Georges Clemenceau

"[Woodrow] Wilson then diverged into his usual rhapsody about the superiority of right to might: he referred to those great French idealists—Lafayette and Rochambeau...and he ended an eloquent appeal to Clemenceau by quoting Napoleon's saying on his deathbed that “in the end right always triumphed over might.” Clemenceau ... said: “President Wilson has quoted Napoleon as having said that in the end might was beaten by right. He says that he uttered this sentiment on his deathbed. Had it been true it was rather late for him to have discovered it. But it was not true. President Wilson alluded in glowing language to those idealistic young Frenchmen who helped to liberate America. However exalted the ideals of Lafayette and Rochambeau, they would never have achieved them without force. Force brought the United States into being and force again prevented it from falling to pieces.” The President acknowledged the cogency of the reply."

"If Germany, still obsessed by her traditional militarism, persists in her Deutschland über Alles, well—let the die be cast. We shall take up the atrocious War again at the point where we left it off. We must have the courage to prepare for it, instead of frittering away our strength in lies that no one believes, from conference to conference."

"A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe."

"His hatred of Germany had a concentrated ferocity which I had never seen before... I remember driving with him back to Paris...after he had handed...the German delegates the draft of the Peace Treaty. As we passed the ruins of the palace of St. Cloud, which had been burned by the Germans in 1871, he told me how he remembered seeing the blaze... That event seemed to have burned itself into his memory ... There is only one incident of 1871 of which he spoke to me with emotion, and that was of the poignant scene in the French Assembly when Jules Favre came straight from an interview with Bismarck to report to the deputies the nature of the terms demanded, and the ruthlessness with which the triumphant Chancellor had treated the supplication of the French delegates for some amelioration in the demands. Tears came into M. Clemenceau's eyes—for the first and only time in my intercourse with him—as he described how "the old man" (Favre), in attempting to describe the harshness of the conqueror, broke down in the tribune and wept. I then understood something of M. Clemenceau's hatred of the Germans. They had not only invaded France, defeated her armies, occupied her capital, humbled her pride, but in the hour of victory had treated her with an insolence which for fifty years had rankled in the heart of this fierce old patriot. When I met him at Carlsbad the sore was still stinging him into anger."

"In the fear, anger, and disarray of the French people the rugged, dominating figure of Clemenceau, with his world-famed authority, and his special British and American contacts, was incontinently discarded. "Ingratitude towards their great men," writes Plutarch, "is the mark of strong peoples." It was imprudent of France to indulge this trait when she was so grievously weakened. There was little compensating strength to be found in the revival of the group intrigues and ceaseless changes of Governments and Ministers which were the characteristic of the Third Republic, however profitable they were to those engaged in them."

"When I am told that a policy of concessions, more or less happily graduated, is going to regain for us the goodwill of our former enemies I can only be glad to hear it, for I desire nothing so much as a state of stable equilibrium in Europe. But I must be able to perceive some sign of a favourable response to the goodwill that I am asked to manifest. Judge then of my surprise when I discover that Germany goes on arming and France disarming. The position is that the most scientific preparations for war are being carried out on the other side of the frontier. With us frontiers lie open, armaments are insufficient, effectives are well below the numbers recognized as necessary, while on the other side a feverish life of reconstruction is developing and reorganizing, by the adaptation of fresh material, every department of their war equipment as well as their means of transport."

"I ask myself whether there is to be found a single Frenchman who could admit that we should refrain from exacting from the Germans their obligations, the burden of which is about to be transferred to a victor ruined by the systematic plunderings of the conquered invader. When I ask for an explanation I am generally met with a shrug of the shoulders, accusations against the Press, Parliament, the politicians, and an assurance that after a few more concessions every one will be satisfied. As a result of which we give way to-day, after having given way yesterday, to the demands of Germany, who is only awaiting the additional last concessions to render an account that will never be the final one until we are completely despoiled."

