During the whole of the war, as for many years before the Germans began their great campaign of aggression, every country with which the Fatherland might in any way be concerned was permeated with German agents and German spies. Great Britain was one of the nations specially favoured in this respect. The ramifications of their systematic interpenetration of the social, political, financial, commercial and even journalistic departments of our public life have never yet been fully exposed; nor, certainly, have the very important personages who conducted this sinister propaganda been dealt with. Even when the Defence of the Realm Act is ended and the Censorship is abrogated, it is doubtful if the full truth will ever be generally known, so powerful are the influences directly interested in its suppression.  
In the United States of America, where similar work was done upon an enormous scale and at vast expense, under circumstances still more favourable to success than in this island, the American Government acted with a decision and a vigour that are not yet understood. Even so, the amount of mischief done was very great, and, for the first two years of the war at least, the German efforts were largely successful. That a duly accredited Ambassador to a friendly power should have been at the head of this vast conspiracy in America, as Count Bernstorff unquestionably was, introduces a new and most dangerous precedent into the comity of international relations. Italy, in like manner, suffered very seriously from German intrigues. The history of the carefully organised disaster upon the Isonzo has yet to be written. That it was[258] the result of well-arranged collaboration between clerical organisers of treachery, inspired by Austria, German agents, with unlimited financial backing, who had sympathisers in high place, and honest and dishonest fanatics of the pacifist persuasion, does not admit of question. Certain it is that in this one case alone German underground machinations were responsible for the crushing defeat of an army of 500,000 men, holding a position where 50,000 good troops could have held a million at bay.[C]
 
But if Great Britain, the United States, and Italy were thus honeycombed with secret service agents from Germany, the nation which the Kaiser, his Chief of Staff and the Junkers were most anxious to crush down beyond the possibility of recovery was still more imperilled by astute German infiltration. Up to the crisis of Agadir in 1911, French finance was, to an ever increasing extent, manipulated by German Jews, who made it their special business to become more Parisian than the Parisians themselves. They were consequently regarded with favour by people whose patriotism was beyond question. Scarcely a great French finance institution but had close relations in some form with Germans, whose continuous attention to business and excellent general information rendered them valuable coadjutors for the French, who, as a rule, are not very exactly informed on foreign matters. Very few saw any danger in this. It seemed, indeed, a natural result of the great growth of German trade, as well as of the position which Germans had acquired as capable managers of the growing French factory industry in the North-Eastern provinces.
 
This latter point is of importance. So long as any industry remains in the old form, where individual skill, meticulous attention to detail, and close observance of quality are the rule, the French are second to none in their methods. But when the next stage is reached, and machine production[259] reigns on a very large scale, with its concomitant standardisation of output, then the French seem to fail for lack of the thorough organising faculty of the German or the American. Hence in many directions the highly educated, methodical, progressive foreigner from across the frontier had begun to take the place of the more conservative Frenchman. This process could be observed in the department of motor-cars, where the French, who were undoubtedly the pioneers, had begun to fall behind upon the world market in the time just anterior to the war. Not only the Americans, but the Germans, and even Italy, showed more capacity to gauge the necessities of the coming period than France in their output of cars.
 
But, in addition to this, Frenchmen, the most thrifty people in the world, are disinclined to use their savings in the development of their own country. In literature, in science, in art, they display great faculties of initiative. In the matter of investment they prefer to rely upon others. Even the underground railways of their metropolis were started by a foreigner: the French investors only coming in to buy the debentures of companies which they might just as well have started themselves. They complained that the Germans were making vast profits out of “their own” iron mines of Lorraine which had been taken from France in an undeveloped state in 1871; yet they failed to exploit the still richer deposits in Briey, of which the Germans were so envious that the desire to possess them was one of the minor causes of the war. Similar instances of neglected opportunities could be pointed out in many districts.
 
This indifference of the thrifty French investors to the possibility of enriching their own country by the use at home of the money capital obtained from their own savings, and the profits derived from visitors, astonished lookers-on. Clemenceau denounced the folly of financial wars of conquest in semi-civilised countries when France needed her own resources for the improvement of her own soil and what underlay it, as well[260] as to make adequate preparation for war. But the loans to foreign nations and foreign banks were economically as prejudicial to her real interests as the injurious colonial policy. That was proved only too clearly, even in the field of military preparation when, in August and September, 1914, tens of thousands of men, unsupplied with clothing and equipment, were to be seen in and around Paris. England had to provide them with what they required.
 
