CHAPTER XVII
CLEMENCEAU AND GERMANY
Clemenceau flung himself out of office in an unreasonable fit of temper. A man of his time of life, at sixty-eight years of age, with his record behind him, had no right to have any personal temper at all, when the destinies of his country had been placed in his hands. Probably he would admit this himself to-day. But, during his exceptionally strenuous period of office, he had, as we have seen, more than once shown an impulsiveness and even an irritability that were not consonant with his general disposition. Throughout, there appeared to be an inclination on his part to take opposition and criticism too much to heart. As if, in fact, the great Radical overthrower of opportunism was annoyed at being compelled, as all administrations must be, to adopt to some extent a policy of opportunism himself. His outburst against all compromise with the Church was one instance of this. His uncalled-for resignation on account of M. Delcassé’s attack was another. This might well have been the end of his official experiences. Certainly no one would have ventured to predict that eight years later would come the crowning achievement of his remarkable career. His own remark on leaving office was not calculated to encourage his personal adherents or to give his country confidence in his leadership. “I came in with an umbrella, I go out with a stick,” was all very well as the epigram of a journalist: it was too flippant a remark for a serious statesman such as Clemenceau had shown himself to be. But the time was not far off when all his main policy, as man of affairs, politician, and as publicist would be overwhelmingly justified. As we have seen, Clemenceau was all his life strongly opposed to colonial expansion. His action with regard to Morocco, apparently so contrary to this, arose from an even stronger motive, his desire to build up French defence against Germany on every side.
But his general distrust of colonisation by conquest in Egypt, China, Madagascar, and elsewhere had been based upon France’s need for using all her strength and all her resources to build up the power of the French Republic within the limits of France. This is true of all nations at a period when the power of man over nature is increasing so rapidly in every department: perhaps, properly understood, in agriculture most of all, when science is capably applied to production on the land. That is to say, that even in countries such as England, where the cry of over-population is so frequently raised, and where the cult of colonisation and emigration has been exalted to the position of a fetish, it would be far better to devote attention to the creation of wealth at home than to the development of waste lands, however fertile, abroad. Concentration of population, given adequate regulation of employment in the interests of the whole people, and attention to the requirements of space, air and health, is not only devoid of danger but is an element in national prosperity—“nothing being more plain than that men in proper labour and employment are capable of earning more than a living,” as John Bellers wrote more than two hundred years ago; and “a nation wherein are eight millions of people is more than twice as rich as the same scope of land wherein are but four,” as Petty wisely stated, about the same date.
If this was so obviously true at the end of the seventeenth century, it is tenfold, not to say a hundredfold, more certain in the twentieth, having regard to the marvellous discoveries and inventions since made and still but partially applied in every direction. But France is the land where such considerations are most decisive in dealing with the basis of national polity. France has enormous advantages in regard to soil, climate, the industrious habits and skill of her people, and the consequent monopoly on the world market of whole branches of commerce, where taste and luxury have to be gratified. Moreover, she possesses a source of income unparalleled in Europe and scarcely worth noting elsewhere, except in the case of Italy. I calculate that France receives, one year with another, from visitors who come thither, merely to see and to spend, an amount, by way of profit, of not less than seventy millions sterling. This large sum alone, if used for enhancing the productiveness of the French soil and French industry generally, would immensely benefit the people in every respect. French thrift, again, had piled up out of the products of industry immense pecuniary accumulations. There could have been no better investment of these funds possible than the improvement of the defences of France against invasion, the completion of her railway and canal system, the development of her mines, so greatly coveted by her aggressive neighbour, the concentration of her military and naval forces at home, instead of scattering any portion of them abroad, the expenditure upon thorough education and scientific agricultural and industrial experiments. All this even Imperialist Frenchmen can see now.
So with regard to Russia. The alliance of the French Republic with the Empire of Russia gave France, apparently, a better position in Europe, the pusillanimous and short-sighted English statesmen having rejected an alliance which was afterwards forced upon Great Britain when wholly unprepared for war. Here also Clemenceau’s views were justified by the event. The close connection between a democratic Republic and an autocratic Empire put France in an unenviable moral position before the world. More materially serious than this ill-fated combination, ethically, was the necessity imposed upon the French of lending continually to Russia, until the total amount of the Russian loans held in France amounted to many hundreds of millions sterling.
Such huge sums, again, would have been far more advantageously spent at home than in building strategical and other railways, and financing gold and other mines, in the vast Muscovite Empire. Financiers gained largely by these loans. But the peasants and small bourgeoisie of France were unknowingly dependent for their interest upon a poverty-stricken agricultural population, which could not possibly continue to pay the large sum due yearly on this amount to their Western creditors without utter ruin. Thus unsound finance followed hard on the heels of more than doubtful policy, and France was the weaker and the poorer for both.
This was all the more fatal to real French interests, inasmuch that, at the same time, the home population of the Republic was slowly decreasing, while the population of her threatening rival, Germany, was steadily growing, and the wealth of the German Empire, both agricultural and mineral, was likewise rapidly expanding with every decade. Consequently, the position of France was becoming more and more precarious, and the relative strength on the two sides of the frontier less and less favourable to the Republic. It must be admitted, under such circumstances, that those who favoured a Russian alliance, in spite of all its manifest drawbacks, had a great deal to say for themselves. But that Great Britain should have failed to see that the declension of French power was a peril to herself, long before the Entente was brought about by Edward VII, and that a pacific understanding alone was not sufficient to ensure the maintenance of peace, is a truly marvellous instance of the blindness of British statesmanship! Only the phenomenal good luck that has so far attended the United Kingdom hindered our governing classes from landing this country, as well as the French, in overwhelming disaster. How narrow the escape was is not yet fully understood.
Clemenceau was at all times in favour of an Anglo-French offensive and defensive alliance, and he clung to this policy in the face of the most serious discouragement from abroad and, as has been seen, at the cost of vitriolic misrepresentation and hatred at home. It was in vain, however, that for many years he preached this political doctrine. Even when the relations between the two countries were greatly improved, the very proper Liberal and Radical and Labour dislike in England of the entanglement with Czarist Russia rendered the close combination which seemed so essential to all who, like Clemenceau himself, knew what was really going on in Germany, exceedingly difficult to bring about.
The terrific war has thrown into high relief facts always discernible except by those who would not see. Here Clemenceau’s own bitter experience of the war of 1870-71, and his yearly visits to Austria, enabled him to form a clearer conception of the real policy of Germany and the ruthless brutality which underlies modern Teutonic culture than any of his contemporaries. It is no longer doubted that the Franco-German war was welcomed by Prince Bismarck, and made inevitable by him, in order to crush France and ensure German military supremacy in Europe. Bismarck himself made no secret of the manner in which he had deceived Benedetti at Ems by a forged telegram; and the refusal of the Germans to make a reasonable peace with France immediately after Sedan was conclusive evidence of what was really intended. During the campaign, also, the Germans resorted to the same hideous methods of warfare on land, on a smaller scale, which have horrified the entire civilised world, on land and on sea, during the great war which commenced forty-four years later.
