Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

by H. M. Hyndman

Cornelius Herz, the co-corrupter of political impeccables, with Jacques Reinach, his “apoplectic” fellow-Jew, had subscribed £1,000 to La Justice in its early days. What could be better? A Semite of Semites, a Panamist of Panamists, he it was who with sinister features and corrupt record stood forth as the dexterous wire-puller of the malignant marionette, Georges Clemenceau. If La Justice had been tainted with the accursed thing, Clemenceau had had his share, and the lion’s share, too, in this wretched swindle. Did anybody really care what a journal of small circulation like La Justice published or stood for? Certainly not. But Clemenceau, the terrible leader of the Left, the upsetter of Ministries, the creator of Presidents, the overthrower of the Church and the enemy of all religion, here was a man worth buying; and beyond all question Clemenceau had been bought—bought by Reinach and Herz, whose tool, therefore, he was and had been! The calumnies were credible; for if senators and Academicians had succumbed to the wiles of the serpents of Old Jewry, why should not the Aristides of Draguignan have fallen a victim to the astute de Lesseps and his “entourage du Ghetto“? Nor did this wind up the indictment. There was more to come. A group of rascals of the Titus Oates type were set to work, to put incriminating facts on record in writing, behind the scenes. They forged the endorsement as well as the bill. Documents of this character proved to the complete satisfaction of all who wished to believe it that Clemenceau was corrupt. The very fact that he was known not to be well-off strengthened the case against him. The empty sack could not stand upright! The Petit Journal, a paper of great circulation, was foremost in all this business, and its editor, M. Judet, distinguished himself by his exquisite malignity amid the crowd of Clemenceau’s detractors.

It was an ugly experience. Panama was dinned into Clemenceau’s ears daily. And there was enough to go upon to make the attacks most galling. Herz had been a large subscriber to the funds of Clemenceau’s organ. Moreover, Reinach and Herz had called upon him, though not he upon them. That was quite enough. The assailants did not stop to inquire when Herz ceased to have anything to do with La Justice, neither did they investigate who sent Reinach and Herz to the Radical leader, nor what passed between Clemenceau and the two Jewish financiers. They were only too glad to be able to take the whole thing for granted and to strengthen any weak links in the chain of evidence by the suborned perjuries of M. Norton and his colleagues.

So it went on. The fact that first the murdered President Carnot, who could not believe that de Lesseps was worse than a misguided enthusiast, and then President Loubet, who wished to deal with the entire matter in a thoroughly judicial fashion, had owed their positions to Clemenceau’s nomination and support rendered the hunting down of their political friend a delightful pastime for the whole reactionary combination. Things had come to such a pass that the common opinion grew that there was “something in it.” People actually believed that Clemenceau really had wrecked his entire career and ruled himself out of public life by taking bribes like the hundred other deputies, when he had refused to accept time after time positions which would have given him control of the national treasury and of France.

Clemenceau was quite unmoved by the storm of detraction which raged around him. He bided his time with a coolness that could scarcely have been expected from a man of his character. At length his chance came. The whole affair was brought up again before the National Assembly. Clemenceau rose to defend himself against this long campaign of successful misrepresentation. So great had been the effect of the attacks upon him that rarely, if ever, has a favourite orator stood up to address a more hostile audience. It seemed as if he had not a single friend in the whole House. Not a sound of greeting was heard. He was met with cold and obviously hostile silence. Clemenceau dealt in his most telling manner with his own personal conduct throughout. He completely immolated his accusers and dissipated their calumnies. When he sat down, the whole Assembly, which had received him as if persuaded of his guilt, cheered him enthusiastically as a much wronged man. A greater triumph could hardly be. The condemnation in open court of the forgers, whose nefarious malpractices had built up the edifice of calumny and misrepresentation upon which Clemenceau’s enemies relied for the proof of their case, cleared the atmosphere so far as his personal integrity was concerned.

But, unfortunately for Clemenceau, there were other charges against him from which he could not hope to clear himself, and would not have cleared himself if he could. Now all his political crimes were recited against him at once. He had been the means of bringing to naught M. Jules Ferry’s great schemes of colonial expansion in the East. He had opposed running the risk of war for the sake of Egypt. He had been largely instrumental in causing the failure of General Boulanger, whom not only reactionists but many vigorous Radicals admired and believed in. He had never lost a chance of pointing to the danger of priestly influence and the anti-Republican attitude of the heads of the Catholic Church. By his action in favour of the strikers at Carmaux, whom he went down himself specially to encourage and support, he had alienated a large section of the bourgeoisie.

