I have known this great Frenchman at many critical stages in his exciting life. What I most admire about him, is that he is always the same man, no matter what his personal position at the moment may be. Never excessively elated: never by any chance cast down. Good or bad fortune, success or failure, made no difference to him. The motto of the Tenth Legion might well be taken as his own. “Utrinque paratus” has been the watchword of this indefatigable and undaunted political warrior throughout. It is well to recall, also, that he has invariably told his country the full truth about the situation as it appeared to him at the time, alike in opposition and in office, as deputy, as senator, and as journalist at large.
Beginning his political career as the intimate friend and almost pupil of the out-and-out Radical Republican, Etienne Arago, a sympathiser with the nobler men of the Commune, whom he endeavoured to save from the ruthless vengeance of the reactionaries headed by Thiers, he had previously voted at Bordeaux in the minority of genuine Republicans who were in favour of continuing the war against Germany when all but enthusiastic patriots held that further resistance was hopeless. Many a time of late those events of l’Année Terrible must have come back to his mind during these still more terrible four years. His attitude now is but the continuation and fulfilment of the policy he advocated then. Thereupon, five years devoted to service on the Municipal Council of Paris and to gratuitous ministrations as a doctor to the poor of one of the poorest districts of the French metropolis: a continuous endeavour to realise, in some degree, by political action, the practical ends for which the Communards had so unfortunately and injudiciously striven. Then political work again on the floor of the Assembly at one of the most stirring periods of French history: supporting Gambetta vigorously in his fight as the head of the Republican Party against the dangerous reactionism of the Duc de Broglie and Marshal MacMahon, and opposing and denouncing the fiery orator whom he succeeded as the leader of the Left, when that statesman adopted trimming and opportunism as his political creed.
The long fight against colonisation by conquest, the exposure of shameless traffic in decorations, the support and overthrow of Boulanger, the Panama scandal, the denunciation of the alliance with despotic Russia, the advocacy of a close understanding with England. In each and all of these matters Clemenceau was well to the front. Then came the crash of exclusion from political life, due to the many enemies he had made by his inconvenient honesty and bitter tongue and pen. Once more, after the display of almost unequalled skill and courage as a journalist, exceptionally manifested in the championship of Dreyfus, a return to political life and unexpected acceptance of office.
From first to last Clemenceau has been a stalwart Republican and a thoroughgoing democratic politician of the advanced Left, with strong tendencies to Socialism. These tendencies I begged him more than once to turn into actual realities and to join, or at least to act in complete harmony with, the Socialists. This seemed possible towards the close of the Dreyfus affair. But I must admit here that, much as I regret that Socialism has never enjoyed the full advantage of his services, Clemenceau, as an avowed member of the Socialist Party, could not have played the glorious part for France as a whole which he has played since the beginning of the war. It was far more important, at such a desperate crisis, to carry with him the overwhelming majority of his countrymen, including even the reactionaries, than to act with a minority that has shown itself at variance with the real sentiments of the Republic, when France was fighting for her existence.
That Clemenceau has, at one time or another, made great mistakes is beyond dispute. It could not be otherwise with a man of his character and temperament. But this, as he himself truly writes me, is “all of the past.” At no moment, in any case, has he ever failed to do his best for the greatness, the glory, the dignity of France as they presented themselves to his mind. This is incontestable. In the following pages I have endeavoured not to write a biography of the statesman who has been constantly in public life for more than fifty years, but to give a study of the growth of a commanding personality, who is an honour to his country, and of the surroundings in which his great faculties were developed.