All this Clemenceau himself saw. While, therefore, in his speeches and writings, he never shut out the possibility that the people of Germany, rising superior to their militarist rulers, might come to terms for permanent peace with the people of France, he at the same time cherished no illusions whatever as to the policy of those military rulers, and the small probability that German Social-Democracy would be able to thwart the designs of the German aggressionists. Unfortunately, in France, as in Great Britain, a considerable section of all classes, but especially of the working class, represented by Labour Unions and Socialists, would not believe that at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century any great civilised power could be harbouring such designs as those attributed to Germany. Vaillant, for example, who, like Clemenceau, had seen the horrors inflicted upon France in the war of 1870, was vehement on that side. So enamoured was he of peace that he never lost a chance of assuring Germany that under no circumstances would the French Republic go to war. He advocated a general strike, in all countries affected, should a rupture of peace be threatened; entirely regardless of the fact that the Social-Democrats themselves had declared that such a strike was absolutely impossible in Germany itself.
The same with Jaurès. Not only did this great Socialist believe that peace might be maintained by concessions to Germany; but, although in favour of “the Armed Nation” for France herself, for the purpose of defending her against a German invasion, he actually came over to London and addressed a great meeting, called by anarchist-pacifists who were all strongly in favour of the reduction of the British fleet. That fleet which, as Bebel himself put it, was the only counterbalance in Europe for Germany herself against Prussian militarism and Junkerdom, Jaurès spoke of with regret as a provocation to war! Germany could, in fact, always rely in all countries upon a large number of perfectly honest pro-Germans, and a lesser proportion who had purely financial considerations in view, to oppose any policy which was directed against the spread of German domination. This was the mania of anarchist-pacifism and anti-patriotism which Clemenceau, both in and out of office, did his utmost to expose and resist. Honesty of purpose could be no excuse whatever for fatuity of action.
Clemenceau, therefore, from the moment when he gave up the Premiership, lost no chance of inculcating the need for vigorous preparation. France must be ready to meet a German assault by land and by sea. When the time came she was not ready on either element, and without the help in finance, in munitions, in clothing, and by arms, on land and on the ocean, at once given by England—whom Clemenceau always upheld as the friend of the Republic—France would have been overrun and crushed, before she could possibly have obtained aid from elsewhere. In spite of the Franco-German agreement of 1909, the danger of such an attack in 1911 was very great: so much so that war was then commonly expected, and was only averted because Germany thought she would be in a more commanding position to carry out her predetermined policy three or four years later. The Franco-German Convention relating to Morocco, of November 4th, 1911, after the Agadir difficulty, was no better than a pretence. It was not intended, in good faith, to ensure a permanent peace, so far as Germany was concerned. This Clemenceau felt sure of, though the treaty was by no means unfavourable to France. He was ready to make all sacrifices, however mortifying, provided only a genuine treaty of peace and understanding between the two peoples could be secured. But this must not be done blindly. It must be an integral part of a serious national policy.
Therefore, speaking in the Senate on the 12th February, 1912, in opposition to the treaty with Germany about Morocco, he went on: “We shall make every effort to give fresh proofs of our goodwill—we have given enough and to spare already during the past forty years—in order that the consequences of this treaty may fructify under conditions worthy of the dignity of the two peoples; but we must know what the other party to the treaty is about, what are his intentions, what he thinks, says, proposes to do, and what signs of goodwill he likewise has vouchsafed. That is the question we must have the courage to ask ourselves. This question I deal with at my own risk and peril, without being concerned as to what I have to say, because I have at heart no bad feeling, no hatred, to use the right word, towards the German people. I want no provocation; firmly resolved as I am to do nothing to sacrifice a vestige, however trifling, of our capacity to win if attacked, I am equally convinced that peace is not only desirable but necessary for the development of French ideas in the domain of civilisation. . . . The German people won two great victories which changed the equilibrium of Europe, in 1866 and in 1870. . . . We then knew, we had the actual proof in our hands, that, if the enemy had occupied Paris, the capital of France would have been reduced to ashes. Prince Bismarck, in reply to the expostulations of Jules Favre, declared that the German troops must enter at one of the gates, ‘because I do not wish, when I get home, that a man who has lost a leg or an arm should be able to say to his comrades, pointing to me: That fellow you see there is the man who prevented me from entering Paris.’ When Jules Favre said that the German Army had glory enough without that, M. Bismarck retorted, ‘Glory! we don’t use that word.’ The German, so far as I can judge of him, is above all the worshipper of force, and rarely misses an opportunity of saying so; but where he differs from the Latin is that his first thought is to make use of this force. As the vast economic development of the Empire is a perpetual temptation in this respect, he wants the French to understand that behind every German trader there stands an army of five millions of men. That is at the bottom of the whole thing.” Moreover, he continued, having pocketed a fine indemnity last time, Germany is greedy for a much bigger one now. “Even quite lately the German Press has never wearied of proclaiming that France shall pay out of her milliards the cost of building the new German fleet. That is the frame of mind of Germany, that is the truth which clearly appears in your treaty: Germany thinks first and foremost of using to advantage her glory and her force.
“But this is not all. She has conquered her unity by force, by iron, by blood; she has so fervently yearned for this unity—nothing more natural—that now she wants to apply it; she wishes to spread her surplus population over the world. She finds herself compelled, therefore, by a fatality from which she cannot escape, to exercise pressure upon her neighbours which will compel them to give her the economic outlets she needs. . . . There is always land for an owner who wishes to round off his estate. There are always nations to be attacked by a warrior-nation which would conquer other peoples. I am not here for the purpose of criticising the German people, I am trying to describe their state of mind towards us. . . .
“And now what of us, the French people? The people of France are a people of idealism, of criticism, of indiscipline, of wars, of revolutions. Our character is ill adapted for continuous action; doubtless the French people have magnificent impulses, but, as the poet says, their height has ever been measured by the depth of their fall.”
After a survey of “the terrible year” and its results, the orator recounts what difficult work it was that Frenchmen had to carry out after the collapse. It was not only that they had to change their Government, but this Government must be taught how to govern itself.
“That has created a hard situation for us. We are absorbed in this great task. We hope to bring it to a successful conclusion. The intervention of public opinion to-day in its own affairs, calmly, soberly, without a word of braggadocio, that is one of the best signs that France has yet given.
“The work we have done must be judged not by what we see but by the ideas, the spirit that we have breathed into the heart of all French citizens.”
