Years of Plenty, Years of Want: France and the Legacy of the Great War

2—Georges—The Defiant

C H A P T e r 2 georges —the defiant Georges Clemenceau was unrepentant. “Yes, they told me to shut up, but damn it all! To hell with the Chamber, to hell with the majority if they failed to understand. . . . Nothing in the world could have stopped me.” Two days earlier, on 20 July 1909, the words he could not resist uttering took him from premier to political oblivion . Before the Chamber of Deputies, this man called the “Tiger” roared out a personal denunciation of Théophile Delcassé, the much esteemed diplomat and architect of France’s alliance system. Clemenceau then stood impassively at the tribune as a hue and cry of “resign!” ascended. The formal declaration of “No Confidence,” voted 212–176, was hardly necessary. When Clemenceau became prime minister, he was already sixty-five years old and a politician since 1870. He had waited a long time to exercise power, and he governed France for thirty-three months, the second-longest-lasting cabinet of the Third republic. His age, but more the circumstances of his defeat, made any second chance unlikely. He was at his worst that day, angry, vindictive, self-destructive, literally out of control, as he invited his fate—and then savored the taste.1 The issue at hand was the state of France’s navy. Between 1905 and 1907, the cruiser Sully went aground and sank in the Gulf of Tonkin, two submarines were lost while on maneuvers in the Mediterranean sea, and the battleship Iéna exploded in the Toulon harbor at the cost of 117 lives. Ten years earlier, the French navy ranked second in the 40 Y e A r s O F P L e N T Y , Y e A r s O F W A N T world, behind only the fleet of Great Britain. Now, it trailed far behind both the British and German navies and was hard pressed to remain ahead of Italy’s. Accidents were one matter, incompetence and mismanagement something much different. suspicion within the Chamber of Deputies first arose when Camille Pelletan served as minister of the navy from June 1902 until January 1905. The deputies authorized an investigation, but Clemenceau and Gaston Thomson, both closely linked to Pelletan in the radical party, spiked the findings. Then, when Clemenceau became prime minister, he named Thomson to head the navy. The Iéna disaster led to a second inquiry, this time under Delcassé, who asked naval officers to write him directly about their experiences. His report, issued in conjunction with one from the senate, blamed the explosion and subsequent gunnery incidents on the navy’s “Powder B,” which was subject to spontaneous combustion from chemical decomposition when stored for too long or in humid conditions. When Delcassé claimed before the Chamber on 18 October 1908 that the navy was incapable of reforming itself, Thomson chose to resign rather than force the cabinet to enter a losing debate. Clemenceau’s reaction was scornful, replacing him with a civil servant and political nonentity, Alfred Picard, from the division of bridges and highways (Ponts et chaussées). Delcassé’s response was to intervene months later, on 25 March 1909, to criticize Picard’s plans as faulty and insufficient and to demand yet another investigation—the deputies agreed and made Delcassé its head. This new investigation’s final report in June cited ministerial indecision, bureaucratic delay, insufficiently tested equipment, extravagant profits for major suppliers, and above all, failure to complete ships as rapidly as Britain or Germany.2 Angry debates dominated the mid-July sessions of the Chamber , and on 20 July 1909, Delcassé made Clemenceau the target by charging that four years earlier he had covered up mistakes and corruption under Pelletan. Clemenceau had an abundance of reasons to detest Delcassé, and he could not resist the temptation . Both men were republicans, but Delcassé had been allied to Léon Gambetta and the “Opportunists” (meaning “conservatives ”), whom Clemenceau’s radicals had spent decades opposing. Both men had been lovers of opera star rose Caron (rose Lucile Georges—The Defiant 41 Meunier), but Delcassé had supplanted Clemenceau in her affection. Delcassé had refused Clemenceau a favor: Charles Le Peletier, Count d’Aunay ruined his diplomatic career by supplying Clemenceau with confidential details about the negotiations of the Franco-russian alliance in 1893, and Delcassé refused to reinstate him despite Clemenceau ’s entreaties. Delcassé sought the disgrace...