France and ourselves; interpretative studies: 1917-1919

Front matter

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FRANCE

AND OURSELVES

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I How We Can Help France .... 3

II The Tiger of France 23

Chapter I

13 EFORE the United States entered the war *^ a few Americans were helping a few French. The French as a people were appreciative of the aid that came from America, and there were remarkable testimonials of this appreciation. Our ambulances were seen on the French front, and Americans in Red Cross work lost their lives on the field of battle. In many places American hospitals, served by American doctors and nurses, cared for the French wounded. Organizations for rehef-work were engaged in a multitude of activities, and the American Relief

Clearing House in Paris dispensed money by the millions and sent out boxes by the thousands. Other Americans were not content to work for France. They fought for France in the Foreign Legion and in the Aviation Corps.

But all this was the effort of individual men and women. The United States was neutral, and so long as the United States remained neutral, the American nation could not help the French nation in the death struggle. The heroism and the self-sacrifice and the warm partizanship of individual Americans did not atone for American neutrality. Whether the French should have understood our neutrality and have acknowledged our right and reason to remain neutral is not to the point. The fact is that we were neutral.

Only Americans who knew how France felt about America could realize how France felt about American neutrality. The feeling about America may have been erroneous ; but only if it were erroneous (which God forbid!) could the feeling about American neutrality be unreasonable. Have we ever understood the French conception of America? Far deeper than the impression, gained from contact with American tom'ists, of America as the land of dollars and dollar-chasing, lay the belief in America as the land of hberty, the defender of right and justice in the relations between man and man and between nation and nation. The French have idealized American history in much the same way that they have idealized their own history. Our national heroes — Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln — are as real to the French as they are to us, and the connection of Lafayette and Rochambeau with the birth of the United States is taught in French schools as it is taught in our schools. This feehng has been specially true under the Third Republic. We have been regarded as the sister democracy, different in manner of life and thought, different even in civi- » lization, but alike in ideals. It was not yesterday that a portrait, a bust of Frankhn or Washington was placed in French mairies; and other cities besides Paris long ago gave the names of the fathers of the American Revolution to streets and squares.

In a spirit of historical detachment, far from the fray and unaffected by it, one may be successful in studying the causes leading up to the war and in pointing out their complexity and multiplicity. But the French did not do this. They could not do it. The storm broke, and broke upon them. The violation of Belgian neutrality brought the Germanic hordes into France. Civilians suffered, provinces were devastated, and through their initial unfair advantage the Germans were able to seize and hold northern France. The instinct of self-preservation called France to arms, but very quickly the defenders of their homes came to identify the national cause with that of human liberty and twentieth-century civilization. Before they had been in the war a week the Germans aroused in their opponents a feeling of moral revolt, dictated by international reasons fully as much as by national ones. Hence France looked to the United States not to help France in her own defense, the success of which was assured by the Battle of the Mame, but in the defense of the principles which all Frenchmen believed were as dear to Americans as to them. We Americans who lived in France during the first thirty tragic months of the war knew full well that our humanitarian efforts were of no avail in the face of the fact of American neutrality. We spoke of American sympathy, proved by relief contributions and by editorials of New York newspapers. But the French ideal of the United States demanded official action by Washington. I believe I am right in stating that, despite the sore need of our material aid, France would gladly have forgone all that Americans were doing and could do for an official condemnation by the American Government of the policy and the acts of Germany.

At last the change — or was it the awakening? — came. Now we are allies of France. In time of war friends are synonymous with allies. Neutrality may be natural, reasonable, expHcable, just; but what logic can be opposed to the thought, "He that is not with me is against me"?

Bygones are bygones. We have come into the war, and we have come in at the critical moment. We have come in whole-heartedly. Perhaps our aid is more appreciated for the timehness of it and the unexpectedness of it. If we do not fall into the error of assuming that we are the deus ex machina and of adopting the attitude of saviors, all will be well.

We made a good beginning. Marshal Joffre was greeted in the United States with an outburst of enthusiasm and affection that put heart into the French nation at a moment of widespread discouragement. The April offensive had failed, the submarine menace was becoming alarming, and the state of anarchy in Russia was causing apprehension. The adoption of a series of practical measures at Washington, coinciding with the reception of the French mission, proved that American cooperation was not going to be confined to manifestations of sentimental hysteria. No ally of France has acted more promptly and more advisedly. We voted conscription, placed immediately enormous sums at the disposal of our allies, gave the President control over the export of food-stuffs, passed the espionage bill, promised active participation on the battle-fields of France, and sent a fleet of destroyers to Europe as an earnest of our intention to sacrifice hfe as well as treasure in combating Germany.

