When a political leader in the course of some fifteen years of Parlamentary life has upset, or has helped to upset, no fewer than eighteen administrations and has always refused to take office himself, that leader is likely to have created a few enemies. When, in addition to these feats of destruction, he has during the same period secured the nomination and election of three Presidents of the Republic and has thus proved an insuperable obstacle to the realisation of the legitimate ambitions of the most important public men in France who were not elected, it is clear that personal popularity was not the object he had in view. It is impossible for the ordinary politician or journalist to judge fairly a man of this sort. Politics in modern Europe is an interesting game and, quite frequently, a remunerative profession. Party interests sap all principle and the attainment of personal aims and ambitions in and out of Parliament is, as a rule, quite incompatible with common honesty. Instead of Court intrigues and backstair cabals there are nowadays lobby “transactions” and convenient sales of titles and positions arranged, for value received, at private meetings. That is as far as democracy has got yet. It is all an understood business, often complicated with more flagitious pecuniary dealings outside.

Republican Government, or Constitutional Government, means, therefore, the success or failure of vote-catching and advantage-grabbing schemes, quite irrespective, from the public point of view, of the merits of the proposals which are put forward. Honest enthusiasts, who really wish to get something done for the benefit of the present or the coming generation, are only useful in so far as they act as stokers-up of public opinion for the profit of the political promoter of this or that faction. Steam is needed to drive the machine of State. Men of real convictions furnish that steam. But they are fools for their pains, all the same. Half the amount of energy used in the right direction would gain for them place, pelf, and possibly power, which is all that any man of common sense goes into politics for. Anybody who carries high principle and serious endeavour into political life is not playing the game. Everybody around him wants to know what on earth he is driving at. The only conceivable object of turning a Ministry out is to get in. To turn a Government out in order to keep out yourself is an unintelligible and therefore dangerous form of political mania, or a persistent manifestation of original sin.

Clemenceau was found guilty on both counts. But he was the ablest public man in all France. Moreover, he was successful in the diabolical combinations he set on foot. The thing was uncanny. That he should begin by overthrowing other politicians was all in the way of business. But that he should go on at it, time after time, for year after year, while other and inferior men took the posts he had opened for them, was not to be explained by any known theory of human motives. If he had been a cranky religionist, now, that would conceivably have met the case. He might have been “possessed” from on high or from below. But Clemenceau was and is a free-thinker of free-thinkers: neither Heaven nor Hell has anything to say to him. Clearly it is a case of malignant atavism: Clemenceau has thrown back to his animal ancestry. What is the totem of the tribe which has entered into him, whose instinct of depredation pervades his every political action? We have it! He is of the jungle, jungly. His spring is terrific. His crashing attack fatal. He looks as formidable as he is. In short, he is a Tiger, and there you are. That accounts for everything!

When Clemenceau was re-elected Deputy for the 18th Arrondissement to the National Assembly, on October 14th, 1877, and took the active part in the renewed struggle with Marshal MacMahon already spoken of, Gambetta was the leader at the height of his power and influence, with a solid Republican majority of more than a hundred votes. But from this period he became steadily more and more Opportunist, which gained him great credit in Great Britain, and Clemenceau was thenceforth the recognised leader of the advanced Left. MacMahon having resigned, M. GrÉvy was elected President with the support of Gambetta.

From the first Clemenceau had vigorously opposed the establishment of a Second Chamber in the shape of a Senate divorced from a direct popular vote. This was a step calculated to hamper progress at every turn, and at critical moments to intensify those very antagonisms which it was Gambetta’s intention, no doubt, to compose entirely, or at any rate to mitigate. Clemenceau did not view the matter from Gambetta’s point of view. The Monarchists and Buonapartists were the domestic enemy, as the Germans had been and might be again the foreign enemy. The only sound policy for strengthening the Republic to resist both was to favour those measures political and social which would make that Republic, which they had established with so much difficulty and at such great cost, a genuinely democratic Republic. Any surrender to the reactionists and the clericals must inevitably dishearten those parties, now shown to be the majority of the whole French people, who were for the Republic and the Republic alone. Opportunism also gave the anti-democrats and intriguers a false notion of their own power, virtually helped them to carry on their underground agitations for a change of the new constitution, and provided them in the undemocratic Senate with a political force that might be turned to their own purpose.

