A History of the Third French Republic

by C. H. C. Wright

In the midst of the public turmoil over these charges Caillaux's wife went to Calmette's editorial offices and killed him with a revolver. Caillaux resigned and, the Rochette case having come up for discussion in the Chamber, when Monis denied that he had ever influenced the law, Barthou produced a most damaging letter. A parliamentary commission later decided that the Monis Cabinet had interfered to save Rochette from prosecution.

It was under such circumstances that the Deputies separated for the general elections. Three chief questions came before the voters, the three-years law, the income tax, and proportional representation. The results of the elections were inconclusive and the new Chamber promised to be as ineffective as its predecessor. On the second ballots the Socialists made a good many gains.

The Doumergue Ministry resigned soon after the elections which it had carried through. President Poincaré offered the leadership to the veteran statesman Ribot, who with the co-operation of Léon Bourgeois, formed a Moderate Cabinet with an inclination toward the Left. This Ministry was above the average, but its leaders were insulted and brow-beaten and overthrown on the very first day they met the Chamber of Deputies. So then a Cabinet was formed, led by the Socialist René Viviani, who was willing, however, to accept the three-years law, though he had previously opposed it. But this victory for national defence was weakened by parliamentary revelations of military unpreparedness.

In mid-July President Poincaré and M. Viviani left France for a round of state visits to Russia and Scandinavia. Paris was engrossed by the sensational trial of Madame Caillaux, which resulted in her acquittal, but this excitement was suddenly replaced by the European crisis, and President Poincaré cut short his foreign trip and hastened home. France loyally supported her ally Russia, and, on August 3, Baron von Schoen, the German Ambassador, notified M. Viviani of a state of war between Germany and France.

Indeed, no sooner had the Moroccan question been settled than danger had loomed in the Orient, in which France was likely to be involved through her alliance with Russia. Moreover, Germany had not got over the Agadir fiasco and was furious with England as well as France. Thus the European balance of power had long been in danger through the hostility of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. It is beyond the scope of the present volume to analyze in detail the Balkan question. The rôle of France was consistent in the interest of peace by helping to maintain the balance of power, but obviously she was loyal toward her partners of the Triple Entente and acted in solidarity with them.

So far as the outbreak of the war in 1914 is concerned, France stands with a clear conscience. She had nothing to do with the disputes between Austria and Serbia, or between Austria, Germany, and Russia. Once war proved inevitable France faithfully accepted the responsibilities of the Russian alliance. Against France, Germany was an open aggressor. Germany's strategic plans for the quick annihilation of France, before attacking Russia, are well known to the world. Everybody is aware how scrupulously France avoided every hostile measure, and, during the critical days preceding the war, withdrew all troops ten kilometres from the frontier to prevent a clash. The Germans were obliged, in order to justify their advance, to invent preposterous tales of bombs dropped by aeroplanes near Nuremberg or of the violation of Belgium neutrality by French officers in automobiles. France had no idea of invading Belgium. All the French strategic plans aimed at the protection of the direct frontier, and they were dislocated by the dishonest move of Germany through Belgium.

In 1914 France was not even prepared for war. The pacification of Morocco immobilized thousands of her troops. Revelations in Parliament as late as July 13 showed, as mentioned above, great deficiencies in equipment. Public attention was taken up by the Caillaux trial and by political strife apparently reaching the proportions of national weakness.

Since Agadir it is true that France, conscious of the constantly provocative attitude of Germany, had seen the folly of plans for disarmament. Love for the army had grown again, through realization of its necessity. But no nation ever looked forward with more horror and dread to military conflict than the French. They had been the last victims of a great European war, of which the memories were still alive. However much the loss of Alsace-Lorraine rankled in their hearts, they knew too well the madness of war to seek it again. A new generation had grown up reconciled to fate and willing to let bygones be bygones.

But Germany would not. The new Empire, a Bourgeois gentilhomme among nations, but without even the breeding of the parvenu, dreamed of world-supremacy. As the boor in society makes himself conspicuous, so it was one of the tenets of Pan-Germanism to let no international agreement take place without German interference.

Some people, reading the annals of forty-four years since the Franco-Prussian War, have been disposed to sneer at France. Some have called the country degenerate because of its small birth-rate, its fiction sometimes brutal, sometimes neurotic, its inefficient Parliament, its vindictive political and religious contests. Such critics should remember that the French Government is the result of tactical compromise in presence of the Monarchical Party. Nobody denies that it might be improved. As to religious persecution, Americans might remember their own righteous feelings toward fellow citizens with "hyphenated" allegiance, when they rebuke the French for fighting vast organizations working against their Government under foreign orders.