FROM ALL FOES, FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC
No statesman is so great that he is admired and supported by his entire
community. Monsieur Clemenceau, the splendid prime minister of France,
who has done so much in a few short months to unify his nation and to
bring the allied armies together under one commander-in-chief, is no
exception to the rule. He has with him in the Chamber of Deputies the
solid vote of the right and center, the conservative and moderate vote,
and he has also some of the left or radical vote. He is opposed by the
radical socialists only.
Some of the radicals with whom I talked in France urged me, if I were
to understand the French mind, to see and talk with the leader of the
opposition, Albert Thomas. So one morning I went, by appointment, to
the modest apartment in the neighborhood of the Chamber of Deputies
which is the home of Monsieur Thomas, and the center of activities of
the radical socialists of France.
Accompanying me was Mademoiselle St. René Taillandier of the French
foreign office, a young woman of exceptional intellect and an
accomplished linguist. Speaking English as well as her native French,
Mademoiselle St. René Taillandier agreed to go with me to interview
Monsieur Thomas, lest any shade of meaning in what he said to me might
be lost.
Monsieur Thomas speaks no English, and I, of course, have an imperfect
knowledge of French. Whenever I failed to understand some idiom
or figure of speech I halted the conversation until it could be
interpreted into English.
I wanted to be fair to Monsieur Thomas and his political group. My
previously conceived admiration for Clemenceau made me all the more
anxious to understand exactly why he was so vigorously opposed. We
talked for nearly an hour, and when I was down in the street again,
walking along the glittering Seine, I said to my friend: “We have them
like that in the United States, honest, sincere, intelligent idealists;
with blinders on.”
Judging from what I saw and heard in the apartment of Monsieur Albert
Thomas that morning, France must have a considerable group of such
idealists. We were early for our appointment and waited for ten minutes
in the reception room, which was more like an office, with a long table
strewn with socialist literature and propaganda pamphlets, and around
the walls a row of stiff cane seated chairs.
A little girl in a black cambric pinafore attended the door, which
frequently opened to admit more visitors. During my talk with Monsieur
Thomas the same little girl appeared half a dozen times bearing cards
and notes. There is no doubt that Monsieur Thomas is the leader of a
strong group.
The head of the radical socialists in France is a man of forty
something, short, thickset, with blue, intelligent eyes behind steel
rimmed spectacles. He has rather long brown hair, a beard of a lighter
shade of brown.
His speech is quick and animated, with a little too much oratory in it.
Every question I asked him was answered by a speech. It made me think
of Gladstone of whom Queen Victoria said: “He addresses me as if I were
a public meeting.”
I asked Monsieur Thomas to tell me the spirit of the French working
people during the war. Were they wholeheartedly patriotic, or was there
any of the industrial unrest that had made itself felt in England.
“Our French working class is more stable than the British,” he replied.
“Every French man and woman worthy of the name wants the allies to win
the war. In the Chamber of Deputies there have been only three men who
have not shown themselves genuinely patriotic.
“Those three went to Switzerland and discussed the war with certain
Germans. Their act was denounced by all other socialists as well as by
the bourgeois deputies. The men have absolutely no following.”
“Is the French working class solidly socialist, or has it a majority of
socialists?”
“It has not a majority in numbers, but the socialist element is very
powerful, much more powerful than surface indications show. In time of
strikes the party always wields great influence. It is impossible for
a stranger to understand the extent of socialist opinion throughout
France. Reading the newspapers would not convey the facts to the
stranger, because unfortunately the press and the people here are not
together.”
“Is your socialism revolutionary?” I asked.
“No, it is more philosophical than revolutionary,” was the reply. “The
opinions of your President Wilson are almost exactly ours. His war aims
as stated by him find absolute echo in the French popular mind. Much
more so than in the mind of the government.” This with a flash and a
gesture that spelled “Clemenceau” very clearly.
“We are not Bolsheviki, we are French,” he added with emphasis.
“I wish you would explain to me, if you are solidly in favor of a
peace with victory for the allies, why your group, and especially you
as leader, wanted to go to the Stockholm conference and discuss peace
without victory with the Germans.”
Monsieur Thomas demurred a little at my way of putting the question,
and right here I began to notice the blinders.
“It is true that I was and am warmly in favor of the Stockholm
conference,” he began. “I regret very much that Mr. Gompers and the
American Federation of Labor have misunderstood my attitude and my
object in wanting to meet in Stockholm representatives of the workers
of all nations. They seem to think that my object was to fraternize
with the Germans. Not at all. My object was to tell the whole German
people the allies’ war aims, and their stated terms of peace.
“The German people do not know these aims. The imperial government
keeps the people in ignorance. The press censorship is so complete that
the real terms on which we are willing to make peace have never been
published. We can not get at the German people through their newspapers.
“We could have talked to them through the Stockholm conference, because
even the censored press would have published the proceedings of that
conference. The Germans then would have known the truth.”
“What makes you think that the censored press of Germany would have
been permitted to publish the proceedings of the Stockholm conference?”
