TWO PRESIDENTS
From a constitutionally Republican point of view, M. Sadi Carnot, about
whom already I have said a few words, made an admirable Head of the
State--honest, dignified, strictly observant of his duties; of unfailing
tact, and with neither slur nor blemish either in his political or in
his private life. He knew how to hold himself in public, was moreover a
fair speaker and a very well-read man. But he had nothing about him
capable of provoking enthusiasm among the masses. His cold attitude,
indeed, which drew on him the nickname of “the President with a wooden
head,” did not appeal to the nation. He was generally respected and
esteemed, he was even liked, but he never became popular, and the
impression he produced on outsiders, and those who only saw him
performing his functions, otherwise never being brought into contact
with him, can be summed up in the remark made by a little schoolgirl
who, on one of his provincial _tournées_, had presented him with a
bouquet of flowers, and whom he had kissed: “Il ressemble à la poupée de
cire du Musée Grévin, que l’on m’a montrée à Paris, seulement il est
moins joli” (“He is like the wax doll of the Grévin Museum I was taken
to see in Paris, only he is not so handsome”)
In spite of this drawback M. Carnot would very probably have been
re-elected had his career not been cut short by the knife of Caserio. By
a strange irony of fate, this Republican, whose ancestors had helped to
overthrow royalty in France, died the death of a King. The odiousness
of this crime is still remembered. It was a crime for which even the
most rabid anarchists could not find excuse. With the murder of the
Empress Elizabeth of Austria, it remains one of the most inexplicable
crimes of modern times, and even political hatreds cannot justify it. M.
Carnot was universally regretted, even by those who did not sympathise
with him.
His sudden death left the field open for a race to the Presidential
chair, which probably would not have been so fierce had the election of
the Head of the State taken place under normal conditions, or had he
even succumbed to illness or natural causes. No one had any thought of
the possibility of a Presidential election, and neither Radical, nor
Republican, nor the Monarchist parties had a candidate ready to step
into the place left so suddenly vacant. When the Congress assembled at
Versailles no one had the least idea who, among the eligible politicians
of the moment, held most chances to succeed the murdered President, and
the election of M. Casimir Périer was due, perhaps, more to the lack of
any suitable competitors than to his own merits.
M. Casimir Périer was a remarkable man in his way. He came from a good
bourgeois stock, such as had played an important part in political life
at the beginning of the great revolution of 1789. It was in the castle
of his grandfather, Vizille, near Grenoble, that the first revolutionary
assembly of provincial states had taken place. Later on, his grandfather
had been head of the Cabinet under Louis Philippe, and for more than a
century the Périers had been conspicuous in France. Casimir, moreover,
was extremely rich, which fact gave him an independence such as very few
political men of his generation could boast. He had been born and bred
in a most refined atmosphere, and always moved in the very best
society, so that he found himself at his ease when he entered the
Elysée.
His wife also was a most distinguished woman, who bore herself like a
queen, and who had dispensed not only a semi-regal hospitality in her
own house, long before she was called upon to continue doing so as the
first lady in the land, but who, all her life, had also understood the
duties towards the disinherited of this earth which a great fortune
carries along with it. She was universally respected on account of her
private virtues and blameless life, and she brought to the Elysée an
atmosphere of elegance and refinement greater even than existed during
the days when the Duchesse de Magenta had presided over its destinies.
The advent of the Casimir Périers did away with the reputation for
meanness and dullness that had clung to the receptions of the Head of
the State ever since the days of M. Grévy and his estimable but
commonplace wife. Once more people belonging to the upper classes
returned to the Presidency. M. and Mme. Casimir Périer visited a great
deal, accepted invitations to Embassies and to the houses of members of
the Cabinet; they received frequently too, and made themselves extremely
well liked in fashionable Paris.
