At this time Clemenceau, owing to his apparently resolute determination not to take office, no matter how many Ministries he might successfully bring to naught, had got into a back-water. He had become permanently Senator for the Department of the Var in 1902, a startling, almost incomprehensible move when his continued furious opposition to that body is remembered. However, having thus made unto himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, he found their “eternal habitations” a not unpleasing dwelling-place. His position as publicist and journalist was assured and nothing could shake it; his criticisms by speech and pen were as telling and vigorous as ever. But at sixty-five years of age he was still a free-lance, a force which all parties were obliged to consider but with which no Ministry could come to terms. It was a strange position. So his countrymen thought. Those who most admired his ability and his career saw no outlet for his marvellous energy that would be permanently beneficial to the country in a constructive sense. Perhaps no politician of any nation ever so persistently refused to “range himself” as did Clemenceau for thirty-five years of stormy public life. He revelled in opposition: he rejoiced in overthrow. He was on the side of the people, but he would not help them to realise their aspirations in practical life. He was a political philosopher compact of incompatibilities. As an individualist he was a stalwart champion of individual freedom: as a man of affairs he advocated the use of State power to limit the anarchic domination of personal power.
There was no understanding such a man. He would remain[172] a brilliant Frenchman of whom all were proud until the end, when he would be buried with public honours as the champion Ishmaelite of his age. “When I saw he doubted about everything, I decided that I needed nobody to keep me ignorant,” wrote Voltaire. Much the same idea prevailed about Clemenceau. He was the universal sceptic: the man whose sole intellectual enjoyment was to point out the limitless incapacity of others with epigrammatic zeal. I myself, who had watched him closely, was afraid that he would allow all opportunities for displaying his really great faculties in a ministerial capacity to slip by and leave to his friends only the mournful task of writing his epitaph: “Here lies Clemenceau the destroyer who could have been a creator.”
But this was all nonsense. “Ce jeune homme“—Clemenceau will die young—”d’un si beau passé” had also before him un bel avenir. Nothing is certain with Clemenceau but the unforeseen. At the very time when people had made up their minds that he was a back number, he had a brand-new volume of his adventures ready for the press. After a few conversations with M. Rouvier and then with M. Sarrien, he became Minister of the Interior in the latter’s Cabinet. He took office for the first time on March 12th, 1906, at a very stirring epoch.
It is difficult to exaggerate the impression produced by this step on the part of M. Clemenceau. His accession to M. Sarrien’s Cabinet eclipsed in interest every other political event. Here was the great political leader and organiser of opposition, the Radical of Radicals, the man who had declined the challenge alike of friends and of enemies to take office, time after time, at last seated in a ministerial chair. All his past rose up around him. The destroyer of opportunism: the Guy Earl of Warwick of ministries: the universal critic; the immolator of Jules Perry and many another statesman; the one Frenchman who had maintained the ideals of the French Revolution against all comers—this terrible champion of democracy à outrance now placed himself in the official hierarchy, whence he had so often ousted others. His victims of[173] yesterday could be his critics of to-day. How would this terrible upsetter of Cabinets act as a Minister himself? That was what all the world waited with impatience to see. They had not days, but only hours to wait.
That was the time when, M. Delcassé having been forced to resign from the Foreign Office, almost, it may be said, at the dictation of Germany, the Morocco affair was still in a very dangerous condition, threatening the peace of France and of Europe. But even the critical negotiations at Algeciras were for the moment overshadowed by a terrific colliery disaster in the Courrières-Lens district, causing the death of more miners than had ever been killed before by a similar catastrophe. This horrible incident occurred but a few days before Clemenceau became Minister of the Interior, and it fell within the immediate sphere of his official duties.
The mines where the accident occurred had long been regarded as very dangerous, fire-damp being known to pervade them from time to time, and the miners throughout the coal regions had long held that the owners had never taken proper precautions to ensure the safety of the men. They went down the pits day after day, not only to work on very difficult and narrow seams, but at the hourly risk of their lives. Owing to the great social and political influence of the mine-owners it was practically impossible to get anything done, and the general treatment of the men employed was worse than is usual even in those districts in our own and other countries where coal magnates are masters. The pitmen under such conditions were less cared for and more harshly treated than animals, probably because they were less costly and could be more easily replaced.