It was more important all through, thought Clemenceau, to inspire your own side with confidence than to placate your opponents by half-measures. It was, in fact, not enough to eject officials who were known to be hostile to the Republic; it was still more essential to give such shape to the political forms and so vivify political opinion that even the most unscrupulous officials could not turn them to the account of reaction. Both steps were necessary to carry out a thorough democratic programme. In fact, the whole scheme of administration in France could not be permanently improved merely by substituting one set of bureaucrats for another. Much more drastic measures of a peaceful character were indispensable, and these Opportunism thwarted. Gambetta may not have given up his desire to carry these Radical measures in 1877 and 1878: he still retained and expressed his old opinions upon clericalism and its sinister influence. But he was no longer the vehement champion of the advanced party at Versailles, and the position which he had abandoned Clemenceau took up and pushed further to the front.

There was no matter on which the lines of cleavage between the Republicans and the reactionists were more definitely and clearly drawn than on the question of the Amnesty of the Communists. No man in the Assembly was stronger in favour of their complete amnesty by law than Clemenceau. This he showed in 1876, and in his powerful advocacy of the release of the great agitator and conspirator Blanqui in 1879. Every reactionary and trimming man of moderate views was bitterly opposed to a policy of justice towards the victims of the wholesale measures of repression formulated by M. Thiers and so frightfully carried out by General Gallifet and the Versailles troops in 1871. Even when measures of partial amnesty were passed, their application was nullified as far as possible by Ministers. It was part of an organised policy to frighten the bourgeoisie and peasants into another Empire. The reprisals of the Bloody Week and the transportations to Cayenne and New Caledonia had not by any means fully satisfied the enemies alike of the Commune and the Republic. So Clemenceau and his friends never ceased their attacks upon M. Waddington and others who took the rancorous conservative view of unceasing persecution of the men and women who, after all, were the first to declare the Republic. M. Waddington, as Premier, got a resolution passed by the Chamber in his favour. But this did not silence either Clemenceau’s friends or himself. Here, in fact, was a crucial case of his power of getting rid of an obnoxious Ministry even in the face of a Ministerial majority. The Tiger showed his claws and made ready to spring. But first he gave fair warning of his intentions. Nothing could be plainer than this: “Why has the Minister of Justice demanded a partial amnesty? Because he is anxious that the country should not forget the horrors of the Commune. But then, if you do not wish it to forget the horrors of the Commune, why do you desire that those who have been condemned should forget the horrors of its repression? Because for eight long years we have kept under cover the abominable facts at our disposal, you have thought yourselves in a position to trample on us! You say: We shall not forget the hostages and the conflagrations. Very well. I who speak here tell you: If you forget nothing, your opponents will remember too.”

The speech from which that passage is an excerpt was regarded as a distinct menace on Clemenceau’s part. It was followed up by the extreme Left with a series of interruptions, interrogations and denunciations which ended in the retirement of M. Waddington. He had his majority but he had no Clemenceau. So out went Waddington and his colleagues. In came M. Freycinet—“the white mouse.” “We have had,” said Clemenceau’s organ, La Justice, “in the Waddington cabinet a Dufaure cabinet without M. Dufaure. To-day we have a Waddington cabinet without M. Waddington. It is a botch upon a botch.” A nice welcome for M. Freycinet! A pleasing congratulation for the President, M. GrÉvy! The administration was regarded as a political monstrosity. It had two heads, M. Freycinet and M. Jules Ferry, one looking to the right and the other to the left. The friends of Freycinet could not stand Ferry: the friends of Ferry abhorred Freycinet. This new political marriage not only began but went on with mutual aversion. It stood at the mercy, therefore, of Clemenceau, who was less inclined to be merciful since the Premier declared himself bitterly hostile to the plenary amnesty proposed by the famous old Republican, M. Louis Blanc. Also on account of clerical tendencies. Out goes Freycinet, therefore, in his turn, and in comes M. Jules Ferry, with various clerical, educational and other troubles of his own hatching to clear up. Ministries, in short, were going in and out on the dial of Presidential favour like the figures of a Dutch clock. Clemenceau was getting his claws well into the various political personages all the time. As none of them had any blood to lose in the shape of principles there was no great harm done—except to the Republic! It was the perpetual immolation of a sawdust brigade. A keen critic of the period said of the Ferry Ministry—which was beaten on its proposal to postpone on behalf of education the reform of the magistracy and all that this carried with it in regard to the amnesty—that it wished to die before it lived. Down it went for the moment, and returned to place out of breath and half-ruined. But there the Ministry still was, and that by itself was something in those days of political topsy-turveydom, with Clemenceau and his party ever ready to assert themselves.

