M. Clemenceau had a ready pen as well as a very bitter one, and he did not confine himself to articles on politics and sociology. Besides La Mêlée Sociale, of which I have given some account in the previous chapter, he published the following books in order within eight years: Le Grand Pan, a volume of descriptive essays; Les Plus Forts, a novel; Au Fil des Jours, and Les Embuscades de la Vie, which were, in the main, collections of sketches and tales. At the same time he did a great deal of ordinary journalism, including his articles on the Dreyfus case, which make in themselves four good-sized volumes.  
Le Grand Pan followed close upon La Mêlée Sociale, and came as a delightful surprise to M. Clemenceau’s readers, a piece of pure literature. In this book he no longer writes as a citizen of Paris, a man of the boulevards and pavements, but as one country-born and bred, knowing the hills and the sea. Although he describes his own Vendéen scenery with loving familiarity, making the “Marais,” the “Bocage” and the “Plaine” live before us, he does not cling to them with the monotonous affection of some French writers, who are, as it were, dyed in their own local colour. Without elaboration, without the detailed building-up of a scene which is the careful habit of some others, he conveys in two or three lines the feeling of a countryside and that elusive but immutable thing, the character of a landscape. This belongs really to the poet’s art, and gives, I cannot tell why, a deeper impression, a far more lasting pleasure than all the abundance and detail of prose. Clemenceau’s neighbour, and almost fellow-countryman, Renan, had this gift. All the grey waters of the rocky Armorican shore seem[142] to sweep through the first lines of his essay on the Celtic Spirit; and the influence of Renan is marked in Le Grand Pan. The first article, which gives the book its title, sets the reader’s fancy sailing among the Greek Isles, steered by poetry and tradition, in the light of the golden and the silver age. Clemenceau, like Heine, mourns for the overthrow of the Greek gods in the welter of quarrelling priesthoods and fierce Asian ugliness that flooded the Mediterranean world. “Pan, Pan is dead!” But in the Renaissance—“the tumultuous pageant of Art hurrying to meet the classic gods reborn”—he welcomes the magnificent restoration of the ancient and eternal Powers. And he claims for the nineteenth century the honour of beholding another re-birth of the gods of Nature in the development of science, and the labour that has brought some of the secrets of earth within our ken.
 
But science, as we know, has revealed the horrors as well as the wonders of earth. It troubles us; man has shed rivers of needless blood, but we shrink from recognising Nature as she is, “red in tooth and claw.” It did not trouble the ancient Greeks; their gods, developing from the rough deities of place or tribe into the embodiments of the natural forces of matter or of mind, were outside human ethic, although they were cast in human form. They might take the shape of mortals, but only Euripides and a few other hypersensitive moralists thought of blaming the gods when, as often happened, they fell below the standards of human conduct. But we are creatures of another era; and man, criticising and even condemning the Powers that rule his little day, has, for good or ill, reached out to a level that is above the gods, whose plaything he still remains.
 
And there is another change. Man—some men, that is to say—have taken the animals into their protection and fellowship: and M. Clemenceau is truly one of these. Not only those charming, kindly essays, La Main et la Patte and Les Parents Pauvres, in Le Grand Pan, but the history of the two pigeons in the Embuscades de la Vie, and a hundred little[143] touches and incidents throughout Clemenceau’s books show him to be a man of most generous sympathies, looking at animal life from a far higher and finer point of view than the majority of his countrymen.
 
There is much else in Le Grand Pan that it would be pleasant to dwell upon: a delicate classic spirit, a certain ironic grace, humour and mockery, but everywhere and above all keen indignation at needless human suffering and a sympathy which is poles apart from sentiment, for human pain. M. Clemenceau might well be called “a soldier of pity,” as, in one of the Near Eastern languages, the members of his first profession, the doctors, are termed. But I must pass on. Le Grand Pan is, as it deserves to be, the best known of M. Clemenceau’s books, and no one who has overlooked it can form a complete idea of this remarkable man.
 
