CHAPTER XXIXCLEMENCEAU THE TIGER
It mustbe plain to everybody, even to the people of the German empire and her vassal states, that the allies will certainly win the war. The only thing that could possibly alter that fact would be for one of the great powers, England, France or the United States, to make a very serious political blunder. We need not be afraid now that such a thing will happen. We know that President Wilson will stand firmly by the policies which have brought him fame and gratitude throughout the civilized world.
Great Britain has had her worst political crisis, and she has survived it. We trust David Lloyd George to work wholeheartedly with Woodrow Wilson for a fight to the finish with German militarism. But what of France? What manner of man is at the helm in the French capital? What about Clemenceau?
All I knew about Clemenceau, when I went to France last January, was that he was the editor of a newspaper which seemed to attack everybody in the French government, and which was frequently suppressed by the censor. I had never seen a copy of the paper. I knew that Clemenceau had had a long political career, had been a member of the French Senate,and also of the Chamber of Deputies, which corresponds to our House of Representatives. For a brief period also he was prime minister.
Always Clemenceau appeared to be opposing something. I thought of him as a firebrand with a talent for writing ironic newspaper articles. Therefore, when I reached Paris, when I began to read the French papers and found them filled with praises of a man they had previously denounced as a Judas; when I heard the most conservative people speak of him as the savior of France, I was filled with curiosity. I began to ask everybody to tell me all about Clemenceau.
To see him was difficult. To interview him an impossibility. He spends half his time at the front, and the other half working. Rarely did he find time to visit the Chamber of Deputies. His speeches came at rare intervals, and were never announced beforehand. So the foreign office informed me.
The best I could do was to sit down with people who knew the prime minister and get from them the extraordinary history of the man. Added to that I followed day by day in the newspapers the amazing progress of his policies announced last November when he took office.
“You ask my war aims?” he said to the Chamber. “I have only one—to win.”
Part of the programme of winning the war was the suppression of the tribe of traitors and defeatists that disgraced the name of France. These, including theunspeakable Bolo and the former minister, Caillaux, Clemenceau had fiercely attacked in his newspaper.
When he told the Chamber that he intended to push the prosecution of the accused men to the finish, some one called out unbelievingly, “What! Caillaux?” naming the man who wielded immense power, and who, while Clemenceau was making his speech of acceptance, was seated in the Chamber a few feet from the tribune, a cynical smile on his lips.
Thus challenged, Clemenceau paused just long enough to turn and fix his blazing black eyes on the man he had so often accused. He did not say a word. He just looked. Turning furiously red, Caillaux half rose from his seat. Clemenceau’s fierce eyes bored him through, and, try as he might, Caillaux could not return the gaze. He sank in his seat with averted head.
Turning once more to the deputies Clemenceau said simply that as a newspaper man he mentioned names, but as premier he would merely deal with indicted criminals.
He has dealt with them. Bolo has been executed. Almereyda, one of the worst of the lot, died a violent death in prison, Duval followed Bolo to the fatal glade in the Park of Vincennes, Humbert was exiled and Caillaux is in prison with the strongest possible prospect of being shot as a traitor. A whole raft of smaller treason mongers have received prison terms.
Clemenceau is doing what the former governments seemed to find impossible. He has adjournedpolitics. And when I found that out I understood why this man, the “Tiger,” as he is styled, is also called the savior of France. For France has been cursed with politics and politicians, and it is no affront to the most universally loved and admired of all nations to make that admission.
I have no intention of trying to explain the political parties of France, or the minute shades of opinion that separate them. The Chamber of Deputies has a right, or conservative, a left, or radical, and a center. But every one of the three has a right, left and center, and each one of the subdivisions seems to have. This explains why France, or at least Paris, has more newspapers than any place in the world.
Scores of newspapers are displayed on the news-stands, and there are some that are not displayed at all, but are circulated none the less. Most of these papers have only four pages and some have only two. They are supported not by subscriptions or sales, much less by advertising. The political group which each represents does the supporting.
With all these warring political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies, it is a wonder that anything in the way of legislation is effected. But the French people managed very well, until the war. Then it was time to call a truce. But no prime minister before Clemenceau was able to bring about a truce.
Clemenceau, who had been out of office for some years, thundered away in his paper,L’Homme Libre, theFree Man, excoriating, abusing, calling down invectiveson all party leaders alike. The mildest term he applied to President Poincaré was Nero. The censor suppressed one issue of theFree Mancutting out everything in it except the head-lines. Clemenceau changed the name of his paper to theMan in Chains. The censor ignored him for a time and he changed it again to theMan Less Chained.
Everybody read the paper, because it was so brilliantly written, especially the two columns of invective which Clemenceau signed every day. Nevertheless, it was a scandal. Nobody was spared. The “Tiger” respected nor wealth nor power.
Things were at a troublous pass in France during the year 1917. The war did not approach an end. There was a serious shortage of fuel. Agricultural affairs were in a tangle. Russia, which owed France vast sums of money, had collapsed. Traitors were abroad in the land. While the real France fought gloriously, immortally at Verdun, and at Ypres, the politicians in the capital wrangled the hours away.
People began to say, “We must have a strong government. There must be unity. Who is the man to give it to us?” One after another man they tried, splendid men. Ribot, the diplomat, the grand old aristocrat, who could talk familiarly with kings, the man who had made the Franco-Russian alliance. Painlevé, the intellectual, one of the greatest mathematicians in Europe. Other statesmen. One by one they had fallen. Clemenceau was usually responsible for their fall. He kept after them until they got too unpopularto last. He is said, in the course of his entire career, to have wrecked sixteen ministries and he certainly removed one president.