Efficient and decisive aid, however, cannot be given by us if we go to France with an imperfect or incorrect conception of the essential conditions of our cooperation. We must see problems as France sees them, and we must help to solve them in the French way and not in the American way, remembering that the war is being fought on French soil. Otherwise we shall fail, and generous impulses will come to naught. Instead of a permanent understanding with France, there will be mutual disillusionment. Then the French will dislike us, and we shall dislike them. What calls more insistently for the rarest quafities and tact and delicacy than helping a friend?

We are accustomed to regard France as a nation that has broken with traditions of the past and has evolved a democracy similar to our own.

We contrast French individualism with German conformity, and think that the French are freed from the shackles of convention by the democracy they have constituted. We contrast French gaiety with English dourness, and think that the French are hail-fellow-well-met Hke ourselves. Let us correct immediately and entirely these notions. And since we are going to France, and France is not coming to us, let us remember that we must try to understand their point of view without insisting upon their understanding ours.

The French are bound by their past. Despite revolutions and republics, they are hostile to new ideas and attach a tremendous importance to form. Both in thought and action they are less individualistic than the English. They are proud and sensitive and reserved. Then, too, the French have been keyed to the breakingpoint of nervous tension during three years of war. We cannot expect them to be calm and patient and grateful. If they need help badly, it is because they have borne the brunt of the German

Hotv We Can Help France 11

aggression. France has given everything, suffered eveiything, and sacrificed everything where her alHes have given and suffered and sacrificed only in part. Russia, like France, has had enormous losses in fighting, and portions of her territory are now occupied by the enemy ; but Russia has more than twice the population of France, and the territories that the Germans hold are not an integral part of the Russian Empire or a vital part of Russia's economic life. England and Italy are not invaded, and their industries have not been paralyzed by the mobilization and the maintenance on the front through years of their manhood population.

We are going into a country the soil of which is consecrated by the life-blood of a million soldiers and desecrated by the German occupation. We are going among a people who have been and are still Hving in hell, and who stand undaunted and glorious in the midst of bereavement and desolation. It is the holy of holies that we are privileged to enter, and we must go in with bowed heads. We go to learn, not to teach, and the man of us who says, "You ought never to have done it this way," or "I '11 show you how to do it," ought to be taken out and shot.

Yes, I mean what I say. Lack of consideration, thoughtlessness, bluntness, impatience to reform things, are qualities that have no place in the house of grief and suffering. Our opportunity to walk into the heart of France and to win the most precious national friendship on earth is unique ; but, oh, how we need insight and gentleness! The problems are open, bleeding war wounds, every single one — ^miHtary, political, economic, social. Of course one recognizes that many of them existed before the war or have been born of seed sown before the war. Many of them are due in part to defects in French character and French institutions. But the aggravation and seriousness of the problems have one cause — the war. And if the problems do not exist in England and Italy as they exist in France, it is because France is on the cross and the others are not. Congestion of ports, scarcity of ships, difficulties of railway transportation, bad repair of rolling-stock, caring for the refugees, meeting the needs of the widows and orphans and mutilated, fighting tuberculosis and prostitution, ministering to the wounded, distributing food-stuffs and fuel to civiUans, finding money, regulating the economic life of the country, moving troops, provisioning the front — 'all these are the problems that are confronting France and in the solution of which our help is needed.

Insight and gentleness. Can we have the insight unless we appreciate what France has been through, how these problems have arisen, and what the French think about them? Can we use the gentleness unless we put ourselves in the place of the dwellers in the house of grief and suffering and view the problems through their eyes? Let me cite only one illustration. An admirable movement was put on foot in the United States to raise a substantial fund for French war orphans. It was a great idea, and an appeal could be made with peculiar force for the children of France who were deprived of their fathers. Had not the French fathers died for us, for the world.

as well as for their own children? But while an American committee could fittingly raise money for French orphans, it could not fittingly distribute this money. No outsider, no matter how good a friend, could enter and exercise authority in French homes. He would encroach upon and influence rehgion and education, the precious prerogatives of the family and the state. An American committee could not give money to sectarian organizations in France for the bringing up of orphans. No matter how perfect the good faith and intention of the givers, the nation would resent the money coming from abroad for this sacred purpose if it had a string attached to it. To distribute money is harder than to beg it; to give it away is harder than to make it. In the case of the orphans, intelligent friends of France will keep their money in their pockets unless it is to be handed over unostentatiously to a French committee, representative of and designated by the nation.