After giving conclusive proof that in 1875, in the Schnäbele affair, as well as at Tangier, Morocco and Casablanca, Germany’s policy had been to wound, weaken and irritate France, Clemenceau wound up as follows:
“In all good faith we desire peace, we are eager for peace because we need it in order to build up our country. But if war is forced upon us we shall be there! The difficulty between Germany and ourselves is this: Germany believes the logical consequence of her victory is domination. We do not believe that the logical consequence of our defeat is vassalage. We are peaceful but we are not subjugated. We do not countersign the decree of abdication and downfall issued by our neighbours. We come of a great history and we mean to continue to be worthy of it. The dead have created the living: the living will remain faithful to the dead.”
This great speech was prophetic. Clemenceau knew what were the real intentions of Germany. It was this fact that made him so bitter against all who, honest, patriotic and self-sacrificing as they might be, were in favour of weakening France in the hour of her greatest danger. His warning against the financiers who were so solicitous that foreign policy should be guided by manipulators of loans, interest and discounts was also specially appropriate at a time when German influence was becoming dominant in many of the banks and pecuniary coteries of Paris. Such warnings were also timely in view of the strange hallucinations—or worse—which then dominated English politicians.
For it was in this same year that Lord Haldane, having reduced the English artillery, full of sublime confidence in the rulers of Germany, returned from Berlin to tell us through Mr. Asquith and Viscount Grey that never were the relations between Germany and England better! It was in this same year, too, that Mr. Lloyd George and the whole Radical Party were convinced that Great Britain might safely reduce her armaments on land and on sea, and the Unionists themselves scarcely dared to take up the challenge. It was in this same year, again, that nearly all the leaders of the Labour Party convinced themselves that the Germans had the best of good feeling towards France and England. Having been most artistically and hospitably “put through” in the Fatherland, they returned to England brimful of zeal against all who, knowing Germany and Germans well for some fifty years, could not take the asseverations of the Kaiser, or of his trusted friend Lord Haldane, at their face value: a value which this legal nobleman admitted a few years later he knew at the time to be illusory, and not in accordance with what he then declared to be the truth.
Clemenceau did not condescend to such shameless falsification. Whatever mistakes he made, from the Socialist and anti-Imperialist point of view, in matters of domestic importance, or concerning Morocco, where the danger of France from the other side of the frontier had to be considered, whether in office or out of it, he treated his countrymen with the utmost frankness.
So time passed on. The preparations of Germany were becoming more and more complete. The influence of the pan-German Junkers and their flamboyant young Crown Prince was becoming so powerful that the Kaiser felt his hand being forced before success in “the great design” appeared quite so certain as he would like it to be. The German army was largely increased, powerful war-vessels were being added to the navy. A policy was being pursued which roused fears of aggression. All through 1913 and the first months of 1914 Clemenceau in his new paper, L’Homme Libre, continued day after day his warnings and his injunctions to all Frenchmen. He had no mercy for those who unceasingly preached fraternity and disarmament for France when Germany, more powerful and increasingly more populous, was arming to the teeth.
“Such fraternity,” he said, at the unveiling of Scheurer-Kestner’s statue, “is of the Cain and Abel kind. Against the armed peace and armed fraternity with which Germany is threatening us nothing short of the most perfect military education and military organisation can be of any avail. All Europe knows, and Germany herself has no doubt whatever, that we are solely on the defensive. Her fury for the leadership of Europe decrees for her a policy of extermination against France. Therefore prepare, prepare, prepare. Here you see 870,000 men in the active army of Germany on a peace footing, better trained, better equipped, better organised than ours, as opposed to 480,000 Frenchmen on our side. Doesn’t that convince you? And Alsace-Lorraine at the mercy of such creatures as Schadt and Förstner? Observe, Germany has great projects in all parts of the world. It would be childish for us to complain. What is intolerable is her pretension to keep Europe in perpetual terror of a general war, instead of general international discussion of her claims. Every Frenchman must remember that, if Germany’s increasing armaments do impel her to war, the loss of the conflict would mean for us the subjugation of our race, nay, even the termination of our history. Meanwhile, with Alsace-Lorraine before me and the statue of Scheurer-Kestner now unveiled, I claim for us the right never to forget. To be or not to be, that is for us the question of the hour. Gambetta, after Sedan, called upon all Frenchmen in their day of deepest depression to rise to the level of their duty. He consecrated once again Republicans as the party of patriotic pride. France must live. Live we will!”
Unfortunately, one of the chief reasons why France was unready to meet the onrush of the modern Huns was that the Socialists were all bemused with their own fatuous notion that the German Social-Democracy could stop the war. Instead, therefore, of investigating the truth of Clemenceau’s statements, they merely denounced him as a chauvinist and an enemy of the people, and twaddled on about a general strike on both sides of the Rhine. As an old Socialist myself, who, as a member of the International Socialist Bureau, had discussed the whole question at length with Liebknecht, Bebel, Singer, Kautsky and others, I knew that, as they themselves explained to me, there was little or no hope of anything of the sort being done when war was once declared. I viewed this whole propaganda, therefore, with grave alarm, and Bebel himself warned the French that the Social-Democrats would march with the rest. If an opportunity came something might be done, but——Since then the old leaders had died and the new chiefs, as we all see now, were Imperialists to a man. Thus Clemenceau’s prognostications and warnings were only too completely justified. Prince Lichnowsky’s revelations conclusively prove this, and the German Social-Democrats have been at pains to confirm it. On March 11th, 1914, Clemenceau stated precisely what they would do.
How anxious, how eager, the French were at the critical moment to avoid even the slightest cause of offence is shown by the fact that all their troops were withdrawn fully eight miles back along the German frontier, a portion of French territory which the Germans made haste to seize. Even before this, every effort was made to provoke the French troops by petty raids across the frontier, and at last the Germans declared that the French had sent aeroplanes to drop bombs on Nuremberg—a statement which the Germans themselves now admit to have been a pure fabrication. But the facts of the invasion of Belgium and France are too well known to call for recital here.
Clemenceau did what might have been expected of him. He appealed to all Frenchmen of every shade of opinion to sink all minor differences in one solid combination for the defence of the country. Day after day, this powerful journalist and orator laboured to encourage his countrymen and to denounce unceasingly all who, honestly or dishonestly, stood in the way of the vigorous and successful prosecution of the war which should free France for ever from yet other attempts by Germany to destroy her as an independent nation. The memory of the dark days of 1870 was obliterated by the horrors of 1914 onwards. In good and bad fortune the Radical leader kept the same resolute attitude and used the like stirring language. L’Homme Libre, defaced and then suppressed by the Censor, was succeeded by L’Homme Enchaîné. Ever the same policy of relentless warfare, against the enemy at the front, and the traitors at the rear, was steadily pursued. Ministry might come, Ministry might go, but still Clemenceau was at his post, save when illness compelled him to quit his work for a short time.
