All I knew about Clemenceau, when I went to France last January, was that he was the editor of a newspaper which seemed to attack everybody in the French government, and which was frequently suppressed by the censor. I had never seen a copy of the paper. I knew that Clemenceau had had a long political career, had been a member of the French Senate, and also of the Chamber of Deputies, which corresponds to our House of Representatives. For a brief period also he was prime minister.
Always Clemenceau appeared to be opposing something. I thought of him as a firebrand with a talent for writing ironic newspaper articles. Therefore, when I reached Paris, when I began to read the French papers and found them filled with praises of a man they had previously denounced as a Judas; when I heard the most conservative people speak of him as the savior of France, I was filled with curiosity. I began to ask everybody to tell me all about Clemenceau.
To see him was difficult. To interview him an impossibility. He spends half his time at the front, and the other half working. Rarely did he find time to visit the Chamber of Deputies. His speeches came at rare intervals, and were never announced beforehand. So the foreign office informed me.
The best I could do was to sit down with people who knew the prime minister and get from them the extraordinary history of the man. Added to that I followed day by day in the newspapers the amazing progress of his policies announced last November when he took office.
“You ask my war aims?” he said to the Chamber. “I have only one—to win.”
Part of the programme of winning the war was the suppression of the tribe of traitors and defeatists that disgraced the name of France. These, including the unspeakable Bolo and the former minister, Caillaux, Clemenceau had fiercely attacked in his newspaper.
When he told the Chamber that he intended to push the prosecution of the accused men to the finish, some one called out unbelievingly, “What! Caillaux?” naming the man who wielded immense power, and who, while Clemenceau was making his speech of acceptance, was seated in the Chamber a few feet from the tribune, a cynical smile on his lips.
Thus challenged, Clemenceau paused just long enough to turn and fix his blazing black eyes on the man he had so often accused. He did not say a word. He just looked. Turning furiously red, Caillaux half rose from his seat. Clemenceau’s fierce eyes bored him through, and, try as he might, Caillaux could not return the gaze. He sank in his seat with averted head.
Turning once more to the deputies Clemenceau said simply that as a newspaper man he mentioned names, but as premier he would merely deal with indicted criminals.
He has dealt with them. Bolo has been executed. Almereyda, one of the worst of the lot, died a violent death in prison, Duval followed Bolo to the fatal glade in the Park of Vincennes, Humbert was exiled and Caillaux is in prison with the strongest possible prospect of being shot as a traitor. A whole raft of smaller treason mongers have received prison terms.