Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

by H. M. Hyndman

President Sadi-Carnot, a cold, silent, upright man, little given to allow his feelings to inflame him at any time, warmly took this view of de Lesseps’ character. M. Carnot had been brought into close contact with de Lesseps on another of his vast projects. The President, like many others, refused to look at the Panama matter from the point of view of fraud or imposture. Money was for de Lesseps always a means, never an end. When the whole matter was brought before him, and one of the legal personages whose duty it was to investigate the whole of the facts came to a very harsh conclusion as to de Lesseps’ responsibility for the waste, corruption and malversation, M. Carnot said with some vivacity: “No, no; M. de Lesseps is not a man of bad faith. I should rather consider him punctilious. Only his natural vehemence carries him away; he is a bad reasoner, and has no power of calculation. Hence many regrettable acts on his part, done without any intention of injuring anybody. I knew him well, having seen him very close, when his imagination suggested to him the scheme for excavating an inland sea in Africa. A commission of engineers, of whom I was one, was appointed to hear him and study his proposal. We had no difficulty in showing that the whole thing was a pure chimera. He seemed very much astonished, and we saw that we had not convinced him. Take it from me as a certainty that he would have spent millions upon millions to create his sea, and that with the best of good faith in the world.”

This was probably the truth, so far as de Lesseps himself was personally concerned. Promoters, discoverers and inventors of genius are men of mighty faith in their respective enterprises. As a great anarchist once said of his own special nostrum for regenerating humanity at a blow: “All is moral that helps it, all is immoral that hinders it.” So with de Lesseps. All was moral that got in money to construct his canal: all was immoral that checked the flow of cash to the Isthmus. But an enthusiast of this temper, “without power of calculation,” is a very dangerous man, not only to the subscribers to his shares, but to the Republican politicians who confined their enthusiasm to the acquisition of hard cash for use not in Panama but in Paris.

In 1888 the Panama Canal Company collapsed, and the thing was put into liquidation. But that was not the end of it. All sorts of schemes were afoot for carrying on the works and completing the canal before the concession expired in 1893. Although, however, from the date of the breakdown onwards— when it was stated that fully £70,000,000 would be needed in addition to the amount already expended or frittered away to carry out the canal—most virulent attacks were continually made upon prominent politicians and financiers, as well as upon the Directors of the Company, neither the political nor the legal consequences of the disaster were felt to the full extent until four years later. Judicial investigations, it is true, were going on. But it was an open secret that, in spite of the losses and complaints of the shareholders, and the strong desire of the public that the whole vast transaction should be exposed in every detail, the anxiety of men in high place was to calm down natural feeling in the matter. What made this attitude more suspicious was the fact that the Government had certainly not shown itself unfavourable to the scheme, but on the contrary had helped it, even when the gravest doubts had been thrown upon its practicability, at a cost vastly exceeding anything contemplated by the Company. In fact, an atmosphere of general distrust pervaded Paris and the whole of France. Yet Panama still had its friends, and it was believed that somehow or other the affair would be tided over.

But there was a good deal more to come. Things, in fact, now took that dramatic turn which seems the rule in France with affairs which directly or indirectly influence high politics and high finance. There were people who believed that the entire enterprise could be set on its legs, although parts of the recent excavations were deteriorating and some of them had been covered already with luxuriant tropical growths which one imaginative critic spoke of as “forests.” Either the Government, they thought, could be forced to take up the enterprise itself, or at any rate would think it best, in view of what had already been done, to support de Lesseps in a fresh scheme, should the concession be renewed. This, no doubt, was the opinion of M. Gauthier, who urged the Government in the Assembly to appoint a commission to prepare plans for the completion of the Canal. This, he declared, was the only means of safeguarding the interests of the shareholders and the many hundreds of millions of francs sunk by poor French investors in this great enterprise.