I asked. “It was not permitted to publish the war aims speeches of
President Wilson or Mr. Lloyd George.”
“Why,” exclaimed Monsieur Thomas, with what appeared to me a childish
innocence, “their own loyal Germans would have attended as delegates,
and of course the people would insist on hearing their reports.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I admit that such a conference with
the enemy, at a time when the allied armies are engaged in killing that
same enemy on the battle-field, would be morally and sentimentally a
grave thing. But I am certain that the advantages would have outweighed
the disadvantages. All the French socialists, except a group on the
right, agree with my point of view.
“After the war the working classes in all the countries will have to
stand together, will have to have a common programme, that they may
force their point of view on the governments. The Stockholm conference
would have furthered that solidarity. I regret that the American
working class can not see that.”
I turned the question to the Russian collapse.
“Ah, Russia, a great mystery, is it not? When you think she is about to
commit a treachery you see a Brousiloff offensive. When you think she
is about to be sublime you behold the Brest-Litovsk surrender. Anarchy!
But Russia is too great to fall permanently.
“Why are not France and America there now, helping poor, wounded
Russia? All we do is to send a message to the Moscow soviet: ‘Russia
will emerge.’ _Mon Dieu!_”
“To whom would you offer your help, Lenine and Trotzky?” I asked. “Do
you think that we can help the Russian people through men who are daily
delivering them piecemeal to the Germans?”
“Oh, I do not think Lenine and Trotzky are exactly German agents,
although it is evident that they took German money,” was the
extraordinary reply. “They are not traitors, they are fanatics. They
see nothing except their propaganda. Here was money offered them, money
they needed for their propaganda. German money--true, but what of it?
They would take any money!”
Monsieur Albert Thomas evidently could not see that men who would take
German money were incapable of being honest leaders, sincere prophets,
or anything in the world but liars, thieves and traitors. No man can
exist half crook, half honest.
“They see nothing but their propaganda.” That is a perfect description
of Monsieur Albert Thomas and all the other misguided idealists who
walk with blinders obscuring their eyes. They think and talk as though
unaware that the world around them was in flames.
On a battle-front of seventy-five miles our allied soldiers are
enduring such hardships, are performing such miracles of labor, are
suffering such wounds, such horrible mutilations, that no imagination
can compass the facts. Every day some of these heroic men give their
blood, their beautiful young lives for the freedom of the world.
They die for our liberty without a murmur. And while they are suffering
and dying, a whole section of the community in every allied country
continues to ignore them for one or another fatuous dream.
In France when these dreamers beat at the Chamber of Deputies to be
allowed to go to Stockholm, Clemenceau answered them: “I understand
your idealism, and I share it. But where we differ is that I am under
no illusion regarding the reality of facts.”
The only important fact in the world is that we are fighting the
greatest war in history, “in order that government of the people, for
the people, and by the people shall not perish from the earth.” Nothing
else matters. Nothing. Every other question is a side issue, something
to be considered and acted upon after we have won the war.
In this country we have our Bolsheviki who would take advantage of the
fact that our best beloved, our sons, are fighting, giving their lives
in a far land, to seize power for their “class.” We have fanatics whose
paranoia finds expression in “radical” magazines. We have propagandists
who find supreme satisfaction in going around the country making
defeatist speeches, and we have a public which exclaims in horror
when one of these talkers is arrested and given a well-merited prison
sentence.
We have lawmakers, men in Congress, whose devotion to their
propaganda is so limitless that they are willing to risk losing army
appropriations, delaying the progress of the war, in order to hasten a
little the prohibition campaign.
We have theorists who can not think very much about the war because
they are so occupied with getting on good terms again with a people
who never were honestly on good terms with anybody except themselves.
After all these years of slaughter these theorists would smilingly get
together with the men who willed the slaughter and talk about a league
of nations, a society to abolish war.
“A league of nations!” exclaimed Clemenceau to the Unified Socialists
of France, led by Albert Thomas. “What will a league of nations mean
without Germany? I for one will not let Germany in. You would do so,
and on what guarantees? Ask Belgium!”
What are we Americans, those of us who walk without blinders, who
see and know the awful realities of the hour, going to do about the
class fanatics, propagandists, egotist individualists, the sentimental
theorists, big and little? They are traitors to the world that is
struggling to be free. Whether they know it or not, they are traitors.
They fight side by side with Attila.
Rather, they are the camp followers of the Hun, for they rarely do any
fighting. When justice overtakes them they nearly always throw up their
hands and cry “Kamerad.” They almost invariably claim that they didn’t
mean to be disloyal.
The only thing to do with these people is to snatch the blinders from
their eyes and make them look at the reality of a world at righteous
war. As soon as one defeatist comes within the law, seize him, imprison
him. Whether he is an I. W. W. criminal or a university professor, or
even a United States senator. Keep on doing it. Treat women exactly as
the men are treated. It wouldn’t take long before the blinders would
begin to fall without assistance.