Nor did he waver in his views as to the general strategy to be pursued. Without making any pretence to military knowledge, but well advised by experts on military affairs, and firmly convinced that whatever success Germany might achieve elsewhere she would never be satisfied unless France was crushed, he persistently opposed diversion of strength from the Western front. There this terrific struggle for world-domination would eventually be decided. The civilisation of the West must be subdued to German culture, France and England must be brought under German control, before the great programme of Eastern expansion for the Teutonic Empire could be entered upon with the certainty of success. These were the opinions he held as to Germany’s real objects.
Therefore, in opposition to the views of important personages in Great Britain and in Allied countries, Clemenceau withstood any frittering away of force on tempting adventures, away from the main field of warfare. This not because he confined himself to the narrow programme of freeing France from the invaders, but because the waste of troops on wild-cat enterprises weakened the general strength of the Allies at the crucial point of the whole struggle. In that decision his judgment was at one with the ablest British strategists, and the event has shown that he did not underrate the importance of the warfare on the Western front. There alone, especially after the collapse of Russia, was it possible to deliver a crushing blow at the German power. There alone could all the forces of the Allies of the West be effectively concentrated for the final blow.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GREAT WAR
The events of the great war, from 1914 onwards, are too recent and too deeply graven on all our minds to call for lengthy recital or criticism. What many, if not most, people believed to be outside the limits of calculation occurred. The German armies commenced their campaign by outraging the neutrality of Belgium, which, in 1870, even Bismarck had respected. In a few days they crashed down the great Belgian fortresses, which capable experts had calculated would check the Teutonic advance for at least a month, with howitzers specially constructed and tested for that purpose; soon they exhausted the resources of barbarism in torturing, butchering and shooting down unarmed men, women and children whose country they had solemnly sworn to safeguard; and they devastated and destroyed homes, beautiful buildings, and great libraries, which even a Turcoman horde might have spared, and extorted tremendous ransom and blood-money from the defenceless inhabitants.
That accomplished, this torrent of ruffianism and infamy poured in upon France with almost irresistible fury. The horrors of 1870-71 were far outdone. The defeats of Mons, Charleroi and Metz, the impossibility that their opponents should resist such overwhelming odds, made the Germans believe that for the second time in half a century they would force Paris to surrender. Then they were prepared to wreak upon the great city, the social capital of Europe, the full vengeance of destruction.
It is not easy, even for those who remember what occurred in the terrible year of the downfall of the Second Empire, and the prostration of the French Republic before the German invaders, to imagine what were the feelings of all Frenchmen who went through that period of martyrdom for their country when they saw a still worse storm of brutality and hatred breaking out upon them—when, too, more rapidly than before, Amiens was in danger and Paris seriously threatened. Clemenceau, with his devotion to France and almost worship of the city where he had spent his whole manhood, was more hardly hit than perhaps any of his countrymen. He had experienced the horrors of the former invasion; and though, when France was at its lowest, he never despaired of the Republic, no ordinary man of seventy-three could possess the resource and resilience of a man of thirty.
Yet Clemenceau showed little loss of vigour compared with his former self. No Englishman has ever undergone what he underwent at that period. Undoubtedly, when the news came to us of the great retreat of August, 1914, our heartfelt sympathy went out to our own men. We were all likewise full of admiration for our French comrades who still held the Franco-British line unbroken. But at least our hearths and homes were kept in safety for us—the raids of aircraft excepted—by the magnificent courage of our sailors in the North Sea and of our soldiers who freely gave their lives to protect us from the enemy. If we would fully appreciate what was happening to France and Belgium, in spite of all their efforts, we must imagine the county of Durham completely occupied by the German hordes, Yorkshire overrun and the chance of saving London from the enemy dependent upon the result of a battle to be fought in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. It would be well if we could display at such a crisis in England the same cool courage that the Parisians did; if we had generals at our disposal such as Joffre and Foch and Gallieni; and statesmen in reserve such as Clemenceau. That was how things looked prior to the first battle of the Marne, which checked the early flood of German invasion and removed for the time being the necessity for retiring from Amiens and Epernay and moving the seat of government from Paris.
During the whole of this trying period Clemenceau never lost heart for a moment, nor his head either; and day after day in his journal he surveyed the whole situation without fear, devoid of illusion, yet confident always that France and her Allies could not be beaten to their knees. When things looked worst and Paris was being drained of her population by order, in preparation for a siege, and when the Government was about to be removed to Bordeaux, this is how Clemenceau wrote, recalling the past to cheer his countrymen in the present:
“The seat of government at Bordeaux is a new phase of the war which must follow its course: a renewal of the war in the Provinces, as in the days of the Gambettas, of the Freycinets. The same struggle against the same German invasion, with the capital of France reduced to the simple condition of a fortress, with France herself—provincial France, as we say—taking in hand her own defence outside the traditional lines of political and administrative concentration in which she has lived.
“How men and times have changed! . . . And now after full four-and-forty years I find myself again at Bordeaux, before the theatre I had not seen since 1871, looking for men who had undergone the misery of survival and failing to find them. Who now remembers that Jules Simon on his arrival had in his pocket an order for the arrest of Gambetta? In the Provinces, as in Paris, foreign war and civil war were being carried on. I only recall these terrible memories of past dissensions to enhance the value of the magnificent consolation that uplifts our hearts at the spectacle of the truly fraternal union of all the Frenchmen of to-day. Gambetta maintained the war against invasion in the midst of the most cruel attacks of a merciless opposition. Compare this with the present attitude of all parties in the presence of a Government from which all only demand that every means should be used with the maximum of efficiency.” Nor does the writer hesitate even at this moment of trial to criticise the shortcomings of his countrymen. As opposed to the persistent preparations of Germany, Frenchmen, he says, have been too careless, too light-hearted, too apt to rely upon the inspiration and enthusiasm of the moment to repair their neglect, “while an implacable enemy was sharpening his sword against us with unwearying zeal.” And this had been proved to be the truth years before; while so lately as November 22nd, 1913, the French Ambassador in Berlin, M. Jules Cambon, had solemnly warned M. Pichon, then as now French Minister for Foreign Affairs, “For some time past hostility against us is more marked, and the Emperor has ceased to be a partisan of peace.”
The man who used his pen to tell Frenchmen disagreeable truths in this wise and followed them up by giving chapter and verse from the French Yellow Book, with the text of the threatening conversations of the Emperor and General von Moltke with the King of the Belgians, may be granted the credit of entirely disregarding his own political interests, at least.
