Paris immediately after the Armistice was a woeful spectacle of neglect and dirt. It was not much better six months ago. In those early days it was like a handsome slut in need of a bath; which in view of its sufferings was not surprising. The paint on the woodwork of houses and shops was almost all peeled away. Shutters hung awry on their broken hinges. Roads were unspeakably filthy, and full of dangerous holes and swampy gutters. The parks and gardens looked ragged and tattered. The Bois de Boulogne and the Champs Elysées were marred with the shreds and patches of war equipment. Dismal weather made everything look a hundred times worse than it really was. We were wise enough not to come to a hasty judgment about Paris. After all, we had a vast gay literature to contradict the sad story written on Paris when first we saw it!
The living in the hotels and restaurants was riotous and expensive. In the homes of Paris it was another story, we were told. Foods were strictly rationed, but of some kinds it was difficult to get even the meagre portion allowed. The strain was heavy upon the city housewife of the humbler classes. Prices were ruinously high. Wages scarcely kept pace with them. Strikes were frequent and menacing, apt to hold up one or another of the public services at any time, as in England.
But in the public cafés, the dance-halls, and the hotels, nothing dimmed the joyousness of the Parisians, set free at last from the haunting fear of the German invasion. Day and night, and night after night, a lively, exuberant, passionate crowd in each of these public places abandoned itself to an ecstasy of song and dance and play, in utter and unrestrained intoxication.
M. Jean Longuet, the grandson of Karl Marx, and at that time a Deputy in the French Chamber, invited Mr. Macdonald and myself to lunch with him at a little Italian café near his business quarters. We called for him at the office of his newspaper, Le Populaire. On our way all together he took us past the restaurant where Jaurès was shot. He pointed to the window at which Jaurès was sitting at the time of his murder. If I understood him rightly Longuet was present when the awful thing occurred; particularly awful in view of the certainty that the issue of affairs for France might have been infinitely happier, and for Europe infinitely less sorrowful, if this great man had lived during the war.
One of the great scandals of history will be the acquittal of the murderer of Jaurès. He was one of the giant political characters of France. The squalid politicians who govern the affairs of Europe at the present time could never have been where they are if there had not been removed either by force or fraud, or by the ordinary process of nature, death, so many of the great men entitled by intellect or character, sometimes both, to occupy the seats of power. Jaurès was murdered by a common assassin, and official France has seemed to rejoice. But I recall the impressive fact that the most arresting picture in the Chamber of Deputies is the immense canvas of Jaurès addressing the chamber from the tribune. They may have hated him, but they insist on his being remembered!
Jean Longuet was born in London, and speaks excellent English. He is tall and dark, with curly hair and brown eyes. He has a rich voice, and is a very eloquent speaker, full of passion when moved. Friends of his assure me that I may trust his sense of humour, and, in order to present a quick picture of the physical man to an English reader, I may say that when Longuet makes a public oration and warms to his subject he assumes an attitude and appearance which irresistibly remind one of a genius of another sort, Charlie Chaplin. Given Charlie’s creased trousers and big feet, the picture would be complete!
But Longuet is no comic figure in international politics. He is a sincere idealist and a most engaging personality. There are those who would regard this statement as less of a compliment than a comparison with the artist whose amazing gift makes honest fun for millions. This, they say, is much better, and much safer for mankind, than to be the advocate of ideals too lofty for statesmen and people to achieve because too great for them to comprehend; ideals so high that they mean crucifixion for the few who live up to them, and greater degradation for the many who deliberately elect to live below the best they have heard and seen.
The tiny Italian café I sought again on the return trip, but never found it. One delicious dish of macaroni, prepared as only the Italians know how to prepare it, was more pleasing to the taste than all the accumulated delicacies of the best Parisian table d’hôte; for those rich hotel meals were impossible to eat without a thought of the millions who were reputed dead or dying, in fields and ditches, and on roadsides, in their houses, in hospitals, in prison camps, for the lack of a crust of bread or a glass of pure water. Our friend and host of the café we learnt afterwards was a Socialist, and a member of the Party; a fact we had rather inferred from the whispered asides with Longuet during the smoking of cigarettes and the drinking of the wine and coffee.
Our chief business in Paris was to try to persuade the Belgian Socialists to come with us to Berne. They were sitting in conference at Brussels at the time. They had there decided not to attend the Berne Conference, and had sent delegates to Paris to explain the reason why. We met them at the headquarters of the French Socialist Party. All our pleading with them was of no avail. Their conference had so decided, and though they would personally have liked to go, if only for the fellowship of the thing, Party discipline must be maintained. Camille Huysmans would be there as secretary of the International, but they could not go.
Their great difficulty was their unwillingness to meet the German Majority Socialists, who had supported the war and who had not protested against the invasion of Belgium. How could they take part with such men in the building anew of the International? What sort of internationalists had these men proved themselves to be? The German Majority must first express its contrition. Then would be the time to forgive. They could never forget.