It is easy to be tolerant of the Catholic Church and Catholics in a Protestant country; though even in Great Britain, and of course only too sadly in the North of Ireland, there are times when the bitterness inherited from the past makes itself felt, on slight provocation, in the present. At such times of sectarian outburst we get some idea ourselves of what religious hatred really means, and can form a conception of the truly fraternal eagerness to immolate the erring brethren, nominally of the same Christian creed, which animated the true believers of different shades of faith, whether Orthodox or Arian, Catholic or Huguenot, in days gone by. Those who chance to remember what Catholicism was in Italy, the Papal States, or Naples, two generations ago—the Church then claiming for itself rights of jurisdiction and sanctuary, outside the common law—those who understand what has gone on in Spain quite recently, can also appreciate the feeling of Frenchmen who, within the memory of their fellow-citizens still living, and even themselves in some degree under the Empire, had suffered from Clerical interference and repression, when the chance of getting rid of State ecclesiasticism was presented to them at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Church had entirely lost touch with the temper of the time. Though it may have been impossible for the Vatican to accept the brilliant suggestion that the great men of science should all be canonised and the discoverers of our day should receive the red hat, as secular Cardinals, there was no apparent reason why a form of super-naturalism which had lived into and out of two forms of human slavery, and was passing through a third, should have been unable to adapt itself in some degree to modern thought. A creed which, in its most successful period, had conveniently absorbed ancestor-worship as part of its theological propaganda in China, need not, one would have thought, have found it indispensably necessary to the salvation of its votaries to cleave to all the old heresies, inculcated in days when criticism of the incomprehensible and unbelievable involved the unpleasant possibility of being tortured to death, or burnt alive.

Nor certainly could its worst enemy have predicted that the infallibility of the Pope would be invented and thrust upon the faithful, as a doctrine whose acceptance was essential to their spiritual welfare, in a period when it was being proved every day and in all departments of human knowledge that what was universally believed to be a certainty yesterday is discounted as a fallacy to-morrow. Nothing in all the long controversy about the Separation of Church and State in France produced a greater or more permanent effect upon intelligent Frenchmen than this preposterous claim of Papal infallibility. Explain it away, whittle down its significance by any amount of Jesuitical sophistry, and still this declaration that a mere man could never be mistaken, because he was the Vicegerent of God, shook the whole framework of Catholic domination, so far as any participation of the State in the matter was concerned. And the career and character of many of the Pope’s predecessors rendered the dogma more utterly preposterous to all who had even a smattering of the history of the Vatican than might otherwise have been the case. That John XXIII should have been infallible threw a strange light upon Catholic morality in its highest grades. Yet if Pius infallible, why not John?

What, however, had more practical effect in turning the scale of public opinion against the Papacy, its nominees and believers as servants and paid employees of the State, was the fact that in all the practical affairs of French life the Catholic Church, as represented by its ecclesiastical hierarchy, had taken the wrong side. Theoretical or theological difficulties would never have upset the regard of the French people for the National Church. But, time after time, the Clerical party ranged itself with the reactionists, throwing over all its wisest counsellors, whose devotion to the Church had never been questioned, when they advised standing by the cause of the people, and relied solely upon the judgment of bigoted Jesuits. Zola, whom these creatures hated, showed in his “Germinal,” thorough-going materialist as he was, what a noble part a priest of the Church could play, when the young ecclesiastic stands between the strikers who form part of his flock and the soldiers who are about to fire upon them. Individuals might thus rise up to and above the level of their creed, but the Church in France, as a whole, was represented by men of God who were a good deal worse than men of Belial. Nor was this all. They pursued a policy of relentless obscurantism. Their object was not to develop education but to stunt its growth: not to teach the truth but to foster lies. So manifest was the determination to take no high view of their duties that such a man as the venerable Dr. Leplay, a Catholic of Catholics whose religious convictions did not prevent him from becoming a master of the theories of Marx, lamented that his Church was proving itself wholly incompetent to cope with or to stem what, as a Christian, he recognised was the rising tide of infidelity.