So also when the Anglo-French forces had won the great seven days’ battle on the Marne, Clemenceau at once uttered a note of warning against undue confidence and excessive elation. “Let us be very careful not to believe that we can reckon upon an uninterrupted series of successes up to the final destruction of the aggressor. The curtain falls on the horrible scenes of foreign invasion in Belgium and France. A mortal blow has been inflicted upon the invincible Kaiser who had never fought a battle. . . . But it would be sheer madness to imagine that we have nearly finished with an enemy who will shortly obtain fresh forces, vast forces even, from his uninvaded territory. A great part of his military resources are still untouched. Automatic discipline will soon reassert itself. The struggle will last very long yet and be full of unforeseen dangers. The stake is too heavy for the German Empire to decide suddenly to give up the game. Remember your mistakes of the past, rejoice soberly in your victory of the present, make ready now for still heavier trials in the future.” Such was the counsel of Clemenceau to Frenchmen on September 15th, 1914. Above all, “Leave nothing you can help to chance. Our military leaders have just victoriously undergone racking anxieties. It is for us to show our confidence in them by giving them credit for the patience and firmness which they will desperately need.”
Similarly in regard to the magnificent series of defensive victories at Verdun, of which Clemenceau gives a fine picturesque account. After justly glorifying the prowess of the heroic French soldiery, whose chances of victory at the commencement of those long weeks of unceasing battle seemed small indeed; after bitter sarcasms on the miserable Crown Prince with his premature jubilations over his supreme carefully stage-managed “triumph”; after a terrible picture of masses of the German troops marching through a hurricane to what they were assured was certain victory and then their dead bodies literally kept erect by the pressure of their dead comrades as a mass of corpses—after all this, and his legitimate pride in the hardly won victory, Clemenceau goes on to remind his countrymen again that this is not the end. “Verdun is the greatest drama of resistance. But all, All must at once set to work to make ready for a thorough offensive: a complete offensive that needs no interpretation. For this we must have preparation. For this we must have science. For this we must have method. For this we must have manœuvres. Keep those words well in mind, for nothing can be worse than to forget them. Never too soon: never too late. What would be the cost to us, in our turn, of a coup manqué?”
That is the tone throughout. But here and there in L’Homme Enchaîné we find Clemenceau the controversialist in a lighter, but not less telling, style. I give an extract from his scathing attack on the Danish littérateur, M. Brandès, in the original:—
“Oui, retenez-le, lecteur, la crainte de M. Brandès dans les circonstances actuelles est que l’Allemagne puisse être humiliée! Le Danemark a été humilié par le peuple de seigneurs qu’est la race allemande. La France aussi, je crois, et la Belgique même; peut-être Brandès le reconnaitra-t-il. Il n’a pas protesté. Il refuse même de s’expliquer a cet égard, alléguant que son silence (assez prolixe) est d’or—d’un or qui ne résisterait pas à la pierre de touche. Mais sa crainte suprême est que les machinateurs du plus grand attentat contre la civilisation, contre l’indépendance des peuples, contre la dignité de l’espèce humaine, les auteurs des épouvantables forfaits dont saignent encore la Belgique et la France n’éprouvent une humiliation.”[B] Brandès among the neutrals is of the same type as Romain Rolland and Bertrand Russell among the belligerents. All their sympathies are reserved for the criminals. And there are others, who are actually eager to embrace the murderers as their “German friends”!
In quite another style is his tribute to Garibaldi when his son Ricciotti—two of whose own sons had fallen fighting for France against the Germans—was himself visiting Paris:—
“Garibaldi was one of those magicians who give their commands to the peoples. These are the true performers of miracles. For they take no account of human powers when the spirit of superhumanity impels them to adventures of rash madness which for them prove to be evidence of supreme sanity.
“Those who know, or think they know, talk. But words are not life. Living humanity instinctively gives its devotion to men who rise up, in historic episodes whose law is to us unknown, to accomplish in their heroic simplicity precisely those very feats which ‘reason’ had never anticipated. To achieve this miracle calls for the man. It requires also the historic moment. The hour struck, and Garibaldi was there. But of that hour he himself was to a marvellous degree the mild yet imperious expression. Obviously inspired with an idea, he refused to see obstacles or to recognise impossibilities. ‘I shall go through with it,’ and through he went. That seems simple enough to-day. How was it no one was found to do it before him? He went through with it, handing over the crown to royal supplicants, and then hid himself in his island to avoid the annoyance of his glory.
“He had given freedom. Let freedom do its work.”
During the whole of the struggle, even when the military situation looked most desperate for the future of his country, Clemenceau never lost confidence. His faith in France and her steadfast ally Great Britain never wavered. That was a great service he then rendered to France and civilisation. But he did more. At a time when on the other side of the Channel, as in Great Britain, in Italy, and in Russia, the national spirit was clouded by deep suspicion of enemy influence, bribery and corruption in high places, with almost criminal weakness, when strength and determination were essential to success, Clemenceau did not hesitate to denounce treachery where he believed it to exist. Nothing like his courage in this respect has, unfortunately, been shown by statesmen in any other of the Allied countries. The fact that fomenters of reaction were, for their own ends, engaged on the like task of exposing the men who were unworthy of the Republic did not deter him, bitterly opposed as he was to the Royalist clique of which M. Léon Daudet was the chief spokesman, from demanding thorough investigation and the punishment of traitors, if traitors there were, in their midst. The time has not yet come to estimate the full value of the work he thus did, or the dangers from which, by his frankness, he saved the Republic.
But already we can form a judgment of the perils which surrounded France in 1917. The feeling of depression and distrust was growing. The organisation of the forces of the Allies was inferior to that of the enemy. The effect of the collapse of Russia was becoming more serious each day. Great Britain, which had rendered France quite invaluable aid in all departments, had accepted Mr. Lloyd George’s personal strategy, which consisted in breaking through to the Rhine frontier by way of Jerusalem and Jericho, owing to the apparent hopelessness of a favourable decision on the West front. The French Government itself, alarmed at the enormous sacrifices France was making in every way, discouraged at the progress of the defeatist movement which weakened the position of Socialists in the Cabinet, and alarmed at the manner in which German agents and German spies, whom they were afraid to arrest, pervaded almost every department—the French Government, itself shaken daily by attacks from the Right and from the Left, felt incapable of dealing with the situation as a whole. There was, for a moment, a sensation in Paris not far removed from despair.
At this juncture a cry arose for Clemenceau. For many years he had predicted the German attack. For more than a full generation he had adjured his fellow-Frenchmen to prepare vigorously for the defence of la Patrie. That he feared nobody all were well aware. Of his patriotism there was no doubt. Then, as more than forty years before, he never despaired of the Republic. Old as he was, whatever his defects of temper, whatever his shortcomings in other respects, the one man for such a crisis was Georges Clemenceau. Office was thus forced upon him, and, as he stated, he accepted power strongly against his will. At seventy-six, and approaching seventy-seven, not the most ambitious politician would be eager to take upon himself the responsibility of coping with such difficulties as Clemenceau was called upon to face. It was hard enough to undertake as Minister of War the onerous work of that exhausting department.