In spite of this, however, the new President did not find his position
pleasant or easy. He had an authoritative character, and liked to have
his own way, and also to discuss with his ministers the decisions which
they submitted to his signature. He had been reared under strictly
constitutional principles, but he was also very well aware of his rights
under the Constitution of France, and had not the least intention of
forgoing them, or of abandoning one single iota of his prerogatives. He
was determined from the outset not to allow himself to become a mere
figurehead in the government, but to make use of his privilege to be put
_au courant_ of everything that was being done around him. His was
essentially a fighting temperament, and it was bound to bring him into
conflict with his ministers, who had been accustomed to the resignation
with which both M. Jules Grévy and M. Sadi Carnot had acquiesced in
everything that had been proposed to them.
Much has been said concerning the resignation of M. Casimir Périer, and
for a long time it was believed even among people who ought to have
known better that he had retired owing to threats which the German
Ambassador, Count Munster, had uttered at the time of the first Dreyfus
affair. I have strong reasons to believe that it was nothing of the kind
which influenced him. The legend of Captain Dreyfus having been a German
spy exploded long ago, and Count Munster never found himself under the
least necessity of resorting to threats, though with a certain amount of
justice he may have felt disgusted at the way the person of his
Sovereign was dragged into the disreputable affair.
The sole reason of M. Casimir Périer’s retirement lay in the sincere
conviction that very soon got hold of him, that he would not be allowed
to do what he liked, or even to attempt to resist the rising tide of
Radicalism which he would have preferred to keep down. He was rich,
independent, and of an easy and lazy temperament, which made him
impatient of the resistance which his best intentions met from the very
people who ought to have appreciated them.
He soon realised that if he clung to position he would be overturned as
were his predecessors, Marshal MacMahon and M. Thiers, and rather than
be told to go away he preferred to take leave of uncongenial colleagues,
and to retire with all the honours of war. He had made many friends
during his short tenure of office, but had also contrived to acquire
many enemies, and somehow the fact of the existence of these last
jarred upon his nerves, influencing him perhaps more than it should,
because those in high places have no right to be too sensitive. One
cannot change one’s character, however, and that of M. Casimir Périer
could not brook the thorns which were entwined with the roses that
strewed his path. He showed, on his retirement, an obstinacy with which
he has been very bitterly reproached by his personal friends, for he did
so in spite of the supplications of all who composed his immediate
entourage. He declared he should go away, and go away he did.
He had been on very good terms with all the foreign Ambassadors and
diplomats accredited at the Elysée, and these, one and all, bitterly
regretted his departure. M. Casimir Périer had tact and great knowledge
of the world, a quality that his predecessors more or less lacked.
Perhaps it was from this cause that during the few short months of his
Presidency the relations of the French Government with the German
Embassy had become more cordial than had been the case since the war.
Talking of the German Embassy, I have already mentioned Count Munster.
He was a great friend of mine, and perhaps one of the ablest men, under
his lazy indolent manner, that the German diplomatic service has ever
possessed. His wife having been English, he liked England better than
any other nation, not excepting his own, in certain cases. He looked
like an Englishman, too, and nothing pleased him more than to be taken
for one. Essentially a grand seigneur of the old school, he was
incapable of meanness, and even in his diplomatic relations he always
avoided saying anything that he did not really think or believe to be
the truth. Placed in a very delicate position in Paris, where German
diplomats were strenuously avoided by all those who were not obliged to
receive them, he contrived even there to make a position for himself,
still better, perhaps, than Prince Hohenlohe, notwithstanding the fact
that the latter had relatives among the society of the Faubourg St.
Germain, where he had been warmly welcomed before the war, but which
gave him the cold shoulder when he returned to Paris in an official
capacity after the disasters of 1870. And yet Prince Hohenlohe had far
more conciliatory manners than Count Munster, and was a far pleasanter
man in social relations; also, perhaps, he had more shrewdness than the
latter, and certainly was more amenable to compromise if the necessity
for such occurred. But the Count made himself respected wherever he
appeared, I mean respected in the sense that he conveyed the impression
that he would never allow himself to be trifled with, whilst always
ready to meet his opponents in everything except in yielding to them.
This digression has led me far away from M. Casimir Périer and his
retirement from public life, and I must return in order to relate the
circumstances which followed upon his resignation. To say the least of
it, his action considerably embarrassed not only his ministers, but also
the leaders of the different parties in both Chambers.
