THE political institutions of the Third Republic were subject to sharp attack for numerous reasons, many of which were justifiable. Among the most substantial criticisms were the ineffectiveness of the institutions and the vulgarity of the Republic, the parliamentary disorganization and continual crises, the lack of strong political leaders and the weakness of the office of the President of the Republic, the power of the legislature over the executive, the short-lived administrations, the lack of governmental policy and the power of groups, the absence of a general interest and the presence of pressing private interests, the dishonesty of politicians, the camaraderie of the self-interested politicians, the management of elections and the power of the committees outside Parliament, the continuous pressure of constituents on deputies and the scandals, the unfavorable financial and budgetary situation, and the failure to introduce social reforms.
Maurras, Barrès, and Sorel joined in this onslaught against the regime. They attacked the institutions of the parliamentary system, the party system through which they operated, the personalities of the deputies who were elected and their inefficiency and corrupt natures, the demagoguery of which they made use, and the plutocrats who were the real rulers of the country.
Maurras saw the Republic as nothing but a long list of evils, and he conducted against it what Cormier has called "a 60-year Trojan War."1 The Republican doctrine was absurd and puerile; the Republican institutions were the last degree of French decadence, the cause and effect of French humiliation. The Republic was an idea and only an idea, corresponding to nothing real, profound, useful, solid, or good.2 Because its view on the essential nature of man was so wrong, the Republic was a permanent conspiracy against the public welfare. This conspiracy was even more dangerous because there were no controls on the Republic as there were controls in a monarchical system over the will of the monarch. The Republic was bureaucratic, envious, possessed of little initiative, and responsible for social evils like the fall in the birthrate, deforestation, the growth of alcoholism, and the desiccation of local life.
Maurras regarded the Republic as a regime of discussion for the sake of discussion, and of criticism for the sake of criticism.3 The regime had no method, no continuity, no stability. The continuous flux of opinions, the routine of the bureaus, the agitations and official parades, the colonial adventures, the operations of parliamentary and financial in terests—these sporadic impulses did not make a policy. Parliamentarianism, said Maurras, was not the palladium of liberty. Even corrected by a prince, parliamentarianism would always be the regime of the competition of parties, if not of civil war. It was garrulous, indiscreet, prodigious, halting, and thoughtless. It meant the oppression of minorities. The leaders of parliamentarianism would never represent anything but parties, coteries, personal rivalries, conflicting passions.
Barrès joined in this criticism. The Nationalists were divided on some matters, said Barrès, but they were united in complete disgust for the Republic and for the parliamentary regime in which the Chamber was an ideal place for deceit4 and for a minority to terrorize the majority. The ignorance, falsehood, and insolence of the parliamentary illiterates were a perpetual insult to French intellectual inheritance.
The Nationalists looked on the Republic as a sickness, and consistently used medical metaphors of decomposition and poison in discussing it. Barrès thought that Boulanger had understood that parliamentarism was a poison of the brain like alcohol, saturnism, syphilis, and that every Frenchman was intoxicated by the exuberance and vacuity of his verbosity. It was because Boulanger represented the opposition to the parliamentarian regime that Barrès had rallied to him,5 and Barrès never ceased regretting that machinations with parliamentarianism had led Boulanger to duplicity, alliances, and secret procedures.
It was necessary to put an end to the present institutions, although this was regrettable. Barrès found it pitiable that men who, like himself, were partisans of the need for preserving French ways of life, and who wanted to live in accord with the spirit of eternal France were so often reduced to wishing for revolutionary changes against which their intelligence protested. Nevertheless, reform of the Constitution was the indispensable condition without which those with the best wills would be powerless to serve the individual and society. However, Barrès' program for constitutional reform hardly suggests clarity of thought behind the necessary corrective measures he proposed: referendum, separation of powers, abolition of the Senate, abolition of the office of President of the Republic, or the possibility for the electors to dismiss the head of the executive.