"To-day Germany is once more trying to construct, by methods of peace, a Germanic Empire that she failed to bring into being by means of war. That she could never do without eventualities that may change the destinies of a France exposed to every hostile enterprise. What will become of us in this welter of countries the development of whose strength in the future no man can foresee? There are nations that are beginning. There are nations that are coming to an end. Our consciousness of our own acts entails the fixing of responsibilities. France will be what the men of France deserve."

"I saw him last at the end of May of 1929. He had aged a good deal but his mind was as clear as ever. He spoke sadly and with disillusionment. He professed that he no longer much cared to live, though he was very glad to have been alive. He spoke with uneasiness of the general situation in the world and especially in France. He seemed to think there was a decay of authority and—though he did not use the word—of ideals. He said: "The truth is that I am in one respect a very unfortunate man. I have seen my wishes fulfilled. I believed very much in democracy and representative Government and now that I see it in operation I am a little disappointed." One other striking phrase he employed. He said: "I have come to think that it is more difficult to make Peace than to make War—and requires more patience!""

"He was...much the most arresting and powerful personality in the arena of French politics during the Third Republic... Clemenceau was a master of words. No orator of his day had a more perfect command and choice of word and phrase. But he was pre-eminently a man of action... That he should have succeeded as War Minister is not a matter of surprise. He possessed restless energy, indomitable courage and a gift of infecting others with his own combativeness and confidence... A combination of energy, courage and common sense was needed at that hour, and he possessed these three attributes in an exceptional degree... Clemenceau was the greatest French statesman—if not the greatest Frenchman—of his day. He was in every fibre of his being a Frenchman. He had no real interest in humanity as a whole. His sole concern was for France. As long as France was humbled he cared not what other people were exalted. As long as France was victorious he did not worry in the least about the tribulations of any other country. To him France was all in all."

"Signing of Protocol and procés-verbal ratifying the Treaty [of Versailles]. It was interesting to see old Clemenceau going through the ceremony – the quick way in which he walked round the tables. L[loyd] G[eorge] said that after the signing of Protocol, which took place in a private room, Clemenceau had to shake hands with the German delegate. He said to [L]loyd G[eorge], “I spat on the place in order to commemorate it!”"

"He had one illusion — France; and one disillusion — mankind, including Frenchmen."

"Before he was thirty he was the witness of the complete defeat and invasion of his country brought about by the infamy and ineptitude of the Imperial Government. These experiences governed his whole career. The object for which he lived was the restoration of his country and the reversal of the wrongs she had suffered. Patriotism became to him a passion. It took the place of religion and provided that idealism without which great characters cannot live. And so for more than forty years he strove by voice and pen to fortify his country for a renewal of the struggle with Germany, to cleanse it of corruption, to give it greater strength and a higher courage. Perhaps his outlook was too material. Perhaps he cared too much for his country's glory and too little for her real happiness. But it is not for us, with our sheltered history, to judge him."

"When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking."

"In truth, the bulk of the German nation, the Reich Government (so well personified in the circumstances by the late Herr Stresemann) is not at all eager to begin a new struggle with France. It is perfectly well aware—and the perpetual mutilations of the Treaty of Versailles have shown that it is right—that with patience, a great deal of boldness, and some cleverness, it will easily manage to obtain, from the weak and irresponsible Governments that have been succeeding one another in France since 1920, the almost complete annulment of the Treaty. During this time—that is to say, while Germany is preparing, that is, arming—what is the French Army doing? It is quite simple: it is disarming."

"Is it not fairly clear that the very idea of a fatherland, which is still so potent among us, has lost some of its native strength in the hearts of those who have deliberately allowed themselves to be despoiled of that French pride so essential if the fatherland is to live and not die?"

"I scan the horizon in vain for any sign of a recovery. Day by day the position grows more serious through our inertia, while the designs of German violence shrink from no ways or means or instrument."