Of this infidelity, the free-thinker and champion of secularism, Clemenceau, was a type and a prominent example. He saw the Church as a pernicious influence. His feeling towards it was even more vehement than that of Voltaire or Gambetta. “Écrasez l’infÂme!” “Le clÉricalisme voilÀ l’ennemi!” If thought was to be free, if Frenchmen were to be emancipated from superstition and intolerance, the power of the Catholic Church must be weakened and, if possible, destroyed. For him, in this matter, compromise was impossible. His begettings, his surroundings, his education, his profession, his political life all made him relentless on this point. Behind the Duc de Broglie, behind the persecutor of Dreyfus, behind the pretender Boulanger, behind reaction in all its forms hid the sinister figure of the unscrupulous power, working perinde ac cadaver against all that was noblest in France, against all that was highest in the ideals of the Republic. And if Clemenceau knew well that under all circumstances and at every turn of events the Catholic Church was the enemy of France and of himself, the Church had no doubt at all that Clemenceau was its most formidable foe in French political life.

Long before and after his defeat in the Var, in 1893, the Catholics never hesitated to join with their enemies, if only this combination would help them to overthrow Clemenceau. Whatever differences the French Premier might have with the Socialists on strikes and social affairs generally, on the matter of the separation of Church and State they were heartily at one. In fact, Clemenceau was even more uncompromising than they. The whole texture of his thought revolted against showing any consideration for a Church which, from his point of view, had been for centuries the chief and most formidable enemy of progress in France and the most capable organiser of attacks upon all democratic and Republican ideals.

The greatest names in French history are the names of those whom the Catholic Church has persecuted or martyred. Its leaders would resort to the same tactics now, and have only failed to do so because the power has slipped from their hands as the truths of science and the wider conceptions of human destiny have permeated the minds of the masses. There was no likelihood that, as Prime Minister, Clemenceau, the free-thinker and materialist, would be inclined to modify his opinions in favour of what might be regarded as statesmanlike concessions to the Right on ecclesiastical matters. The danger lay in the other direction. It was one of the remarkable incidents, in connection with his first tenure of the Presidency of the Council, that the final settlement of this important question of the relations of Church and State should come when he himself was at the head of the French Government.

When M. Briand’s measure for the complete laicisation of the Church so far as the State was concerned was introduced into the Chamber, he pointed out in his report that the proposal for complete separation was not dictated by hatred or political prejudice, nor did it involve anything at all approaching to the change in the relations of property when, at the time of the French Revolution, the Church owned one-third of the total wealth of France. This Act was the assertion of definite principles which were necessary in order to secure for the State full mastery in its own country. Freedom of worship for all. No State payment to ministers of any creed. Equitable management of Church property taken over by the towns and Communes.

The Bill, after considerable debate in the National Assembly, was passed by a large majority. In the Senate M. Clemenceau denounced the settlement as too favourable to the clergy. His criticism was as mordant as usual. But he neither proposed an amendment nor voted against the Bill, which passed the Senate without even the alteration of a word, by a greater proportional majority than it did in the Lower House.

This, it might have been thought, would have been the end of the matter for Clemenceau. He had done his full share towards putting the Catholic Church out of action, and might have been contented, as Premier, with any further settlement that M. Briand, the member of his own Cabinet responsible for this important measure, and M. JaurÈs, the powerful leader of the Socialist Party, might come to in regard to the properties of the Church, about which there had been much bitter feeling. But Clemenceau has the defects of his qualities. The Pope had refused to permit his clergy to avail themselves of the excellent terms French Republicans, Radicals and Socialists had been ready to accord to them. He had issued two Encyclicals which could certainly be read as intended to stir up trouble in the Republic—which, in fact, had brought about some disorder. When, therefore, everything seemed arranged on this prickly question of valuations and appropriations, Clemenceau could not resist the temptation to show the unsatisfactory nature of the entire business to him. It was one of those moments of impulse when “the Tiger” could not refrain from giving free play to his propensities, at the expense of his own kith and kin, failing the presence of his enemies to maul. It was thought that the Ministry must come down; for both M. Briand and M. JaurÈs took this outburst amiss. But a conversation in the lobby brought the great irreconcilable very sensibly to a compromise, and Clemenceau failed to give the Catholics the malicious enjoyment they anticipated. It was a strange ebullition which exhibited the perennial youth of this statesman of the unexpected.

