Note.—It was said at the time that M. Briand’s intrigues in the lobbies were the real cause of Clemenceau’s defeat and resignation. Lately this has been confirmed to me on good authority. At any rate, M. Briand benefited. It was he who succeeded his chief.
H. M. H.
[CHAPTER XVII]
CLEMENCEAU AND GERMANY
Clemenceau flung himself out of office in an unreasonable fit of temper. A man of his time of life, at sixty-eight years of age, with his record behind him, had no right to have any personal temper at all, when the destinies of his country had been placed in his hands. Probably he would admit this himself to-day. But, during his exceptionally strenuous period of office, he had, as we have seen, more than once shown an impulsiveness and even an irritability that were not consonant with his general disposition. Throughout, there appeared to be an inclination on his part to take opposition and criticism too much to heart. As if, in fact, the great Radical overthrower of opportunism was annoyed at being compelled, as all administrations must be, to adopt to some extent a policy of opportunism himself. His outburst against all compromise with the Church was one instance of this. His uncalled-for resignation on account of M. Delcassé’s attack was another. This might well have been the end of his official experiences. Certainly no one would have ventured to predict that eight years later would come the crowning achievement of his remarkable career. His own remark on leaving office was not calculated to encourage his personal adherents or to give his country confidence in his leadership. “I came in with an umbrella, I go out with a stick,” was all very well as the epigram of a journalist: it was too flippant a remark for a serious statesman such as Clemenceau had shown himself to be. But the time was not far off when all his main policy, as man of affairs, politician, and as publicist would be overwhelmingly justified. As we have seen, Clemenceau was all his life strongly opposed to colonial expansion. His action with regard to Morocco, apparently so contrary to this, arose from an even stronger motive, his desire to build up French defence against Germany on every side.
But his general distrust of colonisation by conquest in Egypt, China, Madagascar, and elsewhere had been based upon France’s need for using all her strength and all her resources to build up the power of the French Republic within the limits of France. This is true of all nations at a period when the power of man over nature is increasing so rapidly in every department: perhaps, properly understood, in agriculture most of all, when science is capably applied to production on the land. That is to say, that even in countries such as England, where the cry of over-population is so frequently raised, and where the cult of colonisation and emigration has been exalted to the position of a fetish, it would be far better to devote attention to the creation of wealth at home than to the development of waste lands, however fertile, abroad. Concentration of population, given adequate regulation of employment in the interests of the whole people, and attention to the requirements of space, air and health, is not only devoid of danger but is an element in national prosperity—“nothing being more plain than that men in proper labour and employment are capable of earning more than a living,” as John Bellers wrote more than two hundred years ago; and “a nation wherein are eight millions of people is more than twice as rich as the same scope of land wherein are but four,” as Petty wisely stated, about the same date.
If this was so obviously true at the end of the seventeenth century, it is tenfold, not to say a hundredfold, more certain in the twentieth, having regard to the marvellous discoveries and inventions since made and still but partially applied in every direction. But France is the land where such considerations are most decisive in dealing with the basis of national polity. France has enormous advantages in regard to soil, climate, the industrious habits and skill of her people, and the consequent monopoly on the world market of whole branches of commerce, where taste and luxury have to be gratified. Moreover, she possesses a source of income unparalleled in Europe and scarcely worth noting elsewhere, except in the case of Italy. I calculate that France receives, one year with another, from visitors who come thither, merely to see and to spend, an amount, by way of profit, of not less than seventy millions sterling. This large sum alone, if used for enhancing the productiveness of the French soil and French industry generally, would immensely benefit the people in every respect. French thrift, again, had piled up out of the products of industry immense pecuniary accumulations. There could have been no better investment of these funds possible than the improvement of the defences of France against invasion, the completion of her railway and canal system, the development of her mines, so greatly coveted by her aggressive neighbour, the concentration of her military and naval forces at home, instead of scattering any portion of them abroad, the expenditure upon thorough education and scientific agricultural and industrial experiments. All this even Imperialist Frenchmen can see now.
So with regard to Russia. The alliance of the French Republic with the Empire of Russia gave France, apparently, a better position in Europe, the pusillanimous and short-sighted English statesmen having rejected an alliance which was afterwards forced upon Great Britain when wholly unprepared for war. Here also Clemenceau’s views were justified by the event. The close connection between a democratic Republic and an autocratic Empire put France in an unenviable moral position before the world. More materially serious than this ill-fated combination, ethically, was the necessity imposed upon the French of lending continually to Russia, until the total amount of the Russian loans held in France amounted to many hundreds of millions sterling.
Such huge sums, again, would have been far more advantageously spent at home than in building strategical and other railways, and financing gold and other mines, in the vast Muscovite Empire. Financiers gained largely by these loans. But the peasants and small bourgeoisie of France were unknowingly dependent for their interest upon a poverty-stricken agricultural population, which could not possibly continue to pay the large sum due yearly on this amount to their Western creditors without utter ruin. Thus unsound finance followed hard on the heels of more than doubtful policy, and France was the weaker and the poorer for both.