Three days before the main explosion there had been an outburst of fire-damp at a small adjacent mine, whose workings were in direct communication with the larger pits. This alone ought to have been taken as a serious warning to the engineers in control. But markets were good, coal was in great demand, the “hands” were there to take risks. So this minor difficulty[174] was dealt with in a cheap and convenient way, and the extraction of coal went on upon a large scale from the imperilled shafts as it did before. Meanwhile the dangerous gases were all the time oozing in from the smaller pit to the larger ones. For three days this went steadily on, and nothing whatever was done, either in the way of taking further precautions where the original danger began, or of testing the character of the air in the bigger mines to which the other pit had access.
On Saturday, March 10th, no fewer than 1,800 men went down the shafts into the mines. A full account of what actually took place could never be given. All that was learned from the survivors was that the miners working with bare lights in these dangerous pits suddenly encountered an influx of fire-damp. Explosion after explosion took place. The unfortunate men below, threatened at once with suffocation or being burned alive, rushed in headlong disorder for the cages which would lift them to the surface. Horrible scenes inevitably took place. Those in front were pressed on by those behind, who, as one of them expressed it, were breathing burning air. For the majority there was and there could be no hope. Out of the 1,800 miners who went down in the morning, more than 1,150 were either stifled by the gas or burnt alive. The heroism displayed by the pitmen themselves, in their partially successful endeavours to rescue their entombed comrades, was the only bright feature in the whole of this frightful disaster. Some of these fine fellows went down to what seemed certain death, and others worked at excavation until almost dead themselves in their efforts to save a few from the general fate. No wonder that the feeling throughout the neighbourhood was desperately bitter.
The war, sad to say, has much modified our general conception of the value of human life, even when unnecessarily thrown away. But sacrifices for a great cause on the battlefield or on the ocean, however serious, are made as a rule for high ideals. They differ widely from the loss of life deliberately occasioned by capitalist neglect or greed. Thus a mining accident on a[175] large scale, or a conflagration in a peaceful city, produces a stronger impression on the public mind than the loss of ten or twenty times the number of soldiers or sailors in a world-wide struggle. Among the widows and children and relations and comrades of the victims on the spot the exasperation against the employers was still greater. Class hatred and personal hatred were excited to a very high pitch.
This was the more natural for two reasons. First, the company on whose property the immolation of so many pitmen had occurred, and to whose mismanagement and cold-blooded indifference the avoidable explosions were due, had made enormous, almost incredible profits. From dividends of fifty per cent. in 1863 their returns had risen to profits of 1,000 per cent. in 1905. Yet they could not spare the comparatively small sum necessary to safeguard the lives of the men who obtained this wealth for the shareholders. Secondly, the Germans, who rendered assistance in the attempts to rescue the Frenchmen still in the workings below, openly proclaimed that it was quite impossible—as indeed was the truth—that such an accident on such a scale should have occurred in Germany. That the Empire in Germany should be far more careful of the lives and limbs of the miners than the Republic in France, and that huge profits should have been made still huger by the refusal of the French coal-owners to adopt the ordinary precautions enforced by law on the other side of the frontier—these considerations, driven home by the results of the great catastrophe, rendered the situation exceedingly perilous from every point of view. A strike for increased wages seemed a very poor outcome of the horrors inflicted upon the actual producers of the coal under such conditions.
Clemenceau was perhaps the best man in the country to deal with the miners at such a juncture. A Socialist of mining experience would possibly have taken more decidedly the side of the men, but he would not have been able to carry with him to the same extent the support of the Chambers. And Clemenceau had gone very far already on collectivist lines. Not many[176] years before, in an article on “The Right to Strike,” he had put the case of the men very strongly indeed. In a vehement protest against the theory of supply and demand, as applied to the human beings compelled to sell labour power as a commodity, and the political economy of the profiteers based upon subsistence wages for the workers—all being for the best in the best of possible worlds—Clemenceau set forth how the system worked in practice:—
“The State gives to some sleek, well-set-up bourgeois immense coal-fields below ground. These fine fellows turn to men less well dressed than themselves, but who are men all the same, men with the same wants, the same feelings, the same capacity for enjoyment and suffering, and say: ‘We will grant you subsistence; sink us some pits in the earth; go below and bring us up coal, which we will sell at a good price.’