Sorel was opposed not merely to the political institutions of the Republic but to the power of the state in general. All the efforts made by philosophers to moralize the state were in vain. Whenever the power of the state was very great it provoked conspiracies, and parties violently opposed each other in order to steal, massacre, or oppress once they captured the state power. Statism tended to transform the worker into a machine, to stupefy officials, and to look on scientific methods with abhorrence. Sorel explained the prosperity of the United States as due, in spite of the vices of its politicians, to the fact that the state played only a small part in life, while industrial production offered opportunity to men of adventurous spirit.6 Unlike Barrès, he was opposed to protection of industry or agriculture, so that his economic views were almost pure liberalism. For Sorel, the Republic was simply another of the manifestations of the power of the state that had to be destroyed. He rejected all political institutions, partly because they represented the state power and partly because the economic foundation of society was always more important and ought to be examined before the political. He rejected outright the slogan Maurras used, "Politique d'abord." When man had ascended to a higher culture, the religion of political magic would disappear.
But this rejection by Sorel of the validity of political action was totally misguided if we define "political action" in the realistic fashion that Bertrand de Jouvenel has done, as "action which inclines to his (individual) will the wills of others,"7 and accept the view that the political process is something much wider and more general than what is commonly denoted by the word political. Sorel's attitude to the state was similar to that of Proudhon and Engels. They pleaded for and anticipated the disappearance of political authority. In this way, all discussion of the institutions necessary for fostering the new society became unnecessary and irrelevant. Sorel always saw the state as parasitical, and as unfavorable to production. Admittedly the state had not yet become an instrument in the smooth functioning of the economic system, and Sorel can hardly be criticized for not being at least a precursor of Keynes. But the state was concerning itself increasingly with social legislation, and to this intervention Sorel was not simply benevolently neutral, but overtly hostile. It is for this lack of interest in real social progress that damaging criticism can be made of Sorel.
The criticism that Ascoli made of Sorel is one which can be applied to all the three writers.8 Looking at modern society as they did, one wonders not why it went so badly, but how, if it had so many buffoons and rascals, it could continue to function at all.
Politics are the preoccupation of politicians, and all three writers were contemptuous of politicians. The three attacked the self-interest, the limited capacity, the inefficiency, the demagoguery, the pretence of infallibility, and the harmful consequences that resulted from the activity of politicians. They all assailed bitterly the political and literary figures who supported the regime. For Sorel, Jaurès was "a Sibyllin obscure oracle," a man whose peasant duplicity could be compared to a cattle-dealer, a man who in the Chamber was like a fish in water, Zola "un petit esprit," de Pressensé, "a mediocre scribbler of dull chronicles," Briand "a Boulanger with artistic hairdo, moustache still a little sticky from apératifs." There were few old politicians who were not elderly tricksters. For Barrès, Clemenceau was "the little bull with the large breast and the square snout," Ribot "the large hawk on the icy pool," Waldeck-Rousseau was "congealed in his silence like a pike in its jelly," and Zola "a déraciné Venetian." Barrès referred to contemporary politicians as frogs, sparrow hawks, bellowing beasts who had escaped from the judicial slaughterhouses, beasts who knew where to find their hay.9 Caillaux, Briand, and Barthou were three young dogs, vigorous beasts of the same litter, who had formed alliances while playing together in the parliamentary dog kennel. "Look, my child, at these men," said Barrès' character, Mme Thuringe, "and learn to despise them; they are all canaille." Barrès proposed that deputies be dipped in the Seine, like dogs being cleaned from fleas.10 Similarly, the columns of the Action française were full of the acrid venom which Maurras unloosed on politicians, and which led at least twice to physical attacks on prominent politicians.
For Sorel, politicians were self-interested, had lost all ideals, and had lowered the moral tone of life. He regarded politicians as people whose interests were singularly sharpened by their voracious appetites, and referred to them as people in whom the pursuit of fat jobs had developed the cunning of Apaches. Since they acted only in favor of a group that would support them, they caused a lowering of ethical standards.11 They entered a deliberative assembly only in the hope of obtaining concessions from their adversaries. Political democracy in fact meant the creation of a special class of politicians who would thrive on the capitalists. Politicians distorted history because, being interested only in the ways of increasing the chances for success of their party, they recognized in history only those aspects that could be utilized in their behalf. They opposed the contemporary social organization only to the extent that it created obstacles to their ambition. They used the word country when they needed to develop in the people the tendency to submit to power.
