The Deputies rose again and again. It would have been strange if they had not.
But fine though these speeches were, and impressive as was the Prime Minister’s adjuration that, since the problems of peace were harder than those of war, they must prove their worth in both fields—it was Clemenceau’s personal influence that gave them their special value. Undoubtedly the splendid fighting of the French and British and American troops and the admirable skill of their commanders had produced that dramatic change from the days of depression from March to July to the period of continuous triumph from July to November. This Clemenceau never allows us for one moment to forget. But he it was who had breathed new life into the whole combination, military and civilian, at the front and in the factories. No man of his time of life, perhaps no man of any age, ever carried on continuously such exhausting toil, physical and mental, as that which this marvellous old statesman of seventy-seven undertook and carried though from November 1917 to November 1918.
His energy and power of work were those of a vigorous young man in the height of training. Starting for the front in a motor-car at four or five o’clock in the morning at least three times a week, he kept in touch with generals, officers and soldiers all along the lines to an extent that would have seemed incredible if it had not been actually done. Once at the front he walked about under fire as if he had come out for the pleasure of risking his life with the poilus who were fighting for La Patrie. Marshal Foch and Higher Command were in constant fear for him. But he knew what he was about. Valuable as his own life might be to the country, to court death was a higher duty than to take care of himself, if by this seeming indifference he made Frenchmen all along the trenches feel that he and they were one. He succeeded. Fortune favoured him throughout. Then having discoursed with the Marshal and his generals, having saluted and talked with the officers, he chatted with the rank and file of the soldiery and rushed back to Paris, arriving at the Ministry of War at ten or eleven o’clock at night, ready to attend to such pressing business as demanded his personal care. And all the time cheerful, alert, confident, showing, when things looked dark, as when the great advance began, that the Prime Minister of the Republic never for one moment doubted the Germans would be hurled back over the frontier and France would again take her rightful place in the world.
And that is not all. Clemenceau’s influence in the Council Chamber of the Allies was and is supreme. The old gaiety of heart remains, but the soundness of judgment and determination to accept no compromise of principle are more marked than ever. Many dangerous intrigues during the past few months, of which the world has heard little, were snuffed clean out by Clemenceau’s force of character and overwhelming personality. The French Prime Minister wanted final victory for France and her Allies. Nothing short of this would satisfy him. There was no personal loyalty he wished to build up, no political object that he desired to attain, no section or party that he felt himself bound to propitiate. Therefore the other Ministers of the Allies found themselves at the table with a statesman who was something more than an individual representative of his nation. He was the human embodiment of a cause. What that meant and still means will only be known when the dust of conflict has passed from us and the whole truth of Clemenceau’s policy can be told.
For my part I have done my best as an old and convinced Social-Democrat, and on some important points his opponent, to give a frank and unbiassed study of Clemenceau’s fine career. His very mistakes serve only to throw into higher relief his sterling character and the genius which has enabled him to command success. Read aright, his actions do all hang together, and constitute one complete whole. Comprising within himself the brilliant yet thorough capacity of his French countrymen, he has risen when close upon eighty to the height of the terribly responsible position he was forced to fill.
Therefore his efforts have been crowned with complete victory. Having forgotten himself in his work, the man Clemenceau will never be forgotten. He will stand out in history as the great statesman of the Great War.
And now that he and we have won—our aid, as none knows or appreciates better, having been absolutely indispensable to the French triumph—Clemenceau feels so deeply that France as a whole has shared in the great awakening that, having himself appointed the devout Catholic Marshal Foch generalissimo of the Allied armies, he, of all men, joined in the Te Deum of Thanksgiving in the Cathedral of Lille! The work he has done, the risks he has run, the unshakable determination he has displayed, have raised him high above all petty considerations of politics, creeds, classes, or conditions. Therefore he is the hero of France after her desperate struggle for national existence.