But still more trying was the necessity imposed upon him of dealing with the traitors of various degree who had been trading upon the lives and sacrifices of the men at the front. Probably no other French statesman would have dared to enter upon this dangerous and difficult task. The suspected men were highly placed, both politically and financially. They were surrounded by influential cliques and coteries, in Parliament and in the Press, to whom it was almost a matter of life and death to prevent disclosures which would inevitably be made, if the various cases were brought into court. It was even doubtful whether he would get the support of the Assembly, the Senate, or the Presidents of Council who preceded him, if he decided to push things to extremity, as, in view of his own criticisms and denunciations, he was bound to do. Should such misfortune occur or should the malefactors be indicted and acquitted, all that Clemenceau had been saying against them would turn to the advantage of the domestic enemy. It was a great risk to run.
There was also another obstacle in the way of Clemenceau’s acceptance of the Premiership. The relations between himself and M. Poincaré, the President of the Republic, had been anything but good. M. Clemenceau had energetically championed the claim of M. Pams for the Presidency. M. Pams had been, in fact, M. Clemenceau’s candidate, as MM. Sadi-Carnot, Loubet and Fallières had been before him. This time he did not win. The fight was fierce, the personal animosity between the parties very keen, and M. Poincaré’s victory was asserted to have been achieved by intrigue of a doubtful character. The war had called a truce to individual rancour, and the union sacrée was supposed to inspire all hearts. Still it was by no means certain that trouble would not come from that quarter. A President of Council with a hostile President of the Republic over against him must find the difficulty of the post at such a time immensely increased.
Then there were the Socialists to consider. True, they had taken office in the Cabinet of M. Briand, whose policy towards strikers of anarchist methods had been even more stern than that of M. Clemenceau. But they regarded Clemenceau as an unforgivable enemy. The calling in of the military at Courrières, at Narbonne, Montpellier and St. Béziers had never been forgotten. Clemenceau for them was the Tiger crossed with the Kalmuck. It was far more important, the French Socialists apparently thought, to hamper Clemenceau and prevent him from forming an administration than it was to beat the German armies and clear France of the Boches. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of a minority, which afterwards became the majority, of the party. Therefore, even Socialists who thoroughly sympathised with Clemenceau in his policy towards Germany, and had previously taken part in a Cabinet pledged to carry on the war “jusqu’au bout,” would have nothing to do with a Clemenceau Administration. The upshot of these fatuous, anti-patriotic and anti-Socialist tactics on their part will be seen later. Yet the knowledge that the Socialists as a whole would give him at best a lukewarm support, and at worst would vigorously oppose him, was not an encouraging factor in the general calculation of what might occur.
Neither could high finance be relied upon. The great bankers, great brokers, and great money institutions as a whole, were heartily sick of the war. They wanted peace with Germany on almost any terms, if only they could get back to business and begin to recoup their losses during more than three years of war. Nor, apart from downright treachery of which he held positive proof, could the proposed new Premier close his eyes to the fact that German influence had so subtly and thoroughly pervaded the French money market that many Frenchmen were still looking at the economic problems of France through spectacles made and tinted in Germany.
There was consequently a combination possible which might drive Clemenceau headlong out of office at any moment, if he entered upon his second attempt to control French affairs at such a desperately critical stage of the war.
But the formidable old Radical leader did not hesitate. Sceptic as he might be in all else, one entity he did believe in: the unshakable greatness of France: one Frenchman he could rely upon—himself.
CHAPTER XIX
THE ENEMY WITHIN
During the whole of the war, as for many years before the Germans began their great campaign of aggression, every country with which the Fatherland might in any way be concerned was permeated with German agents and German spies. Great Britain was one of the nations specially favoured in this respect. The ramifications of their systematic interpenetration of the social, political, financial, commercial and even journalistic departments of our public life have never yet been fully exposed; nor, certainly, have the very important personages who conducted this sinister propaganda been dealt with. Even when the Defence of the Realm Act is ended and the Censorship is abrogated, it is doubtful if the full truth will ever be generally known, so powerful are the influences directly interested in its suppression.
In the United States of America, where similar work was done upon an enormous scale and at vast expense, under circumstances still more favourable to success than in this island, the American Government acted with a decision and a vigour that are not yet understood. Even so, the amount of mischief done was very great, and, for the first two years of the war at least, the German efforts were largely successful. That a duly accredited Ambassador to a friendly power should have been at the head of this vast conspiracy in America, as Count Bernstorff unquestionably was, introduces a new and most dangerous precedent into the comity of international relations. Italy, in like manner, suffered very seriously from German intrigues. The history of the carefully organised disaster upon the Isonzo has yet to be written. That it was the result of well-arranged collaboration between clerical organisers of treachery, inspired by Austria, German agents, with unlimited financial backing, who had sympathisers in high place, and honest and dishonest fanatics of the pacifist persuasion, does not admit of question. Certain it is that in this one case alone German underground machinations were responsible for the crushing defeat of an army of 500,000 men, holding a position where 50,000 good troops could have held a million at bay.[C]
But if Great Britain, the United States, and Italy were thus honeycombed with secret service agents from Germany, the nation which the Kaiser, his Chief of Staff and the Junkers were most anxious to crush down beyond the possibility of recovery was still more imperilled by astute German infiltration. Up to the crisis of Agadir in 1911, French finance was, to an ever increasing extent, manipulated by German Jews, who made it their special business to become more Parisian than the Parisians themselves. They were consequently regarded with favour by people whose patriotism was beyond question. Scarcely a great French finance institution but had close relations in some form with Germans, whose continuous attention to business and excellent general information rendered them valuable coadjutors for the French, who, as a rule, are not very exactly informed on foreign matters. Very few saw any danger in this. It seemed, indeed, a natural result of the great growth of German trade, as well as of the position which Germans had acquired as capable managers of the growing French factory industry in the North-Eastern provinces.
This latter point is of importance. So long as any industry remains in the old form, where individual skill, meticulous attention to detail, and close observance of quality are the rule, the French are second to none in their methods. But when the next stage is reached, and machine production reigns on a very large scale, with its concomitant standardisation of output, then the French seem to fail for lack of the thorough organising faculty of the German or the American. Hence in many directions the highly educated, methodical, progressive foreigner from across the frontier had begun to take the place of the more conservative Frenchman. This process could be observed in the department of motor-cars, where the French, who were undoubtedly the pioneers, had begun to fall behind upon the world market in the time just anterior to the war. Not only the Americans, but the Germans, and even Italy, showed more capacity to gauge the necessities of the coming period than France in their output of cars.
But, in addition to this, Frenchmen, the most thrifty people in the world, are disinclined to use their savings in the development of their own country. In literature, in science, in art, they display great faculties of initiative. In the matter of investment they prefer to rely upon others. Even the underground railways of their metropolis were started by a foreigner: the French investors only coming in to buy the debentures of companies which they might just as well have started themselves. They complained that the Germans were making vast profits out of “their own” iron mines of Lorraine which had been taken from France in an undeveloped state in 1871; yet they failed to exploit the still richer deposits in Briey, of which the Germans were so envious that the desire to possess them was one of the minor causes of the war. Similar instances of neglected opportunities could be pointed out in many districts.