Sorel's most bitter contempt was reserved for the parliamentary Socialists. He wrote to Croce that he "wanted to show how the leaders of socialism work to corrupt the moral tendencies without which socialism can do nothing."12 Political socialism meant an era of frightful servitude; it could only dishearten men having some sentiment of honor. It is curious to find such a fierce hater as Sorel arguing that "parliamentary Socialists have a doctrine of hate, and that is not true nobility."13 Sorel enthusiastically quoted Reinach's observation that the parliamentary Socialists tried to deceive the people "by throwing to them every morning monks and priests, just as the Caesars had formerly thrown them bread and circuses."14 Sorel prophesied that the leaders of the Socialist party would end by becoming a sort of political clergy as harmful to socialism as clericalism was to religion. These leaders had forgotten or abused the idea of revolution. The Socialists, instead of conquering power by a single coup, contented themselves with gaining individual positions which allowed them to play a part in administrative details. They created an electoral clientele, and in the Chamber they solicited favors for their friends and proposed laws likely to please the workers.
In 1902 Sorel was writing that the Socialist sects hoped to reach power and to use the state to make life easier for their friends—every question was reduced to a problem of compromises among the different factions in order that a majority be obtained. He regarded the parliamentary Socialists as inferior thinkers, who spoke of solidarity, but in fact made the compromises that were necessary in parliamentary life. The result was that modern socialism was becoming a more or less confused concept, varying from simple demagoguery to a socialism of professors, the end of which would be the purification of the capitalist regime.15 But it was noticeable that the degeneration of the movement increased as its members took part in the life of the political institutions of the bourgeoisie. Parliamentary Socialists utilized the strike movement for their own political ends and subordinated proletarian movements to demagogic politics. Strikes became less and less the result of economic questions, and became manipulated by politicians. In 1908 Sorel confessed that he had abandoned his interest in the Mouvement socialiste, with which he had been closely associated for three years, because he believed that politicians were using the journal and the syndicalist movement for their own ends.16
But it was time to end the revolutions of politicians. Nothing great could come of a working-class movement led by politicians—the working class had to oppose democracy, at least to the extent that it favored the progress of political socialism. One of the results of the Dreyfus Affair had been to direct the Socialist movement in France towards electoral politics, but it had also demonstrated that it was necessary for the working class to turn to syndicalism. The proletariat must refuse to allow itself to be organized into new hierarchies. In carrying out the general strike, it would get rid of all the matters with which the old liberals had been concerned—the eloquence of orators, the handling of public opinion, the combinations of political parties.17 For the workers, the revolution must be something more than the victory of a party, it must be the emancipation of the producers from political tutelage. Sorel, who always maintained his admiration for the young syndicalist, Pelloutier, praised the men at the head of the syndicalist movement in France, who were not great philosophers, but were men of sense and experience with a distrust of political organizations.
Barrès would not follow Sorel in his denunciation of all politicians and political activity, but he made out an equally strong case against the self-interestedness of politicians. "Parliamentarians have no notion of morality or of personal dignity . . . but are certain that the flock will be well guarded if each guards his own interests."18 The mind of the deputy was concerned with his re-election, his popularity, his desire to become a minister. Before becoming ministers, deputies remained inactive in order to become ministers; after becoming ministers, they continued to do nothing in order to remain ministers. In the Palais-Bourbon, there was a multitude of sharpers and deceivers ... a considerable number of canaille; an honest man seemed like an imbecile. The dominant law in the Chamber was never to vote according to one's own beliefs or on the questions presented, but always for or against the ministry, and to follow the machinations of the corridors. Candidates entered the Chamber attached to a party and with the resolution to overturn all cabinets without caring about country or the public tranquillity. No deputy except those affiliated to Boulangism was independent enough to displease Parliament.19
Yet Barrès himself always had mixed feelings about the Chamber. It was the meeting place of scoundrels, but it was also a forum of excitement, of civil war, that could provide an appropriate setting for the development of his ego. Talking of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Hugo, but thinking of himself, he defended their aloofness in the parliamentary body. As great artists, they had decorated parties; they did not have to mix in the daily intrigues, but were correct in reserving themselves for great occasions.20
All the writers agreed that politicians were both inefficient and ineffectual. "Even good people like de Mun, Pelletan, Rihot, Simon," said Barrès, "once in the parliamentary swim, are powerless to utilize the gifts that Providence has given them, and are consumed by the vain agitation of mediocrity."21 Politics, he told himself, was a very costly pleasure, in money, in time, and in grudges.