"“Germany is arming and France disarming”: that is the decisive feature of this moment of history when the two states of mind confront one another in such stark brutality that I defy any sane man to cast doubt on the evidence. Our people have come to this, that they seem to like enduring provocations. The history of the plebiscite violently rejecting the financial measures accepted by us in order to help Germany to discharge what may remain of her financial obligations seems a sufficient indication of the most furious hostility. Thus we see, in the relentless light of the facts, the German, in fighting mood and trim, and the heedless Frenchman, both applauding the orators who proclaim the violations of the Peace Treaty."

"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

"He almost ceased to believe in human virtue. That was the foundation of his attitude to such things as the League of Nations. They seemed to him too good to be true; what Napoleon called ideology. Often when I visited him he has begun the conversation by saying: "I like the League of Nations," and then, with an ironic challenge: "but I don't believe in it." But that did not prevent him from being very kind to me personally. He was called fierce and pitiless and he may have been so. When I saw him he was courtesy and consideration personified. He never made phrases. He said what he wanted to say in the plainest and most pointed language he could command—and sometimes it was very plain and pointed. He never talked for the sake of talking—only because he had got something to say. His oratory was not emotional. It was destructive, especially of falsity and pretence. His critical power was great. He used it to destroy mercilessly whatever he despised and he despised a good many things and people... What he saw, he saw clearly, without ambiguity or self-delusion."

"France had been bled white by the war. The generation that had dreamed since 1870 of a war of revenge had triumphed, but at a deadly cost in national life-strength. It was a haggard France that greeted the dawn of victory. Deep fear of Germany pervaded the French nation on the morrow of their dazzling success. It was this fear that had prompted Marshal Foch to demand the Rhine frontier for the safety of France against her far larger neighbour. But the British and American statesmen held that the absorption of German-populated districts in French territory was contrary to the Fourteen Points and to the principles of nationalism and self-determination upon which the Peace Treaty was to be based. They therefore withstood Foch and France. They gained Clemenceau by promising: first, a joint Anglo-American guarantee for the defence of France; secondly, a demilitarised zone; and thirdly, the total, lasting disarmament of Germany. Clemenceau accepted this in spite of Foch’s protests and his own instincts. The Treaty of Guarantee was signed accordingly by Wilson and Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. They repudiated President Wilson’s signature. And we, who had deferred so much to his opinions and wishes in all this business of peacemaking, were told without much ceremony that we ought to be better informed about the American Constitution."

"I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon."

"Had a little talk with President Wilson... The President said that he had been reading an account of Clemenceau's philosophy of life, in which he remarked: “Life consists of the play of unrestrained natural forces” – in other words, the evolutionist's view of sociological development. President: If you take that view, I don't see how you can have any hope or incentive to action."

"Few men in France had made a more realistic appraisal of their country’s position in the post-war world, or were more anxious to secure its future, than its premier, Georges Clemenceau, known as ‘the Tiger’. The 78-year-old Clemenceau may have seemed a man of the past, and his square-tailed coats, shapeless hats, thick, buckled boots, and suede gloves (worn because of his eczema) accentuated this impression. To Clemenceau, the problem of the peace settlement was the problem of French security: how to protect France against another German aggression, something which all of France believed was possible. In his relentless search for the means to enhance French security, Clemenceau operated on the assumption that neither military defeat nor the fall of the Kaiser would permanently weaken Germany nor curb her continental ambitions. Germany would have to be disarmed, but this would hardly be sufficient for future safety. Even as he savoured the victory that was won at such high cost to France, Clemenceau understood how easily the peace could be lost. Stripped to its essentials, French security required the support of allies and military, territorial, and economic changes that would restrict Germany’s capacity to again invade France. Neither the Rhineland nor Belgium was to become a platform for future German attacks. Clemenceau intended, too, that the peace settlements would provide opportunities to redress the unequal balance of economic strength between the two neighbouring nations that the war had not altered. While Clemenceau did not rule out the future possibility of Franco-German economic co-operation, already canvassed in the summer of 1919, it was only a possibility and had to be on terms that would promote French industrial interests."