“Agreed. The pits are sunk, the coal comes out of the earth.
“But, observe, those comfortable bourgeois for their outlay of five hundred francs (￡20) have now a bit of paper which is worth forty thousand francs (￡1,600).
“The miners, who watch what is going on, think this a good deal, and, as they have got nothing by way of profit, they protest and ask for a share.
“‘That, my friend, is impossible. The price of coal has fallen this year, the price of man must come down in proportion. All I could do for you is to reduce your wages. You object to that. All right; down the shaft you go: don’t let us talk about it any more.’
“But the men won’t go down.
“‘You don’t make money this year. All right. But when you made huge profits, did you give us even the crumbs from your banquet?’
“‘I wasn’t a shareholder then; it was my father.’
“‘My father, like myself, was a miner. He died of consumption, his lungs choked with coal-dust. Now it is my turn to cough and spit black. And my wife, looking at her babes,[177] asks herself whether I shall live long enough for them to be old enough, before my death, to go down into the mine which will kill them in turn. If I crack up too soon, misery, ruin, beggary, wholesale wretchedness for wife and children.’
“They don’t come to terms. The strike begins.
“Economists argue, to begin with, that the State has no right to interfere in the relations between miners and mine-owners. The mine-owner is at home on his own property. Certain securities for life and limb may be demanded, nothing more. But no sooner does a strike begin than the State, which five minutes ago had no right to interfere, is called upon to bring in horse, foot and artillery on the side of the coal-owners. Then the miners have no rights left, and the judges decide against them on shameless pretexts and condemn them to prison, when they cannot bear false witness in support of the police and military.”
Such were Clemenceau’s views on the right to strike and the grievances of the men, before he accepted the post of Minister of the Interior and began to deal with the troublous state of things at Courrières-Lens, where the terrible accident had occurred and a strike had been entered upon, while the entire district was in a state of mind bordering upon anarchist revolt.
The first step he took was as bold and as remarkable an act as any in the whole of his adventurous life. He went down at once to Lens himself. Arrived there, he walked straight off, without any escort whatever, to meet and confer with the committee of the miners themselves. Courageous and honourable as this was, it failed at first to impress the strike committee. This was natural enough. They were lamenting the wholesale butchery of their comrades and were incensed against the employers who, with hundreds upon hundreds of dead pitmen below, would not deal fairly with the survivors. Clemenceau therefore met with a very cool reception. But he was nothing daunted, and began to address them. Gradually, he convinced the committee that he meant fairly by the men, and that he had not come down, alone and unarmed as he was, with any[178] intention of suppressing the strike, but, so far as he could, to see that they had the fairest of fair play, according to their rights under the law.
Thereupon, the committee agreed that Clemenceau should go with them to speak to a mass meeting of the miners. It was a doubtful venture, but Clemenceau went. In the course of his speech he reassured the men upon the attitude of the Government as represented by himself. He told them plainly: “You are entitled to strike. You will be protected by the law in doing all which the law permits. Your rights are equal to the rights of President or Ministers. But the rights of others must not be attacked. The mines must not be destroyed. For the first time, you will see no soldiers in the street during the strike. True, soldiers have been placed in the mines, but solely to protect them, not in any way to injure you. On the other hand, you must not resort to violence yourselves. The strike can be carried on peacefully and without interference. Respect the mines upon which you depend for your livelihood.”