In the same way, Sorel could not see the democratic system as anything but inefficient. Led by instincts of destruction, it did not want administrations to function with the regularity that was dear to good employers. A parliamentary regime passed unreasonable laws, distributed money to many parasites, and maintained great economic confusion.
Maurras claimed it was the Dreyfus Affair which made him understand clearly why the Republic was powerless to resolve an affair of state. A great country needed an infinity of decisions and choices to be made, rapid and continuous initiatives to be taken, that were impossible in a republic, a purely critical type of government. The rhythm of democracy necessitated the periodic change of public employees, and this meant absence of continuity. A democratic regime venerated anarchy as its free expression and logical form. The state, the slave of the Chambers, of political parties, of electoral coteries, was also the slave of unforeseen events and of changes of opinion. The government was overburdened by petty functions that would normally be performed by a ceremonial leader. Diplomacy and military affairs, national life and welfare must not depend upon the incompetent. But in the Republic, the chief offices were occupied by lawyers, men of the "Bible and the Code," as Barrès had described them.22
All three writers felt that demagoguery was one of the main characteristics of the parliamentary system, Maurras commented on the parliamentary humbuggery, the obscurity, uncertainty, and malaise of good minds.23 Barre called the parliamentary regime "Blagomachie," a strange system which sought the truth through eloquence and often through barbarian ballets of attitude, gesture, physiognomy, and facial expression. All that the deputies had in common was pugnacity and virtuosity. Sorel complained of demagoguery because it was a sign of mediocrity and because it had a pernicious effect on the proletariat. Demagoguery had ruined all countries it had governed; it generally began to triumph when the first signs of decadence were manifested in a nation, and it increased economic decadence.24 Democracy was in reality a government of demagogues who talked of Utopias rather than showing people the true nature of their activity, and created illusions favorable to their tyranny. Orators would always adopt the politics capable of procuring the most applause in a large assembly. Social democracy was in the last analysis an organization of workers under the direction of vehement orators. It was an oligarchy of demagogues who governed the working class. As the professional haranguers of crowds used words more abundantly, more audaciously and more noisily, the emptier their brains became. The conflicts taking place after the Dreyfus Affair increased the amount of demagoguery in the system. At first in his L'Avenir socialist des syndicats, Sorel had hardly distinguished between political and proletarian socialism, but in Materaux d'une theore du proletariat, he asserted that proletarian or syndicalist socialism would fully realize itself only if it were a working-class movement directed against demagogues.25 If the workers remained under the control of demagogues they would never be able to realize their existence as a class. At the same time, France would be lost if demagoguery, supported by philanthropy and the brainless bourgeoisie, became paramount.
For the two Nationalists, Barrès and Maurras, the party system was the expression and perpetuation of the lack of unity in the state. For Sorel, it was another means by which the intellectuals and the bourgeoisie could maintain their leadership.
Sorel was contemptuous of parties. They were coalitions formed to obtain the advantages which the authority of the State could give, whether their promoters were motivated by hate, sought material profit, or above all, were anxious to impose their will. The party had as its object, in all countries and at all times, the conquest of the State and its utilization in the best interests of the party and its allies.26 When an individual belonged to a party, he could not see anything beyond what the party was interested in having its members see. The development of associations did not appear capable of limiting the abuse of parties in democracies, because it was difficult for associations to live without political parties. Rousseau would find the existing groups too organized, too servile, the opposite of the democracy of which he dreamed.