"Much talk about Clemenceau and Wilson. L[loyd] G[eorge] said, ‘Each lacks and fails to understand the other's best qualities. When Wilson talks idealism, Clemenceau wonders what he means, and, metaphorically speaking, touches his forehead, as much as to say, “A good man, but not quite all there!”’"

"Clemenceau said to me, “I used to be an idealist, but the older I grow the more I am convinced that it is Force that counts.” I replied, “Then you have come to agree with Machiavelli?” But Clemenceau doesn't like having his conclusions sharpened, and he said nothing."

"The truth is that Clemenceau embodied and expressed France. As much as any single human being, miraculously magnified, can ever be a nation, he was France."

"He was not a popular man. He had made too many enemies and his tongue was too sharp. But his fellow-countrymen deeply respected and admired him... For France owed much to Clemenceau. His love for her was the ruling principle of his life. To her he sacrificed ease and friendship and perhaps even happiness. He hated those whom he regarded as her enemies, whether at home or abroad, and he was merciless to them—a Tiger indeed. He grieved with her in defeat, he sought to discipline her in peace, he strengthened her in war and he led her to Victory."

"Almost every day of my life in Paris I saw Clemenceau’s statue in the Champs-Elysées. I paid little attention to it. But this evening, as I stood close to that of Foch, it haunted my vision, the dauntless fighter, standing upright on the stone base, his scarf flying in the wind, his features harsh and tragic. I imagined him, too merciless to himself to shed tears over the destruction of his victory, condemning the pygmies of 1940, with all the contempt of which he was so richly capable, to be tormented by the Furies in spirit and soul and even more in their blood. He had foreseen the coming of these wretches. At the close of his astonishing life the man who waged war, and who in waging it, won it, found pleasure in giving a last lesson to his only love, France: from his rock in the Vendée looking out over his ocean, he wrote a life of Demosthenes, to which he added this comment: "Demosthenes would have saved his country, if it had consented to be saved." He predicted that our country having been saved by him would be lost. He wished that another such as he might rise in his turn to lead and save her."

"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself."

"The Locarno pacts offer only the insubstantial semblance of a guarantee; they are an illusion calculated to mislead easily satisfied consciences and to lull more vigilant minds to sleep. In their inadequacy lies their danger. The spirit of Locarno itself is positively injurious to the interests of our country."

"Unquestionably and naturally, in Germany, as everywhere else, the workmen, peasants, and lower middle class are true pacifists, and view the possibilities of new butcheries with horror. But, on the other hand, we must remember that all the sons of the governing classes, all the young men who attend the high schools, the colleges, and universities of Germany, find there Nationalist or Populist professors who continually din into their ears the Deutschland über Alles. In this lies the great danger to peace, a danger of which the genuine pacifists are well aware. Later on, in a few years, it will be these same young men who will direct the destinies of Germany. Are we not justified in fearing that the mass of the German people, workmen, peasants, lower middle class, faithful to the impulses of its gregarious nature, might allow itself, as in 1914, to be rushed into the whirl of a “fresh and frolicsome war”?"

"The great mistake made by the Governments that have succeeded one another in France since 1920 is to have dandled our people from concession to concession without making them understand, first of all, that a nation with a past like ours could not accept peace at any price—that is to say, at the cost of compromising their honour; secondly, that with neighbours like the Germans this peace could only be ensured by making the necessary sacrifices. Those means are the same since the world began and can be summed up in the words, Be strong. Germany remains faithful to this truth. Perhaps Germany does want peace, but this kind of peace will wipe out the last traces of her defeat. That is why she is preparing. The following figures are more eloquent than any possible dissertation. In 1928 France spent six milliards of francs on her military forces: Germany spent eight. Germany goes on arming: France goes on disarming. For what results?"