In such a state of affairs, where neglect of consideration as to the purposes of loans was the rule, so long as the interest seemed quite secure, German banks could and did act with great advantage. They borrowed French savings at a low rate and employed them for profitable objects, or for their own more complete war preparations on economical terms. After the shock of Agadir, when war at one period seemed certain, the French called in most of their loans and thenceforward were rather more cautious. But, in the meantime, and even afterwards, France’s savings had been used to strengthen her bitterest enemy. And this was the end the Germans kept constantly in view when they borrowed. France, in fact, built up German credit against herself, at the same time that Germany was able to estimate exactly the economic power of her destined victim, and to investigate, without appearing to do so, the weak points in French preparation for defence. The German banks and their French friends played together the same game, in a different way, that the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank did in London and the Banca Commerciale in Italy. The whole formed part of the vast economic octopus scheme, in finance and in industry, which went hand in hand with the co-ordination of military effort destined for attack.
 
It is easy to discern how all this peaceful financial manipulation played into the hands of the German Government and fostered German influence in Paris and in France. There was nothing which could be reasonably objected to, under the conditions of to-day, if Holland, or Belgium, had been the[261] nation concerned. But with Germany it was quite different.
 
Not only was French money being used on German account, but, under cover of quite legitimate finance and apparently genuine newspaper enterprise, most nefarious schemes were hatched in peace whose full utility to the enemy would only be disclosed in war. Taking no account even of the actual operations of bribery, which we now know were carried on upon a very large scale, everybody who was directly or indirectly interested in the various forms of parasitical Franco-German finance had personally excellent reasons for pooh-poohing distrust of the friendly nation on the other side of the frontier. Thus the most pressing warnings addressed to the French Government might be rendered almost useless—as, in fact, they were—by influence brought to bear from quarters that were pecuniarily above suspicion. An atmosphere favourable to German propaganda was created which covered up and favoured the sinister plans of men and women who were actually in German pay. This went on long before the war, and was continued in still more dangerous shape after the war had begun.
 
Then there were the honest pacifists, who regarded all war, even defensive war, as disastrous to the workers. Whether Germany won or France won in any conflict, the capitalists and the capitalists alone were the real enemy. Two such different men as Edouard Vaillant and Gustave Hervé held this opinion; and both at great international Socialist congresses declared that every effort should be made to prevent France from coming to an actual struggle with Germany, no matter what the provocation might be. When, however, they saw what the policy of the Kaiser and his Junker militarists really meant they changed their minds. So, in the early days of the war, did the majority of French Socialists; and several of their principal men, including Jules Guesde, the leader of the Marxists, and Albert Thomas, joined M. Briand’s Cabinet.
 
[262]
 
But there was always an active section left which in all good faith stood to their views that under the capitalist system nothing could justify the workers of one country in killing the workers of another. They had no interest in their own nation which was worth defending in the field. The past of France was for them a record of class oppression, the present of France the continuance of chattel slavery in disguise, the future of France no better than the permanence of penal servitude for life as wage-slaves to the bourgeoisie. German domination could be no worse for them than the economic tyranny of their own capitalist countrymen.
 
This form of social fanaticism now exists in every European nation. It is as bitter and, given the opportunity, as unscrupulous and cruel as any form of religious intolerance that ever exercised control. Economic theory entirely obscures history and facts with such men. Not even the awful horrors of the German invasion, horrors quite unprecedented in modern warfare and systematically practised in order to engender terror, and destroy the means of creating wealth, could convert Socialists of this school. As a Socialist I understand their fanaticism, though I despise their judgment. Capitalism under the control of home employers and financiers is bad, but it can be controlled by educated workers. Capitalism in victorious alliance with foreign Junkerdom would have made France uninhabitable for Frenchmen, and would have thrown back democratic Socialism for at least two generations throughout Europe.
 
Nevertheless, this furious minority, in conjunction with Socialists of political intrigue, among whom Jean Longuet (son of Charles Longuet the member of the Commune and grandson of Karl Marx) was the leader, became eventually the majority, owing to the weakness of the heads of the patriotic section. This success laid the French Socialist Party open to the charge of being not only anti-patriotic but definitely pro-German. It led to the retirement of forty-one Deputies from the “unified” combination. The violent animosity[263] of the main body to Clemenceau at the time when he was forced into office, and the refusal of Socialists to accept portfolios in his Cabinet, when the cause of the Allies was at its lowest point, from November, 1917, to July, 1918, looked to outsiders a miserable policy for the party, not to be explained by the devotion of its members to MM. Malvy and Caillaux.[D] Personal malevolence and political pusillanimity together were the imputations made against those who thus declined to serve France in her utmost need. Happily for Europe, their strength was not equal to their ill-will, and Clemenceau, after his first month of power, was able to treat them as a negligible quantity. So they remain to-day. A very great opportunity of serving the workers of their country has been missed: that the bitterest enemy of France and of freedom has not been greatly helped in her war for universal domination is no fault of theirs.
 