Sorel was most caustic at the expense of intellectuals who were the leaders of parties, especially of Socialist parties, and its wealthy women revolutionaries. A party, even a revolutionary one, was nothing but a syndicate of the discontented, a coalition of the poor, at the head of which was a staff composed of lawyers without briefs, doctors without patients, and students of billiards. The development of the Socialist party meant in reality that the proletariat was working to give itself new masters who had no other aim but to imitate ancient royalty. The official leaders of the Socialist party too often resembled sailors who, having never before seen the sea, once launched upon it, navigated without knowing how to find their way on a map.27
Though Barrès had declared himself unable to belong to any party, and always attacked the dissociation of France, the isolation of individuals and groups struggling in different directions without coordination of efforts, he did make one speech, in April 1914, attacking interest groupings rather than parties. The members of these interest groups, who were connected with financial groups, gave their support momentarily to leaders in order to obtain decorations and favors. It was necessary to put national interest before the camaraderie and the struggle of the groups where petit papiers replaced programs. Barrès regarded as undesirable Boulanger's entry into the Chamber and his parliamentary program. He believed that these actions would lead to Boulanger's becoming merely an addition to the existing political parties and would force him to play the same parliamentary game, dissatisfaction with which had brought the nation to him.
For Maurras, the basis of parliamentarianism did not exist in France. There were no parties in the English sense, and parties, in the French sense, were only plunderers who lived on the State. Maurras' masters—de Maistre, Bonald, Comte, Le Play, Fustel, Renan, and Taine—had all enumerated the general characteristics of party government: feebleness and tyranny, continued abuse of force, eternal subjection to fear of falling.28 The electoral battles were instruments of French division. France was split because those who governed it were not statesmen, but party men. If they were honest, they believed only in the good of the party; if dishonest, in filling their pockets. The political parties were pillaging the State.
The system made for self-interest and for weakness. The so-called Republican elections had been only coalitions of interests, organized by uneasy petty officials. Radicals believed in statism in order to dominate, in anticlericalism in order to pervert, in opportunism in order to avoid being swept away. Party government was placed above national government, "Parti" had been substituted for "Patrie." What should be repressed by the law was placed above the law and given the power to administer the law. Party government was the natural enemy of the history of France . . . the party had a school, a press, a public opinion, an opinion which was a lie destined to destroy not only itself but also the country's pride and the nation's will to live.29 The national interest was being neglected by all parties. Preference was given to internal struggles of parties over external fights against the enemy; the entente with the foreigner was the essential and classical ingredient of the party system. It was necessary to have a government independent of parties and free to operate, politically autonomous and capable of forcing action on others instead of being always forcibly activated by them.
All the writers saw corruption as an essential part of a republican political system; indeed, it was from the criticism of the Panama scandal that much of the impetus of the rightwing Nationalist movement developed.
Barrès devoted two whole books and a play to the subject. He argued that the operation of the political system produced a certain parliamentary type, prudent and cunning, the antithesis of the heroic figure, and ever ready to seek his own advantage. At the Palais-Bourbon, theft, so long as there was no scandal, was only a fault against good taste, something that lowered a person in estimation but did not mean party ostracism. No party made any difficulty about admitting a thief if he had sufficient nerve and stomach. In spite of the fact that there was no law in France against guilty ministers, deputies were unwilling to discuss Panama, each fearing to throw light on the shadowy band of criminals.30
In a country where, on the one hand, everyone dreamed of becoming an official, and on the other, money was substituted for moral discipline as the regulator of morals, rich entrepreneurs provided a means of support for the government which they corrupted. In a liberal political system, where barter and blackmail were the rule, the barterers knew the exact price for which a person could be bought, and had a large stock of receipts to prove how successful they were at it. In this way Herz, the evil genius of the Panama scandal, had obtained concessions from the municipal council, from the government, from individuals.