This indifference of the thrifty French investors to the possibility of enriching their own country by the use at home of the money capital obtained from their own savings, and the profits derived from visitors, astonished lookers-on. Clemenceau denounced the folly of financial wars of conquest in semi-civilised countries when France needed her own resources for the improvement of her own soil and what underlay it, as well as to make adequate preparation for war. But the loans to foreign nations and foreign banks were economically as prejudicial to her real interests as the injurious colonial policy. That was proved only too clearly, even in the field of military preparation when, in August and September, 1914, tens of thousands of men, unsupplied with clothing and equipment, were to be seen in and around Paris. England had to provide them with what they required.
In such a state of affairs, where neglect of consideration as to the purposes of loans was the rule, so long as the interest seemed quite secure, German banks could and did act with great advantage. They borrowed French savings at a low rate and employed them for profitable objects, or for their own more complete war preparations on economical terms. After the shock of Agadir, when war at one period seemed certain, the French called in most of their loans and thenceforward were rather more cautious. But, in the meantime, and even afterwards, France’s savings had been used to strengthen her bitterest enemy. And this was the end the Germans kept constantly in view when they borrowed. France, in fact, built up German credit against herself, at the same time that Germany was able to estimate exactly the economic power of her destined victim, and to investigate, without appearing to do so, the weak points in French preparation for defence. The German banks and their French friends played together the same game, in a different way, that the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank did in London and the Banca Commerciale in Italy. The whole formed part of the vast economic octopus scheme, in finance and in industry, which went hand in hand with the co-ordination of military effort destined for attack.
It is easy to discern how all this peaceful financial manipulation played into the hands of the German Government and fostered German influence in Paris and in France. There was nothing which could be reasonably objected to, under the conditions of to-day, if Holland, or Belgium, had been the nation concerned. But with Germany it was quite different.
Not only was French money being used on German account, but, under cover of quite legitimate finance and apparently genuine newspaper enterprise, most nefarious schemes were hatched in peace whose full utility to the enemy would only be disclosed in war. Taking no account even of the actual operations of bribery, which we now know were carried on upon a very large scale, everybody who was directly or indirectly interested in the various forms of parasitical Franco-German finance had personally excellent reasons for pooh-poohing distrust of the friendly nation on the other side of the frontier. Thus the most pressing warnings addressed to the French Government might be rendered almost useless—as, in fact, they were—by influence brought to bear from quarters that were pecuniarily above suspicion. An atmosphere favourable to German propaganda was created which covered up and favoured the sinister plans of men and women who were actually in German pay. This went on long before the war, and was continued in still more dangerous shape after the war had begun.
Then there were the honest pacifists, who regarded all war, even defensive war, as disastrous to the workers. Whether Germany won or France won in any conflict, the capitalists and the capitalists alone were the real enemy. Two such different men as Edouard Vaillant and Gustave Hervé held this opinion; and both at great international Socialist congresses declared that every effort should be made to prevent France from coming to an actual struggle with Germany, no matter what the provocation might be. When, however, they saw what the policy of the Kaiser and his Junker militarists really meant they changed their minds. So, in the early days of the war, did the majority of French Socialists; and several of their principal men, including Jules Guesde, the leader of the Marxists, and Albert Thomas, joined M. Briand’s Cabinet.
But there was always an active section left which in all good faith stood to their views that under the capitalist system nothing could justify the workers of one country in killing the workers of another. They had no interest in their own nation which was worth defending in the field. The past of France was for them a record of class oppression, the present of France the continuance of chattel slavery in disguise, the future of France no better than the permanence of penal servitude for life as wage-slaves to the bourgeoisie. German domination could be no worse for them than the economic tyranny of their own capitalist countrymen.
This form of social fanaticism now exists in every European nation. It is as bitter and, given the opportunity, as unscrupulous and cruel as any form of religious intolerance that ever exercised control. Economic theory entirely obscures history and facts with such men. Not even the awful horrors of the German invasion, horrors quite unprecedented in modern warfare and systematically practised in order to engender terror, and destroy the means of creating wealth, could convert Socialists of this school. As a Socialist I understand their fanaticism, though I despise their judgment. Capitalism under the control of home employers and financiers is bad, but it can be controlled by educated workers. Capitalism in victorious alliance with foreign Junkerdom would have made France uninhabitable for Frenchmen, and would have thrown back democratic Socialism for at least two generations throughout Europe.
Nevertheless, this furious minority, in conjunction with Socialists of political intrigue, among whom Jean Longuet (son of Charles Longuet the member of the Commune and grandson of Karl Marx) was the leader, became eventually the majority, owing to the weakness of the heads of the patriotic section. This success laid the French Socialist Party open to the charge of being not only anti-patriotic but definitely pro-German. It led to the retirement of forty-one Deputies from the “unified” combination. The violent animosity of the main body to Clemenceau at the time when he was forced into office, and the refusal of Socialists to accept portfolios in his Cabinet, when the cause of the Allies was at its lowest point, from November, 1917, to July, 1918, looked to outsiders a miserable policy for the party, not to be explained by the devotion of its members to MM. Malvy and Caillaux.[D] Personal malevolence and political pusillanimity together were the imputations made against those who thus declined to serve France in her utmost need. Happily for Europe, their strength was not equal to their ill-will, and Clemenceau, after his first month of power, was able to treat them as a negligible quantity. So they remain to-day. A very great opportunity of serving the workers of their country has been missed: that the bitterest enemy of France and of freedom has not been greatly helped in her war for universal domination is no fault of theirs.
During the first three years and more of the war, however, a conspiracy was being conducted which, aided unfortunately by much of apathy and ineptitude on the part of successive French Governments, and supported unintentionally or intentionally by one of the leading statesmen of France, went near to wrecking the fortunes of the Republic. That this fateful plot failed to achieve the full success which the Germans anticipated from it is due to Clemenceau. Sordid monetary sympathy with the enemy is difficult to forgive: Socialist fanaticism and Socialist intrigues which must tell to the disadvantage of the nation are hard to reconcile with common honesty; but downright infamous treachery, bribery, corruption, and wholesale attempts to organise defeat put all who are guilty of them outside the law. Yet matters had come to such a pass that all these various forms of treason to France, to the Allies, and to soldiers at the front could be carried on with impunity.