"My education was built up upon ruthlessly hard-and-fast ideas crowned by a patriotism that nothing could shake. In the insurrection of Vendée, allied with the foreigner against Revolutionary France, the two qualities of patriot and republican were so merged in one another that the Chouans called us patauds, an insult that my forbears were proud of. The fatherland was, and could only be, everybody's home, where energies were developed in common. To renounce one's country had neither sense nor meaning. You might as well have expected the child to want to leave the shelter of its mother's wing. The home, the country, this was no theory; it was a natural phenomenon that had been realized from the very earliest ages of mankind. Animals had a temporary home in their lairs, man a permanent one in his country."

"It is Germany, guilty of the greatest crime in the history of Europe, a crime premeditated, prepared, and carried out in broad daylight, who presents herself vanquished at the tribunal of Europe and the civilized world, no longer to give an account but to demand one. A lie sets her free. A lie puts us in the dock. And our policy of incoherency run wild is about to lay itself open to processes of dismemberment that will reduce the Treaty of Versailles to a state of nullity. Every day will see Germany requesting, demanding, to have her burdens lightened in order to heap them on France, already drained to the last drop of her blood, and every day something of the burden of defeat will be transferred from Germany's shoulders to what still exists of France by the good graces of the Treaty's executors."

"What are we doing, then, if not proceeding, article by article, to restore Germany's power, which, by a truly miraculous exercise of will, after its complete collapse during the War, is about to be built up again in the retrograde peace, which is surrendering, stage by stage, everything that human justice had gained by our victory? After the restoration of Germany's moral prestige by a lie we have the upsetting of the financial reparations by the progressive series of mutilations of the Treaty down to the payment of the so-called debts to America!"

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

"My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then."

"War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."

"La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires."

"Oh, to be seventy again!"

"I should lie if I said that I was at once in agreement with him [President Wilson] on all the points. America is far distant from the frontiers of Germany, as I remarked a little while ago. I have, perhaps, preoccupations which I would not say are foreign to him, but which do not touch him so closely as they touch the man who has seen his country devastated during four years by an enemy who was within several days of Paris."

"In the distance huge trees were still blazing, around us was a waste of ashes and of half-consumed boughs, and the falling rain seemed only to quicken the dying conflagration. In some of the great green boles were fearful gaping wounds through which the sap was oozing, while some tall trees still stretched to heaven their triumphant crown of foliage above a trunk all charred that would never sprout again. The Brazilians contemplate spectacles such as this with a wholly indifferent eye, and, indeed, even with satisfaction, for they see in the ruin only a promise of future harvests. To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house."

"I have come to the conclusion that force is right. Why is this chicken here? (pointing to his plate). Because it was not strong enough to resist those who wanted to kill it. And a very good thing too!"

"I do not know whether war is an interlude in peace, or whether peace is an interlude in war."

"[France] finds herself at this time in a particularly difficult situation. ... It is the country which is nearest to Germany. America is distant; it has taken her a long time to get here. And during that time we have been put to it, we have suffered...our cities and our towns have been devastated. Everyone says, rightly, that 'it must not happen again'. I think so too. But how? There was an old system, which seems to be condemned today, and to which I do not fear to say that I remain a faithful adherent at this time. ... This system—solid frontiers...and balance of power—today seems to be condemned by certain very high authorities."

"Bismarck went so far as to boast of a forgery. The Ems telegram was a crime of no less magnitude than the outrage on Belgium. The cynicism of the scrap of paper will be counted against Germany as long as human history lasts. That stain, like Lady Macbeth's, can never be effaced."

"Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix."

"The idea of force is deeply rooted in man, as in the whole universe. Law is controlled and ordered force."

"Anyone who retains as much education as the average boy can pick up in a continuation elementary school can understand that General Foch's chief preoccupations were not concerned with the generalizations of universal justice embodied in war or peace. Had he opened the annals of our past at whatsoever page he might choose, he would have found that our life throughout history, bandied about between battles and truces in the unending oscillation of all things, is at any moment but preparing for or stabilizing a new transient form of society for the momentary advantage of the strongest."