We must be careful how we do things. We have to curb and keep in leash a natural instinct.

The typical American has his mind upon the goal. He is after results, and the way in which he accomplishes what is set before him he does not consider of much importance. The Frenchman, on the other hand, is hedged in from birth by form. There is a right and proper way to do everything, and one would rather not have it done at all than not do it in that way. The French pride themselves upon their individualism and their personal independence. They make fun of their governmental institutions and are remorseless critics of the bureaucracy and the pohce. But if you watch a Frenchman in discussion with a public official, a rare occurrence, you will notice that the crowd is invariably on the side of the representative of authority. The unforgivable sin in France is not being en regie. Hence, however much one may protest, he conforms; and established institutions and established procedure persist through revolutions and reactions just as they were in the olden days. When Bergson set forth his "philosophy of form," which was hailed as a novelty in Anglo-

Saxon countries, he was reflecting the Latin civilization to which he belonged.

President Wilson, in the face of adverse criticism and pressure from all sides, dechned Mr. Roosevelt's offer to lead a volunteer army to France. He showed remarkable perspicacity. I have not the slightest doubt that Mr. Roosevelt and his friends were actuated by the sole motive of wanting to serve France ; but their love of the French was greater than their knowledge of the French. Whatever their newspapers may have said, in the desire to avoid looking a gift-horse in the mouth, the people of France did not understand the Roosevelt scheme. It perplexed and wori'ied them. They would have interpreted its adoption as a sign that our Government did not have sufficient prestige among the American people to help France in the regular way, or that the American people were so opposed to the war that President Wilson was compelled to fall back upon private initiative and enterprise for mihtary cooperation with the Entente powers. It was only when telegrams from Washington announced that General Pershing would command the first troops sent to France, and that these troops would be an official American army, that the French realized the significance of America's entry into the war. Now they know that the American nation, represented by the Government at Washington, is helping France.

The primary and obvious form of aid to France is the sending of an army. Yet here also we have to exercise an unusual degree of selfrestraint. The most spectacular help is always the easiest to give. While our flag on the French front is a sine qua non of the alliance, and while its moral effect cannot be overestimated in relation to American public opinion, the extent of our military cooperation must not be determined by the longing for excitement and adventure and glory that is being awakened among our young men. If the French and American Governments, working together in perfect harmony, decide that a large American army should be sent to France, well and good. But if other means of serving the common cause are pointed out to us as more pressing and more vital, we must be ready to subordinate our generous impulses to the exigencies of the situation as it develops.

It is probable that France is going to need ships and fuel and war material before she needs fighting men, and our factories and our granaries may continue to be, as they have been in the past, more essential than our armies. In every kind of human endeavor, where cooperation is necessary, directors of concerted effort find that inefficiency in helpers is due to inability or unwilhngness to perform the service required. The difficulty is not in getting the workers, but in getting workers who will take positions they can fill and which need to be filled. This is the prime — if not the sole — reason for unemployment. In this war France looks to the American nation for aid. Our Government at Washington directs the enterprise of aiding France. There will be unemployment, lack of opportunity to serve, only for those who want to dictate how they shall serve. The test of love for our own country as well as for France, of desire to help the world to a better life after the cataclysm through which we are passing, comes right here.

Whatever comhinazione French statesmen and diplomats may have dreamed of, whatever imperialistic aspirations may have received sanction in secret treaties between France and the other powers of the Entente, the voice of the people will count when it comes to the making of peace, and the people are not fighting for the advancement of selfish national interests. Only if Germany comes to the peace conference crushed and powerless, can the French public be seduced by the imperialists and led by the diplomats. There is an overwhelming sentiment in France that the objects of this war are the return of Alsace and Lorraine and the restoration of the invaded departments, with an indemnity for rehabihtation. For more than that France will not prolong the war, and France is not counting on American support to attain objects that are in conflict with French and American principles. We have a right, then, to believe and hope that comradeship in arms will lead to a durable entente between

France and the United States. That behef and hope form the basis of cooperation now. For otherwise, harmonious cooperation, even at this critical moment when om* aid is so precious, would be impossible.

We must guard ourselves against the pernicious and illogical notion, advanced by the unthinking, that our aid is disinterested, and that we are giving it freely. There is a big difference between assuring our enemies that we covet nothing of theirs and assuring our friends that we look for no return for the help we give them. Benefactors bestow largess upon inferiors: between equals there can be only a quid pro quo. Without the idea of reciprocity our aid would be an insult to France. If we do not go to France with the idea that we are going to discharge an obligation that we have incurred, and are going for our own benefit fully as much as for the benefit of France, it would be wiser to stay at home. May we not have a false conception of our role in this war ! We go not to save France, but to assist France to save the world.