In other directions than social affairs and Morocco, where he unfortunately relied upon the Right more than upon the Left in the Assembly for the support of his Administration, Clemenceau proved that his claim to act as the advocate of reform as well as the upholder of order was no pretence.

Whatever may have been its alleged deficiencies in some respects, Clemenceau’s first Ministry was by far the most Radical Government that had held office under the Republic. And the boldness and decision which he and his Cabinet displayed in dealing with what they regarded as Anarchist action—it is fair, perhaps, to recall that Briand himself had first achieved fame as an Anarchist—on the part of the workers, they also put in force, when high-placed officers, with a powerful political backing, tried to impose their will upon the State. Thus the navy, as has too often happened in French annals, had been allowed to drift into a condition which was actually dangerous, in view of what was going on in the German dockyards, and the probable combination of the Austrian and Italian fleets, with German help, in the Mediterranean. At the same time, admirals were in the habit of acting pretty much as they saw fit in regard to the fleets and vessels under their control. Consequently, important men-of-war had been wrecked time after time, and more than one serious accident had occurred. In almost every case also, so powerful was the esprit de corps, in the wrong sense, that the officers in command at the time were exonerated from blame. There was, therefore, a strong public opinion in favour of something being done to improve both the fleet itself and the spirit which animated its commanders. Admiral Germinat, a popular officer with, as appears, a genuine loyalty to his profession and a desire to remedy its defects, thought proper to write a very strong letter to a local service newspaper, making a fierce attack upon the general management of the navy, without having given any notice of his views either to the Minister of Marine or the Prime Minister.

Thereupon, M. Clemenceau at once put him on the retired list. Immediately a great hubbub arose. The very same people who had approved of Clemenceau’s policy, in regard to those whom they called anarchist workmen, were now in full cry after the President of Council, for daring to deal thus drastically with a man who, however his good intentions may have been and however distinguished his career, was beyond all question an anarchist admiral. The matter became a question of the day. It was brought up in the Senate amid all sorts of threats to the stability of the Government. M. Clemenceau, as usual, took up the challenge boldly himself. His speech was so crushing that the whole indictment against the Ministry collapsed. The evidence of indiscipline on the Admiral’s part, not only on this occasion but on several others, and the declaration that Admiral Germinat would not be excluded from the navy, when he had purged his offence and when his services would be advantageous to the country, settled the matter and strengthened the Ministry.

By acquiring the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest and combining it with other Government railways, the Ministry made the first important step towards nationalisation of railways. Clemenceau defended this measure on grounds that would be, and were, accepted by Socialists; but events have shown in this particular case that a good deal more is needed than the establishment of another department of State bureaucracy to render the railways a national property really beneficial to the community. As carried out in practice, the acquisition of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest has rather set back than advanced the general policy of railway nationalisation in France.

A more important measure was that introduced by M. Caillaux and, amazing to say, passed through the Assembly, for a graduated income-tax. How this majority was obtained has always been one of the puzzles of that period. There is no country in the world where a tax upon incomes is more unpopular than in France, and from that day to this, in spite of the desperate need for funds which has arisen, this tax has never yet become law. But it was a genuine financial reform and creditable to the Government. The Socialists supported it, though in itself it is only a palliative measure of justice in purely bourgeois finance. From this period dates the close alliance between the Socialists as revolutionaries and M. Caillaux as the adventurous financier and director of the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale, which later produced such strange results in French politics, and intensified Socialist hatred for M. Clemenceau. But at this time M. Caillaux, with the full concurrence and support of the Prime Minister, was attacking all the bourgeois interests in their tenderest place. The wonder is that such a policy did not involve the immediate fall of the Ministry. Quite possibly, had Clemenceau remained in office, it might have become a permanent feature in French finance. Boldness and boldness and boldness again is sometimes as successful in politics as it is in oratory. Although, therefore, to attack pecuniary “interests” of a large section of the nation is a far more hazardous enterprise than to denounce eminent persons or to overthrow Ministries, this move might then have been successful if well followed up.