Not the least weighty of the charges brought against him, and one which perhaps had as much effect as any in bringing about the crushing result of the poll, was that Clemenceau had steadily opposed the alliance with Russia. This was regarded as still further and more conclusive evidence of downright treachery to France. Those were the days when France felt the need for an ally who could give her powerful military support, and her people were not disposed to inquire too closely into the character of the Czar’s Government. Clemenceau regarded the connection as immoral, injurious, calculated to reduce France’s democratic influence and to lessen the probability of a close Entente with England. But Clemenceau’s adversaries had no concern whatever with the Radical leader’s reasons for his action, which all democrats and Socialists, at any rate, must have cordially approved. All they wanted was another ugly weapon wherewith to discredit and defeat the man who, though he had not gone so far as the extreme Socialists desired, had done enough to hinder and rout reactionaries with their monarchist or Buonapartist restorations. At the moment Clemenceau’s anti-Czarist policy injured him as a politician, but it certainly did him great credit as a man.

But, worse than all, he had steadily pursued his policy of a lifetime as a close and constant friend of England and of the English Entente. That was still more criminal than Panamism or anti-Imperialism. For England at that time was, and to a large extent naturally, very unpopular in France. Clemenceau, therefore, was overwhelmed with charges of being in the pay of Great Britain and working for Great Britain as well as for Panama. Broken English was used to hurl insults at him, which lost none of their fervour by being uttered in a foreign tongue. He had escaped from the obloquy of Panama, but it should go hard if one or other of these counts did not ruin him. The political warfare became more bitter than ever. His persecutors were relentless: la politique n’a pas d’entrailles.

It was at this time that I begged Clemenceau to make some terms with the Socialists, who were gaining ground rapidly and appeared to be the coming party in France. His recent tactics had been decidedly favourable to Socialist views. And again I express my surprise that Clemenceau, while holding fast to his opinions as to the necessity for maintaining “law and order” in every sense, should never have seen his way to adopting the definite Socialist view as to the necessary and indeed inevitable policy of collective social progress. But his strong personal individualism has prevented him from embracing our principles.

The statesman may quite honestly accept the theories of economists and sociologists, while compelled to adapt their application to the circumstances of his time. No really capable Socialist who has taken an active part in public life has ever attempted to do anything else. In France the Guesdists, who are certainly the most thoroughgoing Marxists in the country, have always proceeded on these lines in their municipal, and not unfrequently in their State, policy. Jaurès was a specially fine example of the opportunist in public affairs; so much so that he was taunted by more extreme men with being a Ministerialist before he was a Minister. Vaillant the Blanquist, in theory at least an advocate of a physical force revolution where possible, was in favour of an eight-hour law, compensation for injury to workmen, and so on. One and all, that is to say, were ready to use the social and political forms of to-day in order to prepare the way for the complete revolution tomorrow. All Clemenceau’s speeches and writings, before and after the Panama crash and its consequences to him, contain many passages which every convinced Socialist would accept. I always felt, nevertheless, that I was arguing with a man deaf of both ears when I put forward my well-meant suggestions. Socialism, Clemenceau then declared—this, of course, was now nearly a generation ago—would never become an effective political power in France. France, and above all rural France, which is the real France, constituting the bulk of Frenchmen, is and will always remain steadfastly individualist—“founded on property, property, property.” That was their guiding principle in every relation in life, and, he added, “I have seen them close at every stage of existence from birth to death. It is as useless to base any practical policy upon Socialist principles as it is chimerical to repose any confidence in Socialist votes.” “But,” I urged, “extremes meet: the Catholics and Socialists, both of whom are your opponents, may combine with the men whose minds have been poisoned by the Panamist and Anglophobe imputations of the Petit Journal and turn you out of your constituency in the Var for which you now sit as deputy.” He laughed at the very idea of such a defeat.

But the persistence and malignity of monarchists and men of God of the Catholic persuasion are hard to beat. Socialists with an anarchist twist in their mental conceptions are not far behind them. So the fight for the constituency of Draguignan, which Clemenceau had chosen in preference to a Paris district at the previous election, developed into a personal tussle unequalled in bitterness at that period. Every incident of the candidate’s life was turned to his discredit. The Panama scandal and his relations with Semitic masters of corrupt practices were only a portion of an atheist record unparalleled for infamy. All the Ministries he had destroyed, all the true lovers of France whom he had gibbeted, all the patriotic colonial policies he had frustrated were brought up against him, embroidered with every flaming design the modern votaries of the Inquisition could invent! He had been guilty, in fact, of the unpardonable offence of making too many enemies at once. What might have been counted to him for righteousness by one faction was blazoned forth as the blackest iniquity by another. His anti-Imperialism with his friendly attitude to the strikers incensed the reactionaries. His refusal to make common cause with them in an out-and-out programme against bourgeois Republicanism infuriated the extremists. All his energy, all his oratory, all his genuine love for and services to France in days gone by went for nothing. The friends of Jules Ferry, too, were eager for their revenge. Clemenceau had thought his loss of the seat was impossible. Nevertheless the impossible occurred. He was thrown out of Draguignan at this General Election of 1893, and after more than seventeen years of arduous and extremely useful service was compelled to retire from Parliamentary life. It was a complete break in his career.