I started with the question, How can we help France? I cannot end without the question, How can France help us? For it would be a waste of time to consider the former without having simultaneously in mind the latter. Long ago, at the beginning of our national life, France did for us what we in small measure are trying to pay back now. But we have not grown beyond the need of what France can still give. Far from it. Over against our New World energy, our proud progress in science and in things material, stands France's Old World refinement and proud progress in thought and things spiritual. France can be our gateway to the Europe that we do not know, the Europe whose moderation and modesty are needed to temper our neophytism and self -consciousness.

We are of mixed ancestry, but our political and social institutions, our literature and language, have stamped us in the Anglo-Saxon mold. With the good we have inherited the bad, and the bad has become accentuated in the unformed, expansive life of our vast continent.

We have taken from England her two disagreeable Teutonic traits, race superiority and cant, which have been fostered in the British Empire and in the United States, as they have been in Prussia, by Protestantism. The Germans have waked up late to the philosophy of the Uebermensch and the dream of world supremacy. Anglo- Saxondom has long practised the one and tried to reahze the other. Alhance with the British Empire would tend to increase our selfesteem and our arrogance and stimulate our belief in a world mission, had we not the splendid anchor to windward of the alliance with France, virile exponent of the undying Latin civilization. Germany of the Tugendhund might have grasped this anchor, and not have broken from her moorings. The anchor is strong enough to hold us; but we must realize that it is an anchor, and we must be wilhng to use it.

Chapter II

EMPEROR FRAXCIS JOSEPH did not live long enough to enter Italy at the head of his army; but the next in order among undreamed-of events has actually happened with the return of Georges-Eugene-Benjamin Clemenceau to the helm in France. Up to the last minute the wiseacres of the Palais-Bourbon, where sits the Chamber of Deputies, persisted in their belief that France's veteran pohtician and journalist could not become premier. They had every kind of good reason to give you. As if the ante-bellum record of "the Tiger" were not sufficiently damning from the politician's point of view, there could be added the three years of editorship of UHomme Libre, UHomme Mains

1 November, 1917.

Libre, and L'Homme Enchatne. Only the men too insignificant to waste ink upon had escaped the trenchant pen of "the Tiger." President Poincare; Premiers Viviani, Briand", Ribot, and Painleve; their coadjutors; ministers of foreign affairs and of war; generals of the armies; ambassadors and ministers; Alhed statesmen; the pope; President Wilson and the rulers of all other neutral nations had received special attention in the famous "leaders" of the newspaper held in abhorrence and suspicion by the French censorship. Political parties — all of them — ^were treated as unsparingly as their chiefs.

To whom, then, especially in a country where political animosity is strong, especially at a time when international relations are "dehcate," would Georges Clemenceau be persona grata? It was the duty of the President of France to choose the successor to the premiership. The choice would have to be approved by the Chamber of Deputies. if Clemenceau were picked to succeed Painleve — and the hypothesis was incredible — ^would the magnanimity of Monsieur le President be shared by Messieurs les Deputes? And what about the opposition of the Unified Socialists, who had solemnly pronounced in anticipation the exclusion of Clemenceau as a candidate for premiership? When Ribot tried to reform his cabinet, he failed because Padnleve declared that no cabinet could succeed when presented to the Chamber without the participation of the Unified Socialists. Later Painleve attempted to do what he felt Ribot could not do, and he found that his first opinion was true.

The prophets were wrong. President Poincare, overlooking his own personal reasons for dishking Clemenceau and the veto of the Unified SociaHsts, invited Clemenceau to form a ministry. "The Tiger" did not hesitate to accept the mandate from the hands of the man whom he had been holding up to scorn and ridicule ever since the war started. He had little difficulty in getting eminent men to serve with him, and secui*ed a vote of confidence with the overwhelming majority of 418 against 65. Only Unified Socialists voted against him. Of the forty deputies who refrained from voting, twenty-five were Unified Socialists. This means that all the Radicals and Radical Socialists except fifteen, all the Center and all the Right, gave their confidence to the Clemenecau cabinet.

