A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

At first the idea was laughed at. Then it was discussed, but then everybody said: “It can’t be done. The Unified Socialists have declared against him in advance. Poincaré may nominate him, for he is big enough to forget that he was called a Nero, but without the vote of the Unified Socialists the Chamber of Deputies can not confirm any nomination.” The Unified Socialists, it seems, is a party that hangs together better than some of the other radical groups.

Last November there was a real crisis in France. No use going into details now, because it is past. But when the crisis was at its height the people discovered that Clemenceau was not a firebrand after all. He was the voice of France.

His opposition had almost always been opposition to hypocrisy and incompetence. His fiery invective was fierce common sense, the common sense of the good, brave, clear-visioned French mind. Here, at least, was a man, not a politician. The Unified Socialists alone clung to their opposition, confident that they could block Clemenceau’s appointment. They had blocked both Ribot and Painlevé in their efforts to form ministries. They were ready to keep Clemenceau from office.

Nevertheless, Poincaré sent for Clemenceau and asked him to become prime minister. He accepted bruskly, appealed to the Chamber of Deputies in a speech full of patriotism and intelligent statements of facts. He was accepted as prime minister by every vote in the house except the fifty Unified Socialists and fifteen extreme radicals. The vote stood four hundred and eighteen to sixty-five.

Clemenceau formed a cabinet which rather astonished the French at first. He appointed two men who were not even members of the Chamber of Deputies. He included two of his old associates of former days who had been almost as unpopular as himself. The newspapers, while speaking moderately of all this, accused Clemenceau of being a dictator. “He rules with a rod of iron,” they complained. “He won’t let his ministers mention the word peace in his presence. He works everybody to death.”

This old man of seventy-six is a fiend for work. He once said that one reason he wrecked those ministries was because they wasted so much time. He opened the allied conference at Versailles with the shortest speech on record. “Gentlemen, we are here to work. Let us work.” The speech is shorter still when it is turned into French.

Soon most of the newspapers were supporting the prime minister. He may have been a dictator, but he got results. He took treason by the throat and strangled it. He took hold of the army and strengthened it. At least three times a week he motors to the front, going so close to the firing line that several times he has been in great danger, and once he narrowly escaped being captured by a German patrol.

If that patrol had captured Clemenceau the kaiser would have issued a new medal and had all the church bells in the empire rung, for the prime minister is, of all Frenchmen, the most feared and hated by Germany.

He has always seen through the Germans. His newspaper has exposed their intrigues time out of mind. About ten years ago the Germans tried to seduce France into a huge colonial expansion scheme, and if they had succeeded France and Great Britain might have become hopelessly involved.

That was one of Germany’s objects. Another was to take France’s mind off Alsace-Lorraine. Jules Ferry, then prime minister, fell into the trap, but not so Clemenceau. He denounced Ferry’s colonial policy, called it by its right name, German intrigue, so tigerishly and so long, that the people woke up and Ferry went out of office.