This was quite plain, and Clemenceau adhered to his own programme as he had formulated it. But the difficulty was apparent from the first, and it is a difficulty which must always recur when a great strike is organised. If the State claims the right to intervene, in order to protect the laws and liberties of those who wish to work for the employers, in spite of the strike and the decisions of the strikers, antagonism to such action is practically certain beforehand. For, in this case, as the strikers say, the State is using the forces of the military and the police in order to protect “blacklegs” who, by offering their labour to the employers at such a time of acute class war, act in the interests of the coal-owners and against the mass of the workers. Socialists argue that the strikers are sound in their contention, and that by assuring to non-strikers the right to work the Government practically nullifies the right to strike. When, therefore, in this typical Courrières case, the strikers as a whole remained out, notwithstanding certain insufficient offers by the coal-owners, and a minority of non-strikers claimed the[179] help of the law, with support of the State army, to weaken by their surrender the position of the majority of their fellow-workers in the same industry, then the ethics of the dispute between sections of the miners could not be so easily determined as M. Clemenceau from his individualist training assumed.
If the employers were in the wrong, as it appears they were, then to call out the military to protect those miners who showed themselves ready to make immediate terms with injustice was, however good the intention, to take sides against the main body of the men. So it seemed to these latter. When, therefore, the soldiers defended the non-strikers, the strikers assailed the military, who had not attacked them. Clemenceau accordingly decided that the strikers had broken the law, as undoubtedly they had, by stoning and injuring the servants of the State, who were upholding the law as it stood. The truth is that, so long as these antagonistic sections exist among the working class, and persist in fighting one another, it is practically impossible for the State not to intervene in order to keep the peace. There may be no sympathy with blacklegs, but the Minister of the Interior could scarcely be blamed for protecting them against an infuriated mob, which would probably have killed them, or for insisting upon the release of those whom the strikers had seized. That the temper of the crowd had become highly dangerous was apparent a little later, when the Socialist Mayor was knocked down as he was trying to calm them.
All this rendered M. Clemenceau’s second and third visits to the scene of class warfare far more stormy than the first. Owing to the horror and hatred created by the avoidable holocaust in the Courrières mines, and the further discovery that engineers appointed by the State had played into the hands of the employers, the situation got worse from day to day. The strike itself was not only an effort to get more wages, but a declaration of hostility to the mine-owners, and those of the miners’ own class who showed any tenderness towards them, or were ready to take work under them. Their own leaders[180] and representatives had no longer any influence with the men or control over them. M. Basly, the deputy who acted throughout for the miners, had as little power over the strikers as anybody else. The whole movement was taking an anarchist turn. Also, agents were at work among them both from the reactionary and the revolutionary side whose main object, for very different reasons, was to foster disturbance and influence passion. Foreign emissaries likewise were said to be at work.
Clemenceau’s task was therefore an exceedingly hard one. He had ever in mind the old eighteenth-century watchword which, from his point of view, is the foundation of the French Republic—Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. And the greatest of these is liberty! He throughout forgot, or overlooked, that, even according to his own pronouncements, liberty in any real sense is impossible for the weaker—the majority who own no property—against the stronger—“Les Plus Forts,” the minority who own all the property. This triune fetish Clemenceau, with all his keenness of criticism, might be said to worship: yet to worship in a more or less reasonable way. He could not shut his eyes to the truth that, for men and women whose livelihood was at the mercy of capitalists, there could be no real liberty, dominated as the workers were by their daily compulsion to obtain the wherewithal for the necessaries of life. The only way by which even partial justice could be secured, under the system of payment of wages, was combination among the wage-earners. Hence he recognises the liberty to strike. But he was equally determined, as he puts it, to defend the liberty of those who would not strike. It was logical: it was in harmony with the law; but it was a virtual help to the employers none the less.
On the occasion of his second visit he enforced his view in his usual emphatic way. Three miners who would not join the strike were being paraded through the town by the strikers with an insulting placard hung around their necks: “Nous sommes des poires cuites; des faux frères.” Clemenceau insisted that they should be released, and succeeded in freeing them.[181] The very fact, however, that it was possible for the strikers to act in this way, without protest, showed how small was the minority and how strong the feeling against these claimants of the liberty of taking the other side. Clemenceau likewise acted with vigour against all who were guilty of any violence. But the strikes still spread.
