CLEMENCEAU THE TIGER
It must be 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 the unspeakable 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 adjourned politics. 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_, the _Free Man_, excoriating, abusing,
calling down invectives on all party leaders alike. The mildest term
he applied to President Poincaré was Nero. The censor suppressed
one issue of the _Free Man_ cutting out everything in it except the
head-lines. Clemenceau changed the name of his paper to the _Man in
Chains_. The censor ignored him for a time and he changed it again to
the _Man 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 unpopular to 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 his
ministers 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. Jules Ferry, 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 said there 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, again _L’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.