Thus the Republic stumbled rather than marched on, from the date of Marshal MacMahon’s resignation and the installation of M. GrÉvy as President up to the period of the declaration of July 14th, in remembrance of July 14th, 1789, and the Fall of the Bastille, as the fÊte day of the Republic after the passage of a practically complete amnesty. This was really a great triumph for all Republicans, as it put the Republic in its true historic relation to the past, the present and the future. With such a national fÊte day, with the certainty that Republicans, if they chose to keep united, could always command a large majority in the Assembly, the elections of 1881 might well have been a first step towards a thorough political and social reorganisation of the Republic. Unfortunately there were several causes of disunion. President of the Assembly though he was, and therefore excluded by his position as well as by M. GrÉvy’s prejudice against him from coming into immediate competition with M. Ferry for the Premiership, Gambetta was actively supporting the scrutin de liste, or political appeal to the whole country, against scrutin d’arrondissement, or local elections. This was regarded as a bid on his part for a clear Parliamentary dictatorship. Already on October 20th, 1880, Clemenceau had denounced the hero of the dictatorship of despair of 1871, fine as his effort had then been, as aiming at personal power ten years later. A victory at the polls gained through scrutin de liste would probably ensure him success in this venture.

Nevertheless, in spite of open and secret opposition, Gambetta had sufficient influence to carry the scrutin de liste through the National Assembly. But with the curious irony of fate he was defeated by a majority of 32 in the Senate which he himself had been so largely instrumental in forcing upon the Republic! This was on June 9th, 1881. Three months before, M. Barodet had brought forward a resolution backed by 64 deputies which, if carried, would have abolished the equality of rights between the Senate and the National Assembly, would have withdrawn the right of the former to dissolve Parliament, would have made the Chamber permanent like the Senate, would have modified the system of election of the second House; would have prevented the re-enactment of the scrutin de liste by again making the electoral law for the deputies part of the Constitution; and lastly would have summoned a Constituent Assembly in order to carry out these reforms. This whole project was discussed in the Assembly on May 31st. There was no mistake about Clemenceau’s attitude. He formulated a vigorous indictment against the Constitution of 1875 and attacked the Senate with great violence. The Constitution of 1875 was, he declared, a powerful weapon of war expressly forged for use against the Republic. The Senate with its anti-democratic method of election was a permanent danger to the State. It was not in any sense an element of stability but an element of resistance. “What is the use of talking of a brake on the machine or a weight to counterbalance popular opinion? Does not universal suffrage provide its own brake, its own regulator?” This time, however, Clemenceau missed his coup. M. Barodet’s motion was rejected and the conservative Republic rumbled on comfortably, though Clemenceau shortly afterwards very nearly toppled M. Ferry’s Cabinet over, the Ministers only securing a vote in their favour by a majority of 13 made up by their own votes.

Looking back to that period when the whole Constitution seemed almost certain to go into the melting-pot and come out again in a thoroughly democratic shape, it is remarkable to notice how, in spite of the efforts of Clemenceau, M. Naquet and other democrats, the Republic of compromise has steadily adhered to its old machinery. Why the cumbrous and often reactionary Senate, elected in such wise as to exclude democratic influence, should have been maintained for more than forty years is difficult to explain. But nations, as our own belated and unmanageable Constitution proves, when once they have become accustomed to a form of government, are very slow indeed to adapt it to rapidly changing economic and social developments. This, it may be said, suits the English turn of mind with its queer addiction to perpetual compromise. But the French are logical and apparently restless. Yet their Constitution remains an unintelligible muddle. Their real conservatism overrides their revolutionary tendencies except in periods of great perturbation. Thus the Opportunist Republic of Gambetta, which ought to have been a mere makeshift, has held on, with partial revision, for more than forty years. Fear of the monarchists on one side and of the Communists, afterwards the Socialists, on the other has kept Humpty-Dumpty up on his wall.