People began to say: “That man Clemenceau, that ‘Tiger,’ who has been such a firebrand, such a thorn in the side of all the governments, that man has usually been right in his judgments. He was right about Salonica. We should never have sent General Sarrail there. He was needed for France. Clemenceau said so at the time, and he was right.
“He was right about Bolo, too. He probably knew what he was talking about when he accused Caillaux of trying to persuade Italy to sue for a separate peace with Germany. He was right when he said there ought to be a generalissimo at the head of the allied armies. Nobody, not even his worst enemies, ever accused the ‘Tiger’ of being anything but a good patriot. Why, he is the biggest and most single-minded patriot in France. What if we had to have Clemenceau for prime minister?”
At first the idea was laughed at. Then it was discussed, but then everybody said: “It can’t be done. The Unified Socialists have declared against him in advance. Poincaré may nominate him, for he is big enough to forget that he was called a Nero, but without the vote of the Unified Socialists the Chamber of Deputies can not confirm any nomination.” The Unified Socialists, it seems, is a party that hangs together better than some of the other radical groups.
Last November there was a real crisis in France.No use going into details now, because it is past. But when the crisis was at its height the people discovered that Clemenceau was not a firebrand after all. He was the voice of France.
His opposition had almost always been opposition to hypocrisy and incompetence. His fiery invective was fierce common sense, the common sense of the good, brave, clear-visioned French mind. Here, at least, was a man, not a politician. The Unified Socialists alone clung to their opposition, confident that they could block Clemenceau’s appointment. They had blocked both Ribot and Painlevé in their efforts to form ministries. They were ready to keep Clemenceau from office.
Nevertheless, Poincaré sent for Clemenceau and asked him to become prime minister. He accepted bruskly, appealed to the Chamber of Deputies in a speech full of patriotism and intelligent statements of facts. He was accepted as prime minister by every vote in the house except the fifty Unified Socialists and fifteen extreme radicals. The vote stood four hundred and eighteen to sixty-five.
Clemenceau formed a cabinet which rather astonished the French at first. He appointed two men who were not even members of the Chamber of Deputies. He included two of his old associates of former days who had been almost as unpopular as himself. The newspapers, while speaking moderately of all this, accused Clemenceau of being a dictator. “He rules with a rod of iron,” they complained. “He won’t let hisministers mention the word peace in his presence. He works everybody to death.”
This old man of seventy-six is a fiend for work. He once said that one reason he wrecked those ministries was because they wasted so much time. He opened the allied conference at Versailles with the shortest speech on record. “Gentlemen, we are here to work. Let us work.” The speech is shorter still when it is turned into French.
Soon most of the newspapers were supporting the prime minister. He may have been a dictator, but he got results. He took treason by the throat and strangled it. He took hold of the army and strengthened it. At least three times a week he motors to the front, going so close to the firing line that several times he has been in great danger, and once he narrowly escaped being captured by a German patrol.
If that patrol had captured Clemenceau the kaiser would have issued a new medal and had all the church bells in the empire rung, for the prime minister is, of all Frenchmen, the most feared and hated by Germany.
He has always seen through the Germans. His newspaper has exposed their intrigues time out of mind. About ten years ago the Germans tried to seduce France into a huge colonial expansion scheme, and if they had succeeded France and Great Britain might have become hopelessly involved.
That was one of Germany’s objects. Another was to take France’s mind off Alsace-Lorraine. JulesFerry, then prime minister, fell into the trap, but not so Clemenceau. He denounced Ferry’s colonial policy, called it by its right name, German intrigue, so tigerishly and so long, that the people woke up and Ferry went out of office.
Once when Clemenceau was prime minister before, the German government took offense at something that was said or done to one of its consuls in Morocco. The chancellor sent for the French ambassador in Berlin and demanded an apology. If it were not quickly forthcoming the German ambassador at Paris would be recalled. When this was transmitted to Clemenceau he sent for the German ambassador. He told him without any preamble that there would be no apology. “If you want your passports they are ready for you,” he added. Germany backed down.
Clemenceau’s diplomacy is like that. When the Austrian premier dared to put forth the slander that Clemenceau had sent a peace emissary to him the public clamored for a statement. The prime minister, on his way to the front, paused long enough to say over his shoulder to the interviewers: “Count Czernin lies.” And so it proved.
The greatest thing that Clemenceau has done was to unite the allied armies under a generalissimo. President Wilson wanted it done long ago. The wisest among the English wanted it done. But there were difficulties that seemed insuperable. Then came the almost fatal break in the British line last March. Clemenceau rushed up to the front, and what he saidthere has never been revealed. But it was to the point, and it smashed all the insuperable obstacles at one blow. Foch took command. The disaster was averted.
“I am not old,” said Clemenceau humorously to a friend. “I am just aged.” That is true. At a time when most men are ready to retire he is crowning his life’s work. He is the most thoroughly alive man in France and one of the greatest men in the world.
His newspaper, againL’Homme Libre, is still published, but Clemenceau’s name appears merely as founder. It is still a good newspaper, better in some respects than before, because one of the first things that Clemenceau did after taking office was to trim the censorship down to zero. They have a fairly free press in France now.