Speaking at Lyons on May 3rd, he explained the difficulties of the situation:—“My position is between the political demagogues of the Church, the clericals and the reactionaries on one side, who tried hard to hound on the troops I was forced to call in to fire upon the strikers, who greatly provoked them. This the ecclesiastics and restorationists did with the hope of fomenting a revolt against the Republic—a revolt supported by certain military chiefs, inspired by the clericals and their shameless lack of discipline.” The Separation of Church and State was being decided while all this was going on. “Their object was to bring about a massacre in the interest of the Catholic Church and the monarchy. This plot was frustrated. Butchery was avoided.
“On the other side, I am accused by the revolutionary Socialists of indulging in brutal military oppression because I suppress anarchist rioting. This though no striker was killed or wounded. I acted for tranquillity, while the monarchists fostered disturbances. They wanted a Government of the Republic which should rely for support solely on the Right. The anarchists helped the monarchists, who had agents throughout the perturbed districts, by denouncing the Republic and excusing mob violence. Yet how stood the case? Was it I who organised a campaign of panic? Was it I who was responsible for the original explosion and strike? Was it I who brought about the state of things which resulted in general disturbance and might have tended towards another coup d’état? Nothing of the sort. I was suddenly called upon to deal with unexpected troubles. I acted for the maintenance of the Republic, and kept the peace under the law.”
By taking office at the time when he did it was at once[182] apparent that Clemenceau had brought himself into the full whirlpool of strike difficulties which then arose. He was called upon to solve in everyday life, as a man committed to a policy of justice to the workers, problems which, at critical moments, are almost insoluble under the capitalist system of wage-earning and production for profit. Has any section of the community the right to hold up the life of a nation or a great city in order to secure advantages for itself? At first sight the answer would undoubtedly be “No.” But if the conditions of existence for those who act in this way are admittedly such as ought not to continue in any civilised country, it is not possible to reply so confidently in the negative. Neither can the “No” be repeated with certainty when employers, or the State itself, are guilty of a direct breach of faith towards the workers, unless, by ceasing to carry out their duties, they actually imperil the welfare of the entire collectivity of which they form a part. In short, all depends upon the circumstances, which have to be considered most carefully in each case. It fell to Clemenceau’s lot to decide in what might almost be taken as the test incident—the strike of the electrical engineers and workers of Paris.
There seems to be something in M. Clemenceau’s horoscope which has decreed that his career shall be diversified and rendered interesting by a series of dramatic events. This strike of the electricians of Paris was certainly one of them.
Scene: Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior. The Minister, M. Clemenceau, at work at his desk and dictating to his secretary. Everything going on quite nicely. No sign of more than ordinary pressure. Electric light functioning as usual for the benefit of the Radical leader as well as for Parisians of every degree. Hey presto! Darkness falls upon the bureau of the Minister. Very provoking. What is the matter? Corridors and other bureaux suffering the like eclipse. Evidently something wrong at the main. Candles obtained, lamps got out from dusty cupboards, oil hunted up. Ancient forms of illumination applied. Darkness thus made visible. Telephones set going. All Paris obscured. A city of two or three[183] millions of inhabitants suddenly deprived of light. What has happened? The entire electrical service disorganised until to-morrow by the sudden and unexpected strike of the whole of the skilled men in the electrical supply department. Lovers of darkness because their deeds are evil likely to have a good time. Business arrested, fathers and mothers of families perturbed. Dangers of every sort threatened. Apaches and other cut-throats preparing for action in the to them providential enactment of endless gloom.
Such is the baleful news borne over the telephone wires to the much troubled Minister of the Interior, with his wax tapers and old-world lamps glimmering around him. How preserve his Paris, his ville lumière, from the depredations of the miscreants engendered by the social system of the day, when light fails to disclose their approach? How protect the savings of the conscientious bourgeois and the diamonds of the high-placed horizontale from removal and conveyance under cover of the night? To surrender to the strikers is to admit their right as a few to blackmail the many. It is to sanctify the action of the despoiling minority above by giving way to the organised minority below. Immediate decision is essential. Night is upon us, when no man can work, save the man who communises movable property to his own use. Light is a necessary of security for property, nay, even for life. The State must come in to fulfil the functions which the Creator neglected to provide for when He divided the night from the day. The sapper is the man to supplement the deficiencies of Providence and to mitigate the social revolution by electrical engineers. Rien n’est sacré pour un sapeur! No sooner thought of but acted upon. M. Clemenceau, as Minister of the Interior and trustee for the well-being of the citizens of Paris, calls upon the State engineers under military control to light up Paris afresh. The thing is done. Paris sees more clearly and breathes more freely. Society itself has the right to live.