During the first three years and more of the war, however, a conspiracy was being conducted which, aided unfortunately by much of apathy and ineptitude on the part of successive French Governments, and supported unintentionally or intentionally by one of the leading statesmen of France, went near to wrecking the fortunes of the Republic. That this fateful plot failed to achieve the full success which the Germans anticipated from it is due to Clemenceau. Sordid monetary sympathy with the enemy is difficult to forgive: Socialist[264] fanaticism and Socialist intrigues which must tell to the disadvantage of the nation are hard to reconcile with common honesty; but downright infamous treachery, bribery, corruption, and wholesale attempts to organise defeat put all who are guilty of them outside the law. Yet matters had come to such a pass that all these various forms of treason to France, to the Allies, and to soldiers at the front could be carried on with impunity.
 
Though the guilty persons were well known and their German plots were scarcely concealed, none of the Ministers responsible for the public safety dared arrest them. Journals that were obviously published in the interest of the enemy were allowed to spread false information as they pleased, and to attack all statesmen and politicians who were honestly trying to serve France with vitriolic misrepresentation. Day after day this went on. Day after day, as the situation without grew more precarious, the chiefs of this criminal endeavour to bring France to ruin grew bolder in their well-paid treachery. The people of Paris and the soldiery in the trenches, whose minds also German agents strove to debauch with plausible lies, were becoming hopeless of justice being done. Ministry succeeded Ministry and still the traitors were treated with consideration by the Minister of the Interior, M. Malvy, and other men in high place.
 
Beyond question the man officially responsible for all this shameful laxity, at one of the most trying crises of the whole war, was M. Malvy, who enjoyed the whole-souled support of the Socialist Party, on account of creditable behaviour towards the workers, altogether outside of questions arising from the war. But his conduct in regard to traitors and pro-Germans had become so weak as to be capable of the worst interpretation.
 
On July 24th, 1917, Clemenceau declared that he utterly distrusted M. Malvy. It was known even thus early that this Minister had shown deplorable incapacity in his dealings with men who are known to have been actual traitors.[265] He had, in fact, decided not to arrest persons enumerated in what was called “List B,” that is to say, men and women more than suspected of criminal intrigue against France. Had not Almereyda himself assured M. Malvy, as Minister of the Interior, that he and all other Anarchists and anti-patriotic agitators would really desist from their sinister proceedings? This was enough. Without taking any steps against them, or even obtaining any security for the fulfilment of this promise in the air, M. Malvy left these miscreants alone to do what they pleased. So things went on as before; though, as has since been proved, several of these active agitators for peace, disaffection and surrender were paid agents of the German Government.
 
When, therefore, a resolution of confidence in M. Ribot’s Administration was proposed in the Senate, Clemenceau voted for the resolution, but made special exception in the case of M. Malvy, in whom he declared he had no confidence whatever. Later, Clemenceau boldly accused M. Ribot and his whole Administration of being themselves all responsible for the existence of the treacherous German Bonnet Rouge and Bolo conspiracy. Most unfortunately, notwithstanding the universal distrust thus awakened and spreading from Paris throughout France, Republican Ministers, who ought to have been the first to move to safeguard the interests of France and her Republic, against the dangerous plots of men known to be immersed in abominable dealings with the enemy, failed altogether in their duty. They left it to avowed Royalists and reactionaries to lead the attack upon persons guilty of these crimes. What, consequently, ought to have been done at once, legally and thoroughly, by men who had received political power by vote of the French people, and were trustees for the defence of the country, against the foreign enemy from without and the domestic enemy within, was left largely to be accomplished by M. Léon Daudet and M. Barrès.
 
These men made no secret of the fact that they were actuated by motives entirely antagonistic to the democratic policy of the Allies and hostile to the only form of government[266] possible in France. This did not render their indictment less crushing when the facts were fully disclosed, but it certainly weakened the force of the attack. What is more, it gave a large and, later, apparently the largest section of the Socialist Party the excuse, which they were eager to grasp, for supporting M. Malvy, and more particularly their friend M. Joseph Caillaux, against what they were pleased to denounce as abominable detraction.
 
Newspapers to-day are credited, perhaps, with more political influence than they really possess. But it is clear that if nearly the whole of the important press of a country can be captured by a particular faction, and only such news is allowed to be published as suits the convenience of the Government in power, the people at large have no means of correcting the false impressions of events thus thrust upon them. That is an extreme case, which has, so far, been realised, in practice, in only one country. But the German agents who were so active in Paris were fully alive to the advantages of such a policy of purchase and manipulation of the press for their own ends. They made efforts to secure a control of the majority of the shares in some of the most influential journals of Paris. How far this process was surreptitiously carried will never be known: not far enough, certainly, to affect the tone of the organs they were anxious to manipulate.
 