Sorel saw moral and physical corruption in the political system, as he had complained of corruption in the small towns where he had resided as an engineer. Not only was it true that administrations were corrupted to the degree that politics became more democratic,31 but the corruption was on a broader basis—another example of the decadence in the system. Bourgeois democracy corrupted the people by its vile appetites, its deplorable manners, its frequent imbecility and also by attempting to obtain the allegiance of the proletariat, which was the only class that could preserve itself from contamination. Thus, a democratic republic corrupted the creative power of the industrial bourgeoisie while at the same time it attempted to deny and to remove desirable conflict among classes. After the Dreyfus Affair, the period 1899 to 1906 was one of corruption and compromise, in which the parliamentary Socialists played a sordid role. "There was a mad scramble for melons, and in the rush the Socialists were not the least cynical." The anticlerical policy that was stressed in those years was a return to the political manners of the 18th century, with a government directed by coteries of courtesans, male and female.32
All three writers took a neo-Marxian view of the real rulers of society, the financial elements.
Sorel was concerned with the undesirable moral effects of financial domination. Democracy was the paradise of which unscrupulous financiers dreamed. In a plutocratic system, economic ideas not only obscured the moral law but also corrupted political principles; of all governments, the worst was that where the rich and the able divided power. The present orientation of the wealthy classes was terrifying to those who believed in the importance of juridical sentiments. The consequence of this domination by the plutocracy meant that their undesirable moral attitude penetrated throughout the system. Shopkeepers had often been reproached for lacking patriotism when they spoke of their horror of war and applauded universal fraternity and humanitarian progress; but it was necessary to understand that they were defending their material interests which were being menaced.33
Barrès began his political career by attacking the financial interests supporting the parliamentarians. In 1889 he said, "The opportunists . . . are a financial society organized for the exploitation of France under the Third Republic."34 To play a political role, Barre argued, one had to attach oneself to the world of finance; it was the center of influence and of government.35 France was not really a democracy but a plutocracy, and the crime of the government was that it provided no counterweight to the power of money.
Maurras held that intelligence and opinion were the organs of industry, commerce, and finance, whose help was needed for all work of publicity, library, or the press. Worse than that of a government of the multitude and of numbers, the government of money created derision and crime. Instead of hierarchies and order, instead of the authority of princes of French blood, France had passed under the control of money merchants who were of another skin, that is to say, of another language and of another thought. Only a leader would be able to restrain the power of money; the last obstacle to the imperialism of money, the last fortress of free thought was justly represented by the Church, the last autonomous organ of pure spirit.36
In his political history of France, Bodley argued that the root of the evil lay not in the Republican form of the regime, but in its parliamentary system. Certainly the criticisms that Maurras, Barrès, and Sorel made of this system were often justified. Corruption played too large a part, for the Wilson and Panama scandals were only the two most important of a whole series. In the first scandal, it was disturbing to see that President Grévy was forced to resign for the misdemeanors of his son-in-law. It was even more disturbing that while MacMahon, embodiment of the old regime in the Elysée, came out of power poorer than when he had entered, Grévy ad emerged richer.37 In the Panama scandal, the whole parliamentary world, as Barrès sad, was devoured by a cancer of rage and fear. Yet, apart from Clemenceau, Proust, and de la Fauconnerie, all the deputies compromised in the Panama scandal were re-elected, while those who had been most opposed—Déroulède, Millevoye, and Delahaye—were defeated. To the extreme Right, Parliament was a "great Begging Order of the nineteenth century," ruling over clients, not citizens.
Lack of strongly held convictions meant that the typical politician was the compromiser, the man who was to be found in the corridors during the crises, and not the strong man. Gambetta who, "coming into a room could raise its temperature by ten degrees," was turned out of office in 1882 and Ferry in 1885. To keep Ferry out of the Elysée, combinations were formed and the dark horse, Sadi-Carnot, by no means deserving Clemenceau's unkind gibe, "the most stupid," was chosen. With poetic justice, Clemenceau himself, the destroyer of ministries, was to be kept out of office for many years, and was never to gain the presidency. Instead, Paul Deschanel, of whom it was said that if he ever formed a cabinet, it would be a cabinet de toilette, was chosen.