For the second time within one year the country was called upon to elect
a President of the Republic, and for the second time the event came as a
total surprise upon France and upon its politicians. Once more
candidates made themselves heard, and once again, in presence of those
who pretended that they had the best right not to be passed by in this
political Derby, an outsider won the prize, and M. Félix Faure, about
whom no one had thought, was elected to the Presidency of the French
Republic.
M. Félix Faure was chiefly known because he had been vice-president of
the famous Ligue des Patriotes, the president of which was then, and
till his death in the early months of 1914, the ardent Paul Déroulède.
This fact alone would have been sufficient to excite the apprehensions
of Germany, and M. Faure understood this so well that he at once made up
his mind to pose outright as a partisan of the Russian alliance, that
dream of all French political men ever since the establishment of the
Third Republic.
M. Félix Faure was far from being a stupid man: he had his points of
ridicule which perhaps did him more harm than real defects would have
done. He had vanity to an inordinate degree, loved luxury and splendour,
and enjoyed the external advantages of his new position with an almost
childish joy. He fondly imagined that he had been born to the purple
which had been thrown upon his shoulders, and without the instincts of a
parvenu he yet behaved like one.
He had, however, a far greater knowledge of politics than he has ever
been given credit for, and he was a sincere patriot, though his
patriotism was an essentially selfish one. It is to be doubted whether
he ever would have reconciled himself to a return to the life of an
ordinary citizen, and perhaps the greatest luck of a life which was very
lucky, when all is said and done, was his death when still in the
enjoyment of the privileges of a position he had grown to love.
But I repeat it again, he was no mean politician. It was under his
tenure of office that the Russian alliance was established, and he
certainly showed keen perspicacity in the way in which he contrived to
bring it about, as well as by the perseverance he displayed on this
occasion.
It was M. Faure who first thought of sending the French fleet to
Cronstadt, and it was he who insisted on the great reception that was
awarded to the Russians when their fleet came to Toulon. It was he,
also, who first tried to win over the Russian Ambassador, M. de
Mohrenheim, to his views on the subject, and who did not hesitate to
resort to all kinds of diplomatic arguments in order to win his
interest.
Later on M. Mohrenheim gave himself all the credit for the result of the
conferences which took place at that particular time between him and M.
Faure, conferences about which the world heard nothing, and suspected
even less. But though Russian diplomacy prided herself upon having hit
on this brilliant idea of a _rapprochement_ with France, as a safeguard
against the ambitions of the Triple Alliance, the fact remains, and is
well known to all those who have been behind the scenes of what was
going on in Europe at that particular time, that it was in France that
the idea originated, and that this idea had been carefully entertained
and impressed upon the French nation by none other than M. Félix Faure.
Apart from any statesmanlike leanings and aspirations which did exist in
him, he was drawn towards it by his own personal vanity, and the desire
to be able to welcome in Paris as his guests, first the representatives
of the most autocratic Sovereign in the world, and later on that
Sovereign himself, by whom he, the son of a Havre tanner, would be
treated as an equal. That would be a triumph indeed, and in order to
obtain it he used every effort to break through all the barriers which
existed between the realisation of his dream and the hard reality.
Huge sums of money were spent at that time both in France and in Russia
in order to prepare the public mind, through the press, for this
extraordinary turn in the politics of both countries. The campaign was
engineered with consummate skill, and very few people saw through it. It
very quickly brought about the wished-for results, and might have done
so even more quickly had it not been for various indiscretions committed
by M. Mohrenheim, whose personal wants were sometimes ahead of the march
of events, and who allowed himself upon one or two occasions to let his
impatience take the upper hand of his prudence, and in order to satisfy
those for whom he worked to attack with violence certain French
politicians whom he feared might prove rebellious against the efforts
which were being made. He tried, therefore, to oblige them to walk in
the path mapped out for them.