But enough was done to show the great danger which would have resulted to the community, had a newspaper trust been successfully created on the scale contemplated, but fortunately never carried out, by the infamous Bolo Pasha and his associates. Their own journal, Le Bonnet Rouge, even when increased during the war from a weekly to a daily issue, was not by any means sufficient for their needs, although that traitorous sheet alone was able to do a great deal of mischief. But their control was extended to the Journal, a paper, prior to the war, of considerable circulation and influence. Their attempts to expand further were in full swing when, thanks to the work of MM. Léon Daudet and Barrès in the Action[267] Fran?aise, and still more to that of their bitter opponent Clemenceau in l’Homme Encha?né and in the Senate, the French Government was forced to arrest the proprietors of the Bonnet Rouge and put them on their trial as traitors. It was known that M. Caillaux and M. Paix-Séailles—the latter connected with M. Painlevé’s Cabinet and the repository of anti-French confidences—had contributed considerable sums to the support of the incriminated paper.
 
When M. Almereyda, one of the most important persons connected with the Bonnet Rouge (to whose columns a leading Socialist was a contributor) died suddenly in prison, the editor of that journal telegraphed to M. Caillaux concerning the lamentable departure of “our friend.” As these facts were accompanied by other revelations still more compromising, public opinion became greatly excited. There could be no doubt that the conspiracy was more than a mere anti-patriotic newspaper intrigue of financial origin, or an attempt of discredited politicians to float themselves back into office on the wave of discouragement and defeatism: it was an endeavour, supported throughout by German funds, to destroy French confidence in order to ensure French destruction. A complete exposure of the whole plot, in which M. Caillaux and Bolo Pasha were alleged to be the leading figures, was threatened in the course of the Bonnet Rouge trial. Eleven members of the Army Committee of the Senate were appointed to consider M. Caillaux’s connection with M. Almereyda and the Bonnet Rouge.
 
M. Caillaux has been by far the most formidable advocate of a German peace from the first. That an ex-Premier of France should take up such a position would seem almost incredible, but that Signor Giolitti in Italy and Lord Lansdowne in England have pursued the same course in a less objectionable way. The political relations between Clemenceau and M. Caillaux in the years prior to the war had not been unfriendly. M. Caillaux had been Finance Minister in Clemenceau’s Cabinet in 1907, and they had both worked together for M. Pams[268] against M. Poincaré in the contest for the Presidency. But two more different personalities it would be difficult to find.
 
M. Caillaux is a financier of financiers. His whole career has been associated with the dexterous manipulation and acquisition of money in all its forms. Clemenceau never had anything to do with finance in his fife, and wealth is the last thing anybody could accuse him of possessing. Clemenceau, though no sentimentalist, makes an exception in his view of life where Frenchmen, France and Paris are concerned. With Caillaux audacious cynicism in everything is the key-note of his character all through. Moreover, the one is very simple in his habits, and the other is devoted to ostentation and display. Caillaux’s cynicism is as remarkable as that of Henry Labouchere, though more malignant. When he carried the Income Tax through the Assembly and was upbraided for having made himself the champion of such a measure, he claimed that, though he had obtained for his measure a majority in the Assembly, he had used such arguments as would destroy it in the country.
 
Whatever may be the truth of that story, it is certain that the result has been as predicted. So in the course of the Agadir affair. M. Caillaux, as Prime Minister during the whole of the proceedings, was reluctant, and perhaps rightly so, to assert the claims of France with vigour. He was, in fact, quite lukewarm on behalf of his country, the representatives of other nations doing more for France, it is said, than she, or her Premier, did for herself. No sooner, however, was the business settled than M. Caillaux, the judicious but unavowed anti-expansionist, claimed that he had secured Morocco for France! However this may be, M. Caillaux has always favoured a close political and financial understanding with Germany, as by far the more advantageous policy for France, in opposition to a similar entente with England: a view which, of course, he was quite entitled to take and act upon, though its success in practice must have reduced France to the position[269] of a mere satellite of the Fatherland. Before the war it was possibly a justifiable, though scarcely a far-seeing, policy.
 
The war itself rather strengthened than weakened his tendency in this direction. Having comfortably recovered from the unpleasing effect of the murder of M. Calmette of the Figaro, for which crime his wife was acquitted, he used all his influence, in and out of France, to bring about a peace with Germ............