But stay a moment: here is M. Jaurès. He has a word to say. What are you doing, M. Clemenceau? You are out[184]raging all your own principles. You are interfering with that very right to strike which you yourself have declared to be sacred. You are using the military discipline of the comrades of the men out on strike against the electrical companies, to render their protest nugatory, by employing the sappers against them. You have, in fact, called out the powers of the State to crush the workers in a particular industry. If you were true to yourself, you would convert the electrical supply of Paris now in the hands of greedy monopolists into a public service, and give the strikers every satisfaction. That is the only real solution of social anarchy.
To him Clemenceau: “But this was not merely a strike or a limited liability class war against employers. It was a bitter fight between two irreconcilable antagonists against inoffensive passers-by. The people of Paris, for whom I am concerned, had nothing to do with the matter. I myself knew nothing about the decision to strike till my own work was rendered impossible by the sudden infliction of darkness upon me by these resuscitated Joshuas. Not only was the general security threatened, as I have declared, but the lives of your own clients, Jaurès, were threatened by immersion in a flood below ground. The inundation of the Metropolitan (the Underground Railway) had already begun. The workers of Paris who used that means of communication in order to return to their work would most certainty have been drowned owing to the suspension of electrical pumps and lifts, had not the sappers and the firemen, both of them sets of public functionaries, rushed at once to the rescue. Were the workmen of Paris engaged in other departments to be allowed to perish, with the State standing by, wringing its hands in hopeless ineptitude, while the electrical engineers got the better of their masters in a dispute about wages? This was a practical question which I had to decide at once. I decided in favour of the inoffensive people of Paris and against the electrical engineers on strike.”
Taking a wide view of the whole question, I hold Jaurès’s[185] opinion to be the right one. But Clemenceau had to deal with an immediate practical difficulty of a very serious kind indeed. The lights went out at six o’clock. Night was coming on. No time could be lost in negotiating with the engineers. Still less was nightfall the period when a public service could be instituted in hot haste. The matter was settled in that form and for that occasion. But none the less the real point at issue was not thus easily disposed of. Clemenceau was right in preventing Paris from being left all night in darkness. Jaurès was right in claiming that the State should have a more definite and consistent policy than that of dealing with differences between wage-earners and employers by such hand-to-mouth methods.
It was just at this point that, notwithstanding all adverse criticisms in regard to the instability of Ministries, and the scenes of apparent disorder which sometimes arise, the French National Assembly displayed its immense superiority to the Parliaments of other countries when serious matters of principle were involved. The desire to get to the bottom of a really dangerous question, to hear the arguments on both sides taken, as far as possible, out of the narrow limits of personal or party politics, puts the French Assembly on a very high level. From the point of view of economic development France is far behind Great Britain, America and Germany. The great factory industry and the legislation growing out of it are not nearly so far advanced. But, in the wish and endeavour to investigate the principles upon which the future regulation of society must proceed, France gives the lead.
This openness of mind and anxiety to let both views have fair play have grown under the Republic in a wonderful way. Where else in the world would men of all parties and all sections allow the two chief orators of the Left—Jaurès, the Socialist leader of the opposition, Clemenceau, the Individualist Minister—to debate out at length, in two long sittings, the issues between genuine Socialism and that nondescript reformist Collectivism which goes by the name of Socialistic[186] Radicalism: the latter really meaning, to Socialists, capitalism palliated by State bureaucracy.
This was indeed a great oratorical duel, and those who contend that oratory has lost its significance and virtue in modern times would have to admit that they were wrong, not only in this particular case, but in regard to other speeches delivered by the two chief disputants afterwards. The debate its............