Why were the prophets wrong? Simply because they had grown accustomed to look upon the formation of ministries as a matter of political bargaining and manoeuvering, the premierelect choosing his ministers and setting forth his program with an eye to the likes and dislikes of parties and party leaders. Viviani adopted this plan a month after the war began. Briand and Ribot and Painleve followed in the same path. The politicians had forgotten the country, or at least they persisted in regarding the Chamber of Deputies as representing the country. Perhaps the Chamber of Deputies did represent France at the beginning of the war, but during this long struggle parliament and people have drifted apart. Clemenceau realized this. He did not have to depend upon securing collaborators who could carry the votes of his particular group, or upon sweeping the deputies off their feet by an unexpectedly moving and virile setting forth of his program. He knew that the representatives of the people would not dare to refuse him their confidence. For France wanted Clemenceau, and president and parliament were not wilhng to oppose the country. Considerations of patriotism and of bowing before necessity dictated the choice of Clemenceau.

Some telegrams to American and British newspapers stated that the remarkable speech of the new premier when he presented his ministry to the Chamber of Deputies on November 20th won him the support of the country and instilled new life and determination to continue the war to the bitter end. This is the opinion of superficial observers, who reversed the roles. The nation appealed to Clemenceau before Clemenceau appealed to the nation. Support and confidence were offered to him before he spoke. Clemenceau as premier, despite the inclination of president and parliament, is the result, not the cause, of the remarkable war spirit in France, which.

deep down in the hearts of the people, has never flagged.

During the summer and autumn of 1917 I enjoyed the privilege of traveling in every part of France. I found the people in a state of high nervous tension. The defection of Russia and the crushing defeat of Italy, coming in the fourth year of the war, would have been enough to discourage any nation that had suffered as France has suffered. But added to these outside disappointments were four grave facts of internal order, for which, rightly or wrongly, the French held their own Government and parliament responsible: the fiasco of the Saloniki Expedition; the failure to put through any large offensive movement on the Western front ; general lack of confidence in the measures taken to provide agricultural laborers and to prevent a fuel and food famine for the coming winter; the half-hearted and inconclusive way in which the scandals affecting a former premier, a former minister of the interior, a former chief of secret pohce, a senator and editor of a prominent newspaper, a deputy.

and a president of a high court were being handled.

The French were sick of speeches containing explanations of the past and promises for the future. They were sick of the censorship, which continued to keep them in ignorance about what was going on abroad and at home. They were willing to continue their appalling sacrifices in blood and treasure, but they wanted to be sure that these sacrifices were not being prolonged in vain.

This state of the public mind was well known to President Poincare and the leaders of different political parties whom he called into consultation. When the Painleve ministry fell, Clemenceau became the man of the hour, because he was popularly supposed to be the embodiment of the growing spirit of protest against the way the war and internal affairs have been managed. He had denounced the placing of party above national interests, the blind attachment of parliamentarians to old methods, the formation of ministries through political deals, the criminal stupidity of the censorship, the tendency to go off at a tangent in miHtary operations (witness the Saloniki Epedition, which he bitterly opposed from the moment of its conception), the lack of decision and concerted policy in the whole conduct of the war, the improvidence in national fuel and food supplies, the inability of administrative bureaucrats to face and solve the transportation crisis, and the unwillingness of successive premiers and cabinet ministers to punish persons and groups in France who consciously or unconsciously were playing Germany's game.

In asking Clemenceau to form a ministry. President Poincare heeded the insistent and warning cry of the nation: "Give us a premier who will use all the energies and resources of France to defeat Germany, who will see that we have fuel and food, and who will not allow our armies to be assailed from the rear through pacifist propaganda and through strikes inspired by German money!"

What France expects of Clemenceau is to play the role of a Moses and a Joshua combined. No

Frenchman since Thiers has undertaken a task so difficult, so dehcate, so splendid. Like Thiers, Clemenceau brings to the task half a century of pubHc life. He celebrated his seventy-third birthday shortly after the Battle of the Marne. His active poHtical career began with the September Revolution of 1870, and covers the entire period between two wars. At no time during the Third Republic has Premier Clemenceau been a negligible factor in French politics. After interesting experiences in the United States, where he saw the close of the Civil War and the early years of Reconstruction (he remembers as vividly as if it were yesterday being present at the opening of Virginia's negro legislature), he returned to Paris to complete his medical studies. The year after he received his degree the Second Empire fell, and Clemenceau entered political life as Mayor of Montmartre. He represented Paris in the National Assembly of 1871. From 1875 to 1893 he sat in the Chamber of Deputies on the extreme Left. Since 1902 he has been a senator. From 1906 to 1909 he was premier. During his long parliamentary career those three years were his only opportunity to participate in the government of France. The rest of the time he was a member of the opposition, and as deputy and senator and journalist he enjoyed the reputation of having caused the overthrow of more ministries than any other Frenchman since France has had representative government.