The great difficulty, as Clemenceau said, was that most of the parliamentarians wanted to be ministers, and sacrifices, especially of principle, would be made to this end. The career of Briand was a series of betrayals, from revolutionary sydicalist and leading exponent of the general strike to a follower of Jaurès and a member of the Socialist party to a Radical ministerial position from which he was in contact with the Catholics. More than one minister, like Goblet defending the maintenance of the Concordat which he had attacked, quickly changed their views. In the Parliament of 1900 there were more than 200 ex-ministers. Politicians of all parties retained their seats for considerable periods, Mackau for fifty years, Brisson from 1871 until his death, Ribot from 1878 until he entered the Senate, and Deschanel from 1885 until he was elected President. Sarrien, known in Parliament as "la vieille bête," was a deputy from 1876 to 1908, and a senator from 1908 until his death.
But the insuperable problem was the weakness of executive authority. The continuous series of cabinet crises was due to the multiplicity of groups, to the lack since the 16th of May of executive discretion to dissolve the Chamber, to the power of the Senate being greater and more crippling than had originally been intended, to the power of the parliamentary commissions, to the feebleness of the presidential office, the extent of local influence especially through the cumul de mandats, and to the extra-parliamentary action of the political parties.
Ineffectiveness or lack of policy was largely the result of the controlling power of the deputies. Omnipotent, affecting administration, annihilating ministries, imposing its wishes on its agents, members of the Chamber could appear as "Banquo terrifying the ministers of the Republic."38 Intervention by individual members over acts of the administration, and the indiscriminate use of interpellations wasted time and gave rise to intrigues and combinations. From 1902 to 1906 there were 262 requests for interpellations, of which as many as 140 were actually discussed. From June 1910 until November 1911, of 232 requests, 108 were discussed. In the slow legislative procedure, the committees became all-important, often heirs apparent of ministers, or like the finance committee, "wreckers of ministers." In the great permanent committees of the Chamber, Poincare saw the origin of enfeebled government.
The result of the political maneuvering and the lack of principle was the short negative ministries. From October 1885 to May 1914, there were 42 ministries, many of them upset on trivial issues in which no matter of policy was involved. In 1892, Loubet fell because of an autopsy refused on someone involved in the Panama scandal, in 1894 CasimirPéer fell because of the refusal to allow some employees of state railroads to attend a labor union congress. There never was a homogeneous ministry based on a homogeneous majority. The difficulty that Bourgeois had in finding a Foreign Minister when he was attempting to obtain a homogeneous Radical administration was a disillusioning experience.39
Every Prime Minister had to give up measures he wanted and support those he did not want. Clemenceau had been appalled when Gambetta entered into negotiations with the new Pope, Leo XIII, and with German representatives, but he in his turn was to carry out a policy of "facility." A Prime Minister looked to his colleagues, not for competence, but for ability to make combinations. Brisson and his "cabinet of concentration" of Radicals and Moderates made the Chamber adopt the very motions proposed by Jules Ferry to which it had just refused its vote. A Cabinet was a political, not an efficient administrative, body; the Prime Minister a person of oratorical skill, not a man of action.
But the disturbing nature of the system was ameliorated to some extent by the continuity of individual ministers, the same ministers being actors who came before the public after having changed costume in the wings. Yet even this can be overemphasized. From 1875 to 1913 there were only seven cabinets not containing members of a preceding ministry. Often over half were retained; in three, eight out of ten remained. But the fact that there were, between 1871 and 1929, 82 cabinets and 349 ministers would seem to indicate, taking 12 as the average number in a ministry, that each served on an average about two and a half to three times. However, 132 ministers served only one term, 79 two terms, and 54 three terms.40
Political difficulties were also overcome by the rally to the Republic in vital moments, the organization of effective political machinery, and by stability in other institutions. The German Ambassador at the time of Panama remarked that the Loubet-Ribot Ministry which fell in the Panama Canal had been revived in the form of the Ribot-Loubet Ministry. Between 1899 and 1910, there were only six ministries, three of which lasted over two years, and one of which resigned without being defeated.
