evidently much incensed. The fact that he had been obliged, as he thought, by Germany’s action, to follow M. Delcassé’s Moroccan tactics rendered the position exceptionally awkward. It raised the whole question of M. Delcassé’s foreign policy. This gave him a great advantage when it came to direct political warfare. For M. Delcassé was considered, even by those who opposed him, as the victim of German hatred, since he had refused to surrender to German threats and was sacrificed simply because France dared not face a war. So when he recounted his agreement with Spain, his agreement with Italy, his agreement—“too long delayed”—with England, his mediation in the Spanish-American War and his Treaties of Arbitration, the Assembly went with him. Then, too, his assaults upon Clemenceau raised the fighting spirit on Delcassé’s side. The feeling was: “This time Clemenceau is getting as good as he brings.” The Prime Minister has not done his duty either as President of the Inquiry or as President of Council. “I say to him as he said to Jules Ferry: ‘Get out. We won’t discuss with you the great interests of this nation.’”
Very good sword-play. But had Clemenceau kept cool, as he certainly would have done on the duel ground, there might have been no harm done. However, he burst out into furious denunciation, exasperated by the ringing cheers which greeted his opponent’s conclusion. It was M. Delcassé’s fault that France had to go to Algeciras. M. Delcassé would have carried things with a high hand. “But the army was not ready, the navy was not ready. I have not humiliated France: M. Delcassé has humiliated her.” A purely personal note, disclosing facts that were the more bitter to the Assembly inasmuch that they were true. It was indecent—that was the sensation that ran round the House—for a Premier thus to expose the weakness of his country on a personal issue, no matter what provocation he may have received. The hostile vote, therefore, was given against Clemenceau himself, not against his Government, and he promptly resigned.
Had he desired to bring about his own overthrow he would have acted precisely as he did; and some thought that this was his intention. It was an unworthy conclusion to a Premiership which, whatever its shortcomings, had done extremely good work for the Republic, and to a Government which had lasted longer than any French Administration since the downfall of the Empire. The character and leadership of the Ministry under M. Briand, which succeeded Clemenceau’s Cabinet, proved that only by his own fault had he ensured his official downfall.
As usual, he turned round at once to other work, and accepted an engagement to speak throughout South America, publishing a pleasant record of his experiences in an agreeably written book. The Prime Minister of yesterday was the genial lecturer the day after.
Note.—It was said at the time that M. Briand’s intrigues in the lobbies were the real cause of Clemenceau’s defeat and resignation. Lately this has been confirmed to me on good authority. At any rate, M. Briand benefited. It was he who succeeded his chief.
H. M. H.