Though the guilty persons were well known and their German plots were scarcely concealed, none of the Ministers responsible for the public safety dared arrest them. Journals that were obviously published in the interest of the enemy were allowed to spread false information as they pleased, and to attack all statesmen and politicians who were honestly trying to serve France with vitriolic misrepresentation. Day after day this went on. Day after day, as the situation without grew more precarious, the chiefs of this criminal endeavour to bring France to ruin grew bolder in their well-paid treachery. The people of Paris and the soldiery in the trenches, whose minds also German agents strove to debauch with plausible lies, were becoming hopeless of justice being done. Ministry succeeded Ministry and still the traitors were treated with consideration by the Minister of the Interior, M. Malvy, and other men in high place.
Beyond question the man officially responsible for all this shameful laxity, at one of the most trying crises of the whole war, was M. Malvy, who enjoyed the whole-souled support of the Socialist Party, on account of creditable behaviour towards the workers, altogether outside of questions arising from the war. But his conduct in regard to traitors and pro-Germans had become so weak as to be capable of the worst interpretation.
On July 24th, 1917, Clemenceau declared that he utterly distrusted M. Malvy. It was known even thus early that this Minister had shown deplorable incapacity in his dealings with men who are known to have been actual traitors. He had, in fact, decided not to arrest persons enumerated in what was called “List B,” that is to say, men and women more than suspected of criminal intrigue against France. Had not Almereyda himself assured M. Malvy, as Minister of the Interior, that he and all other Anarchists and anti-patriotic agitators would really desist from their sinister proceedings? This was enough. Without taking any steps against them, or even obtaining any security for the fulfilment of this promise in the air, M. Malvy left these miscreants alone to do what they pleased. So things went on as before; though, as has since been proved, several of these active agitators for peace, disaffection and surrender were paid agents of the German Government.
When, therefore, a resolution of confidence in M. Ribot’s Administration was proposed in the Senate, Clemenceau voted for the resolution, but made special exception in the case of M. Malvy, in whom he declared he had no confidence whatever. Later, Clemenceau boldly accused M. Ribot and his whole Administration of being themselves all responsible for the existence of the treacherous German Bonnet Rouge and Bolo conspiracy. Most unfortunately, notwithstanding the universal distrust thus awakened and spreading from Paris throughout France, Republican Ministers, who ought to have been the first to move to safeguard the interests of France and her Republic, against the dangerous plots of men known to be immersed in abominable dealings with the enemy, failed altogether in their duty. They left it to avowed Royalists and reactionaries to lead the attack upon persons guilty of these crimes. What, consequently, ought to have been done at once, legally and thoroughly, by men who had received political power by vote of the French people, and were trustees for the defence of the country, against the foreign enemy from without and the domestic enemy within, was left largely to be accomplished by M. Léon Daudet and M. Barrès.
These men made no secret of the fact that they were actuated by motives entirely antagonistic to the democratic policy of the Allies and hostile to the only form of government possible in France. This did not render their indictment less crushing when the facts were fully disclosed, but it certainly weakened the force of the attack. What is more, it gave a large and, later, apparently the largest section of the Socialist Party the excuse, which they were eager to grasp, for supporting M. Malvy, and more particularly their friend M. Joseph Caillaux, against what they were pleased to denounce as abominable detraction.
Newspapers to-day are credited, perhaps, with more political influence than they really possess. But it is clear that if nearly the whole of the important press of a country can be captured by a particular faction, and only such news is allowed to be published as suits the convenience of the Government in power, the people at large have no means of correcting the false impressions of events thus thrust upon them. That is an extreme case, which has, so far, been realised, in practice, in only one country. But the German agents who were so active in Paris were fully alive to the advantages of such a policy of purchase and manipulation of the press for their own ends. They made efforts to secure a control of the majority of the shares in some of the most influential journals of Paris. How far this process was surreptitiously carried will never be known: not far enough, certainly, to affect the tone of the organs they were anxious to manipulate.
But enough was done to show the great danger which would have resulted to the community, had a newspaper trust been successfully created on the scale contemplated, but fortunately never carried out, by the infamous Bolo Pasha and his associates. Their own journal, Le Bonnet Rouge, even when increased during the war from a weekly to a daily issue, was not by any means sufficient for their needs, although that traitorous sheet alone was able to do a great deal of mischief. But their control was extended to the Journal, a paper, prior to the war, of considerable circulation and influence. Their attempts to expand further were in full swing when, thanks to the work of MM. Léon Daudet and Barrès in the Action Française, and still more to that of their bitter opponent Clemenceau in l’Homme Enchaîné and in the Senate, the French Government was forced to arrest the proprietors of the Bonnet Rouge and put them on their trial as traitors. It was known that M. Caillaux and M. Paix-Séailles—the latter connected with M. Painlevé’s Cabinet and the repository of anti-French confidences—had contributed considerable sums to the support of the incriminated paper.
When M. Almereyda, one of the most important persons connected with the Bonnet Rouge (to whose columns a leading Socialist was a contributor) died suddenly in prison, the editor of that journal telegraphed to M. Caillaux concerning the lamentable departure of “our friend.” As these facts were accompanied by other revelations still more compromising, public opinion became greatly excited. There could be no doubt that the conspiracy was more than a mere anti-patriotic newspaper intrigue of financial origin, or an attempt of discredited politicians to float themselves back into office on the wave of discouragement and defeatism: it was an endeavour, supported throughout by German funds, to destroy French confidence in order to ensure French destruction. A complete exposure of the whole plot, in which M. Caillaux and Bolo Pasha were alleged to be the leading figures, was threatened in the course of the Bonnet Rouge trial. Eleven members of the Army Committee of the Senate were appointed to consider M. Caillaux’s connection with M. Almereyda and the Bonnet Rouge.
M. Caillaux has been by far the most formidable advocate of a German peace from the first. That an ex-Premier of France should take up such a position would seem almost incredible, but that Signor Giolitti in Italy and Lord Lansdowne in England have pursued the same course in a less objectionable way. The political relations between Clemenceau and M. Caillaux in the years prior to the war had not been unfriendly. M. Caillaux had been Finance Minister in Clemenceau’s Cabinet in 1907, and they had both worked together for M. Pams against M. Poincaré in the contest for the Presidency. But two more different personalities it would be difficult to find.
M. Caillaux is a financier of financiers. His whole career has been associated with the dexterous manipulation and acquisition of money in all its forms. Clemenceau never had anything to do with finance in his fife, and wealth is the last thing anybody could accuse him of possessing. Clemenceau, though no sentimentalist, makes an exception in his view of life where Frenchmen, France and Paris are concerned. With Caillaux audacious cynicism in everything is the key-note of his character all through. Moreover, the one is very simple in his habits, and the other is devoted to ostentation and display. Caillaux’s cynicism is as remarkable as that of Henry Labouchere, though more malignant. When he carried the Income Tax through the Assembly and was upbraided for having made himself the champion of such a measure, he claimed that, though he had obtained for his measure a majority in the Assembly, he had used such arguments as would destroy it in the country.