On March 8th, in this year 1909, Clemenceau unveiled a statue to the Radical Minister Floquet, with whom he had worked for many years. The revolutionary Socialists announced their intention of demonstrating against him on this occasion. They objected to him and his administration on account of the expedition to Morocco—in which Clemenceau had certainly run counter to all his previous policy on colonial affairs—on account of cosmopolitan finance, Russian loans and the shooting down of workmen on strike. It was the last that occasioned the bitterest feeling against him, and this was really not surprising.

Clemenceau had made the workers’ liberty to strike in combination secure, but he did not use the power of the State against the employers, who, in the mines especially, could on his own showing be considered only as profiteering trustees under the State. Also, he refused to all Government servants the right to combine or to strike. This disinclination to take the capitalists by the throat, while using the official power to restrain the workers, had a great deal more to do with the menacing attitude of the Socialists than Morocco or finance. However, there was no disturbance. Clemenceau took advantage of the occasion to deliver a speech which was in effect a powerful defence of the idealist Republicanism of the eighteenth century against the revolutionary Socialism of the twentieth.

The French Revolution is deified by nearly all advanced Frenchmen. Its glorification is as much the theme of JaurÈs and Vaillant as of Gambetta and Clemenceau. Bourgeois revolution as it turned out to be, owing to economic causes which neither individualists nor collectivists could control, orators of the Revolution overlook facts and cleave to ideals. Thus Clemenceau told his audience that the French Revolution was a prodigious tragedy, which seemed to have been the work of demi-gods, of huge Titans who had risen up from far below to wreak Promethean vengeance on the Olympians of every grade. The French Revolution was the inevitable culmination of the deadly struggle between the growing forces of liberty and the worn-out forces of autocracy without an autocrat. Yet, said he, the Revolution itself was made by men and women inspired with the noblest ideals, but educated, in their own despite, by the Church to methods of domination, condemned also by the desperate resistance of immeasurable powers to prompt and pitiless action followed by corresponding deeds of brutal reaction. The people who had just shed torrents of blood for the freedom of the world passed, without audible protest, from Robespierre to Napoleon. Yet the Revolution is all of a piece. The Republic moves steadily on as one indissoluble, vivifying force. Compare the France of the panic of 1875 with the France of to-day. Her position is the result of understandings and alliances and friendships based on the authority of her armed force. France has resumed her position in Europe, in spite of a few weak and mean-spirited Frenchmen, whose opposition only strengthened the patriotic enthusiasm of the nation at large. The history of the Republican Party had been one long consecration of the watchwords of the French Revolution. Liberty of the Press. Liberty of public meeting. Liberty of association. Liberty of trade unions. Liberty of minds by public schools. Liberty of thought and religion. Liberty of secular instruction. Liberty of State and worship. Laws had been passed for relief of the sick. A day of rest had been prescribed for all. Workmen’s compensation for injury had been made imperative. The Income Tax had been passed by the Assembly. “The Revolution is in effect one and indivisible, and, with unbroken persistence, the work of the Republic goes on.” A fine record! So argued Clemenceau.

Notwithstanding all the mistakes which Socialists so bitterly resented, this was a great victory for the Republicans and for the Administration of which Clemenceau was the head. Not the least important claim to national recognition of good service done was the establishment of the Ministry of Labour, over which Viviani, the well-known Socialist, presided. The pressure of events, as well as the pressure of the Socialists themselves, might well have pushed the Radical-Socialist Premier farther along the Socialist path.

Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, and, from more than one point of view, for the nation, M. Clemenceau had another of those strange fits of impatience and irascibility which he had exhibited more than once before. The political antagonism between M. Clemenceau and M. DelcassÉ was of long standing, and was intensified by personal bitterness. During his tenure of the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs, a position which he had held for seven years, in successive Administrations of widely different character, M. DelcassÉ had been subjected to vehement attacks by the leader of the Radical Left. His policy in relation to Morocco had been specially obnoxious to M. Clemenceau. That policy M. Clemenceau had most severely criticised at the time when M. DelcassÉ was stoutly resisting that extension of German influence in Morocco which led to the Foreign Minister’s downfall and the Conference of Algeciras, that M. DelcassÉ had refused to accept. The relations between the two statesmen could scarcely have been worse; but hitherto the Radical leader had carried all before him.

Now came a dramatic climax to the long struggle. A debate arose in the French Assembly on the condition of the navy. It was admittedly not what it ought to have been. M. Picard, the Minister of Marine, made a conciliatory reply to interpellations on the subject of promised immediate reforms and even complete reconstitution. But this was not enough for M. DelcassÉ. The Assembly was not hostile to M. Clemenceau, and certainly had no desire to oust his Administration; yet M. DelcassÉ’s direct attack upon the Premier brought the whole debate down to the level of a personal question. Nevertheless, what he said was quite legitimate criticism. M. Clemenceau had been a member of the Commission of Inquiry on the Navy, and could not get rid of his responsibility for the present state of things. The great critic of everybody and everything was open to exposure himself. He who had enjoyed twenty-five years of running amuck at the whole political world was now being called to account in person as an administrator. So far M. DelcassÉ. Clemenceau retorted that M. DelcassÉ had himself been on the Naval Commission of 1904. He was full of great policies here, there and everywhere. What had they resulted in? The humiliation of France and the Conference of Algeciras. Clemenceau was evidently much incensed. The fact that he had been obliged, as he thought, by Germany’s action, to follow M. DelcassÉ’s Moroccan tactics rendered the position exceptionally awkward. It raised the whole question of M. DelcassÉ’s foreign policy. This gave him a great advantage when it came to direct political warfare. For M. DelcassÉ was considered, even by those who opposed him, as the victim of German hatred, since he had refused to surrender to German threats and was sacrificed simply because France dared not face a war. So when he recounted his agreement with Spain, his agreement with Italy, his agreement—“too long delayed”—with England, his mediation in the Spanish-American War and his Treaties of Arbitration, the Assembly went with him. Then, too, his assaults upon Clemenceau raised the fighting spirit on DelcassÉ’s side. The feeling was: “This time Clemenceau is getting as good as he brings.” The Prime Minister has not done his duty either as President of the Inquiry or as President of Council. “I say to him as he said to Jules Ferry: ‘Get out. We won’t discuss with you the great interests of this nation.’”

Very good sword-play. But had Clemenceau kept cool, as he certainly would have done on the duel ground, there might have been no harm done. However, he burst out into furious denunciation, exasperated by the ringing cheers which greeted his opponent’s conclusion. It was M. DelcassÉ’s fault that France had to go to Algeciras. M. DelcassÉ would have carried things with a high hand. “But the army was not ready, the navy was not ready. I have not humiliated France: M. DelcassÉ has humiliated her.” A purely personal note, disclosing facts that were the more bitter to the Assembly inasmuch that they were true. It was indecent—that was the sensation that ran round the House—for a Premier thus to expose the weakness of his country on a personal issue, no matter what provocation he may have received. The hostile vote, therefore, was given against Clemenceau himself, not against his Government, and he promptly resigned.

Had he desired to bring about his own overthrow he would have acted precisely as he did; and some thought that this was his intention. It was an unworthy conclusion to a Premiership which, whatever its shortcomings, had done extremely good work for the Republic, and to a Government which had lasted longer than any French Administration since the downfall of the Empire. The character and leadership of the Ministry under M. Briand, which succeeded Clemenceau’s Cabinet, proved that only by his own fault had he ensured his official downfall.

As usual, he turned round at once to other work, and accepted an engagement to speak throughout South America, publishing a pleasant record of his experiences in an agreeably written book. The Prime Minister of yesterday was the genial lecturer the day after.

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.