Such a daring proposal necessarily raised the whole question of the responsibility for the serious engineering and financial fiasco. The Government was at once charged from several quarters, not as being answerable for past mistakes in supporting the Panama Company, but with present obliquity in screening and protecting delinquents who should long since have been brought to justice. One deputy vehemently declared that the only reason why no adequate action was taken was that “men possessed of great names and high positions” checked any attempt to handle the scandal boldly. Other deputies declaimed with equal warmth against throwing good money after bad. Meanwhile rumours floated round the Chamber as to the number of deputies who had put their services at the disposal of the Company for money received. Later, this accusation took definite shape as a formal accusation that fifty deputies had received among them the sum of £120,000. Senators and Academicians were in the same galley. Exaggeration was imputed, but the figures were proved afterwards to be less than the truth. Then everybody concerning whose position there could be the slightest doubt was accused of having “touched.”

Even MM. Rouvier and Floquet were taunted with having accepted large sums. The Chamber passed a resolution “calling for prompt and vigorous action against all who have incurred responsibilities in the Panama affair.” This might mean anything or nothing. It was pointed out, however, by a high authority that a judicial inquiry was proceeding all the time. But the public became impatient because nothing was done to stop the campaign of vilification on the one hand or to prosecute the Directors on the other; though de Lesseps was being denounced daily in the press as a fraudulent adventurer. Excitement ran very high. The shareholders and some of the deputies cried aloud for justice.

Matters being thus exceptionally perturbed, Baron Jacques Reinach, the chief agent in the manipulation of political corruption, committed suicide by apoplexy. That was the gruesome explanation given in the press of this financier’s sudden death. His fellow Semite, Cornelius Herz, survived the tragedy. Just at this moment, when everybody thought that something must be done, the Panama Concession was extended for a year. The Panamists took heart again and believed all would blow over. So the ups and downs of public expectation went on.

Then, quite suddenly and without any general notification, all the Directors of the Panama Canal Company, Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, M. C. de Lesseps, M. Fontane, M. Eiffel and M. Cottu were formally charged in court with having resorted to fraudulent methods in order to engender confidence in chimerical schemes, and with obtaining credits on imaginary facts, squandering the money of the shareholders and lending themselves to most nefarious practices. A terrible indictment!

By this time all who cherished a political or personal grudge against any public man of note had no better or surer means of discrediting him than by imputing to him some connection with the Panama affair. Mud of that sort was warranted to stick. Never was there a greater scandal. Never were people more credulous. Never did political feeling run higher, and never certainly was there a keener anxiety to connect leading Republicans with the seamy side of the concern. The more that could be done in this way the better for the Conservatives and anti-Republicans who still constituted a very formidable combination in Parliament and in the press. It was not likely, therefore, that Clemenceau would be able to escape criticism and calumny if he had been in any way connected with men some of whom were then rightly regarded as malefactors.

In a time of so much excitement it was easy to mix up truth and fiction to an extent which would render it extremely difficult for Clemenceau to clear the public mind of allegations made against him, however false they might be. All Clemenceau’s enemies, and he had not a few, took advantage of the situation to try and overwhelm him with obloquy. Now was the opportunity to pay off many old scores; and they set to work to do it with whole-souled zest and vitriolic acrimony. Circumstances aided them. They did not stick at trifles in their efforts to crush the Radical leader who had fought the good fight against reaction and Imperialism with such vigour and success for so many long years. M. Clemenceau was at this time editor of La Justice, a journal founded by himself and written by men of ability, most of whom are still his friends. The tone of the paper and the style of the contributions were no more calculated to bring over recruits from his adversaries than were his speeches and tactics in the Assembly. He was ever a fighter with tongue and with pen. Though he wrote little, if anything, in La Justice himself, the inspiration came from its editor. One thing he lacked, and always has lacked—money. If now they could only get hold of evidence that Clemenceau was contaminated with Panama, the worst foe of French obscurantism would be put out of action and his influence permanently destroyed. So they calculated. And not without good reason, as afterwards appeared.