The elections of 1881, conducted as they were amid much excitement, gave the Republicans of all parties a crushing majority—a majority in the Assembly greatly out of proportion even to the total vote. There were five millions of votes for Republicans against 1,700,000 for the various sections of monarchists. The Republican deputies in the Chamber, however, numbered 467 to only 90 “conservatives.” According to the returns, this was a victory for the Government and its chief, M. Jules Ferry, especially as the Prime Minister had arrived at some understanding with Gambetta, who at this time had become extremely unpopular with the democracy of Paris. But those who were of this opinion reckoned without the question of Tunis and, above all, without taking account of the difficulty of facing the criticisms of the irreconcilable Clemenceau. Clemenceau had always opposed a policy of colonial adventure. This of Tunis was from his point of view not only adventurous but dangerous. Tunis had been offered to France in an indefinite way at the Peace-with-Honour Congress of Berlin in 1878. But the policy of expansion pushed on by financial intrigues did not take shape at once. When it did it was serious enough, for France not only had to deal with troubles in Algeria itself, with the natural opposition of the Bey of Tunis to French interference and annexation, but Italy took umbrage at the advance, regarding Tunis as specially her business, Turkey was by no means favourable, and there was even a possibility that Germany might stir up trouble for purposes of her own. Moreover the whole business had been extremely ill-managed, not only by the Government itself but by M. Albert GrÉvy, the brother of the President, who was the Governor-General of Algeria. This personage, on account of his Presidential connections, could neither be censured nor replaced. So credits were asked for, troops were moved, a railway concession granted—everything as usual, in short, when annexation is being prepared.

Clemenceau quite rightly denounced the whole mischievous business as the policy of intriguers and plutocrats, and demanded an inquiry into the affair from the first. He did not measure his phrases at all. French blood and French money, sadly needed at home, were being wasted abroad. M. Ferry, to do him justice, fought hard for his policy of colonisation by force of arms. His attacks upon the extremists who criticised him did not lack point or bitterness. Discharged officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and returned Communards from Noumea who composed the public meetings and irregular assizes that condemned him, M. Ferry, “as is fitting, kicked aside with his boot.” As to Clemenceau, if he had allowed matters to take their own course in Tunis, what a tornado of malediction would have raged around them from that orator! “I can hear even now the philippics of the honourable M. Clemenceau.” Clemenceau did not get the inquiry he demanded. But on November 10th M. Ferry retired, so badly had he been mauled in the fray. It was a win, that is to say, for Clemenceau, who by his speech on November 9th again overthrew the Government in spite of the cordial support of Gambetta. What made this victory of Clemenceau and the extreme Left the more astounding was the fact that the Treaty concluding the “first pacification” of Tunis had been confirmed on May 23rd by a majority of 430 to 1. Clemenceau was that one. Six months later, therefore, he had his revenge. The expÉdition de vacances, which had developed into a guerre de conquÊte, cost M. Jules Ferry his Premiership, notwithstanding this unheard-of majority. The Tiger at work indeed!

So now at last, in spite of M. GrÉvy’s ungrateful conduct towards him, in spite likewise of the rejection of the scrutin de liste, Gambetta became President of the Council instead of President of the Chamber. He was still at this time in the eyes of all foreigners the most eminent living French statesman. In England particularly his accession to office was received with jubilation in official circles. It meant, so said Liberals like Sir Charles Dilke, who were then in power, a permanently close understanding between France and England, a joint settlement of the troublesome and at times even threatening Egyptian question, as well as a fair probability of the arrangement of other thorny problems between the two countries. But in order to accomplish all this Gambetta must carry the Assembly, the Senate and the bulk of his countrymen with him, and control a solid Republican party, even if Clemenceau and his squadrons still hung upon his flank. Gambetta, however, had shaken the confidence of the country. It was no longer Clemenceau and his friends only who accused him of aiming at supreme dictatorial power. The public in general suspected him too. Nor did his immediate friends, either old or young, do much to destroy this unfortunate impression.