One of these two occasions arose when M. Clemenceau, who already at that
time had made for himself an eminent position in the ranks of the
Radical party, whose leader he was supposed to be, uttered some doubts
as to whether the French Government was not going too far in its
advances to Russia, and was compromising the dignity of France without
feeling sure that its conduct would be reciprocated on the banks of the
Neva. Alexander III. was reigning still, and it was very well known he
had no sympathies for Republics in general, and many people believed,
together with Clemenceau, that though the Marseillaise had been played
at the State dinner which was given at Peterhof in honour of the French
naval squadron anchored at Cronstadt, things would not go further, and
the Tsar would hesitate a very long time before he would condescend to
admit Marianne in his intimacy, and to walk hand in hand with her,
amidst the crowned heads of Europe, whilst they stood aghast at the
unexpected spectacle.
Furious to discover that the doubts uttered by M. Clemenceau had found
an echo among many prudent French political circles, Baron Mohrenheim,
in his impatience, unburdened his outraged feelings to the Marquis de
Morès, that fierce adversary of everything that had to do with the
Republic and its partisans. Morès did not hesitate to say openly that it
was the Radical party in France that was doing its best to prevent an
alliance with Russia, for which the latter country was yearning. Upon
this Clemenceau, indignant and never behindhand on occasions when he
could attack someone, took up his best Toledo pen and wrote to the
Russian Ambassador the following letter, which certainly deserves not to
fall into oblivion, where it has remained these long years:
“_Paris, September 7th, 1892._
“MONSIEUR L’AMBASSADEUR,--In a letter that has been made public,
the Marquis de Morès declares quite positively that you have
exchanged with him the following remarks: ‘We do not know in Russia
with whom we can treat here. The greater number of public
functionaries and officials and the whole of the press is in the
hands of the Jews, or of England. I have not sufficient money to be
able to fight them, whilst England is prodigal with hers.
Clemenceau is openly attacking, in the corridors of the Chamber,
the alliance with Russia; I am getting very uneasy, the more so
that I do not see upon whom I could eventually lean in case of
necessity.’
“I only desire to notice in these words of yours the part which
refers to myself.
“I cannot allow you, by reason of your official position as
Ambassador, to attribute to me publicly language of that kind
without declaring to you that you have been misinformed.
“When the Tsar stood up to listen to the Marseillaise, I was, as
all Frenchmen were too, justly proud at this public homage rendered
to my country. Before the whole of Europe, looking attentively at
what was taking place on that day, the French nation put her hand
loyally into the hand that had stretched itself towards her.
“It is not my place to discuss with you, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,
the consequences of the events which have taken place at Cronstadt;
all that I can say is that no one desires more ardently than I do
that these might prove beneficial for both nations, and also for
the whole of Europe.
“Any excesses of zeal connected with such a noble cause find most
certainly their excuse in that cause itself. It is only to be
regretted that they also might harm it. It is for that very reason,
I do not doubt, that by thinking the thing over you have already
convinced yourself that the ancient precept of ‘_Ne quid nimis_,’
especially when such important interests are at stake, is an
excellent safeguard.
“As concerns myself, I put it into practice to-day. You are our
honoured guest, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur; allow me not to forget it,
and to beg of you to accept the assurance of my most respectful
feelings.
RIGHT
“(Signed) GEORGES CLEMENCEAU.”
This letter considerably embarrassed Baron Mohrenheim, the more so
because he did not reply to it immediately: after it had been published
by the Agence Havas, the papers took it up, and different reporters
called upon the Russian Ambassador to ask him for explanations. He gave
them but lamely, thus making himself more ridiculous. For instance, he
declared that he had been away from Paris when it had been brought to
his secretary, Baron Korff, and that the latter had forgotten to deliver
it to him immediately upon his return, so that he had only learned its
contents through the press. In fact, he made many groundless excuses and
only added to the embarrassment of the position. At last on the 12th of
September the Agence Havas published the following reply from the
Russian Ambassador to the leader of the Radical party in the Chamber:
“_Paris, September 12th, 1892._
“MONSIEUR LE DÉPUTÉ,--The Agence Havas publishes a letter which you
have been kind enough to address to me on the seventh of the
present month. On that day I was at Aix-les-Bains, which I left on
the next day, Thursday, to return to Paris only yesterday, Sunday.
