Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

by H. M. Hyndman

[CHAPTER XIV]

AS ADMINISTRATOR

At this time Clemenceau, owing to his apparently resolute determination not to take office, no matter how many Ministries he might successfully bring to naught, had got into a back-water. He had become permanently Senator for the Department of the Var in 1902, a startling, almost incomprehensible move when his continued furious opposition to that body is remembered. However, having thus made unto himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, he found their “eternal habitations” a not unpleasing dwelling-place. His position as publicist and journalist was assured and nothing could shake it; his criticisms by speech and pen were as telling and vigorous as ever. But at sixty-five years of age he was still a free-lance, a force which all parties were obliged to consider but with which no Ministry could come to terms. It was a strange position. So his countrymen thought. Those who most admired his ability and his career saw no outlet for his marvellous energy that would be permanently beneficial to the country in a constructive sense. Perhaps no politician of any nation ever so persistently refused to “range himself” as did Clemenceau for thirty-five years of stormy public life. He revelled in opposition: he rejoiced in overthrow. He was on the side of the people, but he would not help them to realise their aspirations in practical life. He was a political philosopher compact of incompatibilities. As an individualist he was a stalwart champion of individual freedom: as a man of affairs he advocated the use of State power to limit the anarchic domination of personal power.

There was no understanding such a man. He would remain a brilliant Frenchman of whom all were proud until the end, when he would be buried with public honours as the champion Ishmaelite of his age. “When I saw he doubted about everything, I decided that I needed nobody to keep me ignorant,” wrote Voltaire. Much the same idea prevailed about Clemenceau. He was the universal sceptic: the man whose sole intellectual enjoyment was to point out the limitless incapacity of others with epigrammatic zeal. I myself, who had watched him closely, was afraid that he would allow all opportunities for displaying his really great faculties in a ministerial capacity to slip by and leave to his friends only the mournful task of writing his epitaph: “Here lies Clemenceau the destroyer who could have been a creator.”

But this was all nonsense. “Ce jeune homme“—Clemenceau will die young—”d’un si beau passé” had also before him un bel avenir. Nothing is certain with Clemenceau but the unforeseen. At the very time when people had made up their minds that he was a back number, he had a brand-new volume of his adventures ready for the press. After a few conversations with M. Rouvier and then with M. Sarrien, he became Minister of the Interior in the latter’s Cabinet. He took office for the first time on March 12th, 1906, at a very stirring epoch.

It is difficult to exaggerate the impression produced by this step on the part of M. Clemenceau. His accession to M. Sarrien’s Cabinet eclipsed in interest every other political event. Here was the great political leader and organiser of opposition, the Radical of Radicals, the man who had declined the challenge alike of friends and of enemies to take office, time after time, at last seated in a ministerial chair. All his past rose up around him. The destroyer of opportunism: the Guy Earl of Warwick of ministries: the universal critic; the immolator of Jules Perry and many another statesman; the one Frenchman who had maintained the ideals of the French Revolution against all comers—this terrible champion of democracy à outrance now placed himself in the official hierarchy, whence he had so often ousted others. His victims of yesterday could be his critics of to-day. How would this terrible upsetter of Cabinets act as a Minister himself? That was what all the world waited with impatience to see. They had not days, but only hours to wait.

That was the time when, M. Delcassé having been forced to resign from the Foreign Office, almost, it may be said, at the dictation of Germany, the Morocco affair was still in a very dangerous condition, threatening the peace of France and of Europe. But even the critical negotiations at Algeciras were for the moment overshadowed by a terrific colliery disaster in the Courrières-Lens district, causing the death of more miners than had ever been killed before by a similar catastrophe. This horrible incident occurred but a few days before Clemenceau became Minister of the Interior, and it fell within the immediate sphere of his official duties.

The mines where the accident occurred had long been regarded as very dangerous, fire-damp being known to pervade them from time to time, and the miners throughout the coal regions had long held that the owners had never taken proper precautions to ensure the safety of the men. They went down the pits day after day, not only to work on very difficult and narrow seams, but at the hourly risk of their lives. Owing to the great social and political influence of the mine-owners it was practically impossible to get anything done, and the general treatment of the men employed was worse than is usual even in those districts in our own and other countries where coal magnates are masters. The pitmen under such conditions were less cared for and more harshly treated than animals, probably because they were less costly and could be more easily replaced.

Three days before the main explosion there had been an outburst of fire-damp at a small adjacent mine, whose workings were in direct communication with the larger pits. This alone ought to have been taken as a serious warning to the engineers in control. But markets were good, coal was in great demand, the “hands” were there to take risks. So this minor difficulty was dealt with in a cheap and convenient way, and the extraction of coal went on upon a large scale from the imperilled shafts as it did before. Meanwhile the dangerous gases were all the time oozing in from the smaller pit to the larger ones. For three days this went steadily on, and nothing whatever was done, either in the way of taking further precautions where the original danger began, or of testing the character of the air in the bigger mines to which the other pit had access.

On Saturday, March 10th, no fewer than 1,800 men went down the shafts into the mines. A full account of what actually took place could never be given. All that was learned from the survivors was that the miners working with bare lights in these dangerous pits suddenly encountered an influx of fire-damp. Explosion after explosion took place. The unfortunate men below, threatened at once with suffocation or being burned alive, rushed in headlong disorder for the cages which would lift them to the surface. Horrible scenes inevitably took place. Those in front were pressed on by those behind, who, as one of them expressed it, were breathing burning air. For the majority there was and there could be no hope. Out of the 1,800 miners who went down in the morning, more than 1,150 were either stifled by the gas or burnt alive. The heroism displayed by the pitmen themselves, in their partially successful endeavours to rescue their entombed comrades, was the only bright feature in the whole of this frightful disaster. Some of these fine fellows went down to what seemed certain death, and others worked at excavation until almost dead themselves in their efforts to save a few from the general fate. No wonder that the feeling throughout the neighbourhood was desperately bitter.