Truth to tell, Gambetta was not the man he had been a few years before. He looked fat, even bloated, unhealthy and sensual. His magnificent frame had undergone deterioration. A brilliant French journalist cruelly comparing him to Vitellius, as a man of gluttony and debauchery combined, summed up his career against that of the extraordinary Roman general and Emperor who had played so many parts successfully, as soldier in the field and as courtier in the palace, and wound up in derision of Gambetta with the terrible phrase, “Je te demande pardon, CÉsar!” And over against this self-indulgent and fiery man of genius was a very different personage, who had taken up the rÔle which had once been that of the great tribune of the French people. Spare, alert, vigorous, always in training, despising ease and never taken by surprise; equal, as he had just shown, to fighting a lone hand victoriously, yet never despising help in his battles even from the most unexpected quarters—what chance had Gambetta against such a terrible opponent as Clemenceau? None whatever. Down he went, after a Premiership of but sixty-six days. Many believe that, finding the situation too complicated, and relying still upon obtaining the scrutin de liste later—as indeed came about some time after his death—Gambetta deliberately rode for a fall. Certain it is that M. SpÜller, who had Gambetta’s complete confidence, gave this explanation of his intentions three weeks before his defeat in the Assembly.

Gambetta, with all his great reputation, being overthrown, straightway his old Secretary of 1871, de Freycinet, came again to the front. The affairs of Egypt, always with Clemenceau’s genial assistance, made short work of him. The Anglo-French Condominium having fallen through and England having thought proper to suppress a people “rightly struggling to be free,” de Freycinet was anxious to reassert the claims of France in Egypt after a fashion which threatened unpleasantness with Great Britain. Whatever Clemenceau may have thought privately of English policy at this juncture, he would have none of that. His arguments convinced the Assembly that French intervention in Egypt against England would be dangerous and unsuccessful. France, said Clemenceau, had neither England’s advantages nor England’s direct interests in Egypt. France is a continental, not a great sea power. Her apprehensions are from the East. Do nothing which may drive England into the arms of Germany.

What was much worse, the same colonial expansion which had been carried out in Tunis was now followed up in Tonquin, Annam and Madagascar, at great expense and to little or no advantage. Clemenceau still opposed this entire policy on principle. Ferry thought France would recompense herself for the disasters of 1870-71 by these adventures: Clemenceau was absolutely convinced to the contrary. “Why risk £20,000,000 on remote expeditions when we have our entire industrial mechanism to create, when we lack schools and country roads? To build up vanquished France again we must not waste her blood and treasure on useless enterprises. But there are much higher reasons even than these for abstaining from such wars of depredation. It is all an abuse, pure and simple, of the power which scientific civilisation has over primitive civilisation to lay hold upon man as man, to torture him, to squeeze everything he has in him out of him for the profit of a civilisation which itself is a sham.” There could be no sounder sense, no higher morality, no truer statesmanship than that. Clemenceau had aspirations that France should lead the world, not by unjustifiable conquests over semi-civilised populations, but by displaying at home those great qualities which she undoubtedly possesses. His attacks were inspired, therefore, not by personal animosity against Jules Ferry or any other politician, but against a megalomania that was harmful to his country and the world. Unfortunately, Clemenceau could not, this time, persuade the Assembly or his countrymen to recognise the dangers and disadvantages of expansion by conquest in the Far East, until the disaster of Lang Son and the demand for additional credits enabled him to push the perils of such a policy right home. Then M. Ferry was once more discharged, practically at Clemenceau’s behest.