“I hasten to inform you that your letter has not yet reached me
to-day, otherwise you may rest assured that I would have eagerly
taken this opportunity to express to you my most sincere thanks for
it.
“Nothing could have afforded me greater satisfaction than to be
able to convince myself thus of the real and frank feelings of
sympathy which you express to me for my country, and to read about
the good wishes which you add in it towards the prosperity of a
cause common to us both and dear to us both, thus doing away with
misunderstandings, and making them henceforward impossible. As you
express yourself, Monsieur le Député, ‘_Ne quid nimis_’ ought to be
the motto of us both, and as you may well believe, I have had more
than one opportunity to remember it in many circumstances which I
have witnessed during the long years of my public life, a life that
has always been devoted to the different tasks I have been
entrusted with.
“Will you kindly receive, Monsieur le Député, the assurance of my
distinguished and devoted consideration.
RIGHT
“(Signed) BARON DE MOHRENHEIM.”
In publishing this reply of the Russian Ambassador, the Agence Havas
added that M. Clemenceau had hastened to inform it that his letter had
been handed over to the secretary of the Baron, M. de Korff, on
September 8th, who had given an undertaking that he should deliver it
personally to the Ambassador immediately upon the latter’s return to
Paris. In spite of the frantic efforts made by the Russian and French
Governments to minimise the impression produced by this correspondence,
the prestige of M. de Mohrenheim suffered considerably from its
publication, and he had perforce to become more careful in the future.
But he was not removed from his post. Indeed, it very rarely happens
that a Russian official is obliged to retire into private life by reason
of his public mistakes. The Russians are an enduring people. The Baron
was to witness many other triumphs, especially that of being able to
welcome Nicholas II. and his consort in Paris, which event considerably
added to his personal prestige, and also to his personal advantages.
To return to M. Félix Faure, he went on quietly pursuing the course he
had embarked upon, and preparing the ground for the great things which
he felt himself called upon to perform in the near future. He was so
sure of the ultimate success of his plans that he began to make ready
the Elysée for the glories that awaited it. He drew largely on the
credits put at his disposal for the upkeep of the palace, he tried to
give to his household the appearance of a real Court in miniature, to
train not only the officers and civilians attached to his person to
perform their duties according to the old etiquette that had prevailed
during the Monarchy, but also to put his servants, his stables, his
kitchens, and the maintenance of the state with which he liked to
surround himself on the footing he considered to be necessary to the
Chief Magistrate of the Republic. He also--and this effort is perhaps
the most meritorious of all those he made at the time--did his best to
assimilate the habits and customs prevailing in the higher classes of
society, and he succeeded admirably in doing so, helped as he was by the
numerous fair ladies at whose shrine he worshipped.
But where he showed the greatest tact was in avoiding incidents like the
one which we have just related concerning M. de Mohrenheim. Had he been
President of the Republic at the time it occurred, he would certainly
have been made aware of the possibility, or rather the likelihood of its
happening, and taken measures to avoid its reaching public knowledge.
The alliance with Russia, which was in the air when he was elected to
the Presidency, and which during the term of M. Carnot had been started
in a preliminary manner by certain influential people, was in part his
personal work. I have said that it was he who had first thought of
sending the French fleet to Cronstadt. He was at that time only a
minister, and did not dream of ever becoming Head of the State, but he
saw already looming in the distance the great things which were bound to
follow for France in the event of the public recognition of its
Republican Government by the most powerful Monarch of Europe, and he
felt that something of the glory of such an event was bound to cling to
his own humble person, which might, thanks to this circumstance, come
forward more brilliantly than he could have hoped for when he first
entered public life.
He was to reap his reward, and he must have realised it on that lovely
autumn day when he went to receive Nicholas II. and his Consort at the
railway station of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. As he drove along,
sitting opposite to them in the Daumont with outriders, in which they
made their State entry into the French capital, he may well be pardoned
if he forgot the beginnings of his political career, and the modest
villa where his early days had been spent at Havre. Can one wonder if he
lost his head a little, in the presence of that unhoped for success, and
that, having such an opportunity to be on equal footing with a real
Sovereign, he forgot sometimes that he was not one himself?