It is said that anyone who has the power of setting down his impressions on paper can write at least one good novel, if he tries, for he will draw with varying degrees of truth or malice the individuals he has met, liked, or suffered from, and the main circumstances of his life. What a Homeric novel M. Clemenceau might have written if he had followed these lines! But Les Plus Forts is unfortunately no such overflow of personal impressions and memories; it is merely what used to be called “a novel with a purpose.” That is to say, it is one of the many works of fiction which not only record the adventures of certain imaginary yet typical characters, but also contain severe criticism of contemporary social conditions and life. Such novels were much more common in England during the nineteenth century than in France. In English fiction the sequence is unbroken from Sandford and Merton to the earlier works of Mrs. Humphry Ward’s venerable pen. But in 1898 there were still not many French novels concerned with the serious discussion of social conditions, and M. Clemenceau’s early work stands out among these for sincerity and simplicity of intent. However, in spite of the excellent irony of some passages—notably the description of the Vicomtesse de Fourchamps’[144] career—Les Plus Forts is to modern readers a trifle tedious and a little naive. It is of the same calibre as Mr. Shaw’s two first novels, but less eccentric and not so amusing. M. Clemenceau himself would probably write upon it “Péché de jeunesse,” and pass on. Yet it deserves more attention than that; for Les Plus Forts unconsciously reveals the central weakness of its author’s criticism of modern life. The situation is a good one, although the actors are not so much characters as types.
 
Henri de Puymaufray, a ruined French gentleman, who has lost the world and found a kind of Radicalism, and Dominique Harlé, a rich paper manufacturer, live side by side in the country as friendly enemies or, rather, close but inimical friends. Their views of life are as the poles asunder, but for the purposes of the story they must be constantly meeting in conversational intimacy; and they have each an almost superhuman power of expressing themselves and their attitude towards the world they live in. The chief link between them is Harlé’s supposed daughter and only child, Claude, whose real father is Puymaufray. Both these elderly gentlemen are deeply concerned about Claude’s future; each wishing, as parents and guardians often do, to make the child’s career the completion of their own ambitions and hopes. Here Harlé has the advantage; he knows what he wants, that is, money and power, and he means his daughter to have plenty of both. He is the ordinary capitalist, with a strain of politician and Cabinet-maker, who ends by founding a popular journal that outdoes Harmsworth in expressing the “Lowest Common Factor of the Mind.” Society, the Church, and a particularly offensive form of charity all serve him to increase his own power and the stability of his class. All is for the best in the best of bourgeois worlds. Such is the theory of life which he puts before his supposed daughter, together with a prétendant who will carry out his aims. Unhappily, Puymaufray has nothing positive to set against this very solid and prosperous creed. He and Deschars, the young traveller whom he wishes to give Claude for a husband, can only talk pages of Radicalism in which the words[145] “pity” and “love” would recur even more frequently if M. Clemenceau’s fine sense of fitness did not prevail. What do they really want Claude to do? The best they can offer her appears to be a life of retired and gentle philanthropy, inspired by a dim sense of human brotherhood, which might, under very favourable circumstances, deepen into a sort of Socialist mood.
 
But “mere emotional Socialism cuts no ice.” This has often been said, and means that a vague fraternal purpose and a perception of the deep injustice of our present social system, even when sharpened with the most destructive satire, will never change this world for the better, unless they lead up to some theory of construction that is based on economic facts. Pity and brotherhood may move individuals to acts of benevolence, but they cannot alone recast the fabric of society, or even bring about fundamental collective reforms. Besides, when young people are asked to give up certain definite things, such as money, pleasure and power, they must see something more than mere renouncement ahead. They must be shown the fiery vision of an immortal city whose foundations they may hope to build. Clemenceau’s own knowledge of human nature works against his two heroes, and he says:
 
“Deschars was the child of his time. He had gone about the world as a disinterested beholder, and he returned from voyaging without any keen desire for noble action. . . . Perhaps, if he had been living and working for some great human object, Deschars would have carried Claude away by the very authority of his purpose, without a word. . . .”
 
And Madame de Fourchamps observes:
 
“It is very lucky for the poor that there are rich people to give them bread.”
 
To which Claude replies:
 
“My father’s factory provides these workmen with a livelihood; where would they be without him?”
 
Then, instead of a few plain words on labour-value, Puymaufray can only reply:
 
[............