So matters went on, Clemenceau striving his utmost, in opposition, to enforce the genuine democratic policy of abstention from Imperialism abroad and strengthening of the forces of the Republic at home which the successive Opportunist Administrations in power refused to accept. In each and every case, Tunis, Tonquin, Annam, Madagascar and Egypt, he considered first, foremost and all the time what would most benefit Frenchmen in France, and refused to be led astray by any will-o’-the-wisps of Eastern origin, however gloriously they might disport themselves under the sun of finance. But now came a still more awkward matter close at home. There are not the same facilities for shutting down inquiries into the financial peccadilloes or corrupt malversations of public men in France as there are in England. Monetary scandals will out, though political blunderings may be glossed over, as in the cases of the Duc de Broglie, M. Jules Ferry and M. Albert GrÉvy. The President, M. GrÉvy, was very unfortunate in his relations. His brother, the Governor-General of Algeria, had shown himself dreadfully incompetent in that capacity. But M. de Freycinet, M. Jules Ferry and the whole Ministerial set had entered into a conspiracy of silence and misrepresentation, throwing the blame of his mistakes upon anybody but the Governor-General himself, in order to uphold the dignity of the President quite uninjured. Now, however, the President’s son-in-law, M. Wilson, was found out in very ignoble transactions. He was actually detected in the flagitious practice of trading in decorations, the Legion of Honour and the like, not for what are considered on this side of the Channel as perfectly legitimate purposes, the furtherance, namely, of Party gains or Ministerial advantages, but in order to increase his own income. The thing became a public scandal. Those who could not afford to buy the envied distinctions were specially incensed. But out of regard for the President, out of consideration for their personal advancement in the future, because when you start this sort of thing you never know how far it will go, because other Ministers in and out of office had had relations of their own addicted to similar trading in other directions—for all these reasons, good and bad, nobody cared to take the matter up seriously.

Nobody, that is to say, except that tiger Clemenceau. He actually thought that the honour of the Republic was at stake in the business: was of opinion that a President should be more careful than other people in keeping the doubtful characters of men and women of his own household under restraint. And he not only thought but spoke and acted. M. Rouvier, who was then Premier, felt himself bound to stand by the President and exculpated him from any share in the affair. This made matters worse. For M. GrÉvy, when the whole transaction was fully debated, could not withstand the pressure of public opinion against him; Clemenceau carried his point and the President resigned. Thereupon M. Rouvier thought it incumbent upon him to retire too, though Clemenceau took pains to tell him that this was a concern purely personal to the President and not a political issue at all. There was consequently a Presidential Election and a new Ministry at the same time. So great was Clemenceau’s influence at this juncture that although three of the most prominent politicians in the Republic were eager for the post, he, out of fear of the election of the irrepressible expansionist M. Ferry, persuaded the electors to favour the appointment of the able and cool but popularly almost unknown M. Sadi-Carnot—who turned out, it may be said, quite an admirable President up to his outrageous assassination.

By this time Clemenceau had fully justified his claim to the distinction of being the most formidable and relentless political antagonist known in French public life since the great Revolution. As he would never take office himself and was moved by few personal animosities, he stood outside the lists of competers for place. He had definite Radical Republican principles and during all these years he acted up to them. He was throughout opposed, as I have said, to compromise. He fought it continuously all along the line. Moreover, he had a profound contempt for politicians who were merely politicians. “I have combated,” he said, “ideas, not persons. In my fight against Republicans I have always respected my party. In the heat of the conflict I have never lost sight of the objects we had in common, and I have appealed for the solidarity of the whole against the common enemy of all.”

As, also, he triumphantly declared in a famous oration against those who were engaged in sneering at Parliamentary Government and the tyranny of words, he was ever in favour of the greatest freedom of speech, and even stood up for the commonplace debates which often must have terribly bored him. “Well, then, since I must tell you so, these discussions which astonish you are an honour to us all. They prove conclusively our ardour in defence of ideas which we think right and beneficial. These discussions have their drawbacks: silence has more. Yes, glory to the country where men speak, shame on the country where men hold their tongues. If you think to ban under the name of parliamentarism the rule of open discussion, mind this, it is the representative system, it is the Republic itself against whom you are raising your hand.”

A great Parliamentarian, a great political Radical was Clemenceau the Tiger of 1877 to 1893. He, more than any other man, prevented the Republic from altogether deteriorating and kept alive the spirit of the great French Revolution in the minds and in the hearts of men.