From 1899 to 1905, the Bloc des Gauches kept the Republic together after the Affair. Its steering committee, the Delegation des Gauches, composed of delegates from the four groups forming the ministerial majorities in which Jaurè was the leading influence, stopped internal disputes, maintained a common policy, ensured the easy transfer of power from Waldeck-Rousseau to Combes, and claimed the Presidency of the Chamber and two Vice-Presidents.41 Until its dissolution in 1905 it offered a salutary example of coherent democratic politics. But it took on itself the role of initiative and of direction which must belong to the ministry. It even laid the groundwork for the 1906 Clemenceau Government, promising to govern with "l'esprit socialiste," setting up a Ministry of Labor, appealing to Viviani and Briand, and generally oriented to the Left.
Continuity was also assured in other ways. The prefects were a fixed part of the political landscape—the behavior of Anatole France's M. Worms-Clavelin, who survived all ministries, and would even remain under a monarchy—may not be typical, but it is indicative. Philippe Berthelot remained a power at the Quai d'Orsay under many ministers. Jusserand served in Washington for almost twenty years. Eugene Etienne, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, had a great influence on most measures for Morocco and the Empire in general. In twenty years, there was hardly a change in the three Directors of Public Instruction who held among them the three offices of primary, secondary, and superior education. The whole administrative framework endured—the Conseil d'Etat, the Corps des Ponts-et-Chaussées, the Mines, inspection of finance, universities, diplomatic corps.
When all just criticism has been allowed, the criticism of Maurras, Barrés, and Sorel is seen to be unfair. They complained both that the Republic could not exert authority and also that it was a regime of intolerable authoritarianism. They complained that the Republic could do nothing, but attacked it when it began acquiring a large colonial empire. They attacked Delcassé fiercely although his anti-German orientation was as strong as their own. Although it was the heavy military expenditure that caused budgetary difficulties, the three were unwilling to admit that this was the price that had to be paid for a strong France. A regime liberal, with well-made laws, but deficient in dealing with social matters, the Republic was after all the first regime in France since Louis XV that had lasted over 30 years.
1 Aristide Cormier, La Vie intérieure de Charles Maurras, Paris, 1955, p. 14.
2 Les Princes des nuées, p. 184.
5 Maurice Barrès, "M. le général Boulanger et la nouvelle génération," La Revue indépendante (April 1888), 7:59.
6 Daniel Halévy, "Un Entretien sur la démocratie," "Pages libres" (January 25, 1908), 15:98-100.
7 Bertrand de Jouvenel, Sovereignty, Chicago, 1957, p. 16.
8 Max Ascoli, Georges Sorel, Paris, 1921.
9 Mes Cahiers, I:185; VIII:61; Leurs Figures, p. 6.
10 Barrès, Dans le Cloaque, Paris, 1914, p. 55; Une Journée parlementaire, Paris, 1894, p. 83; L'Appel au soldat, I:209.
11 Reflections on Violence, pp. 168, 247.
12 Letter to Croce, October 30, 1903, La Critica (1928), 26:34.
13 Reflections on Violence, p. 109.
14 La Révolution Dreyfusienne, p. 42.
15 Georges Sorel, preface to F. Pelloutier, Histoire des bourses du travail, Paris, 1902, p. 16.
16 Letter to Delesalle, November 2, 1908, in Lettres à Paul Delesalle: 1914-24, Paris, 1947.
17 Sorel, "Le Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire," Le Mouvement socialiste (November 1, 1905), 17-167:267.
18 Les Déracinés, II:11.
19 Leurs Figures, pp. 7, 102; L'Appel au soldat, I:193.
20 Barrès, "Se Prêter, non se donner," Le Journal, August 10, 1S94.
21 Barrès, "M. le général Boulanger," p. 63.
22 Enquête sur la monarchie, pp. 126, 213.
23 L'Ordre et le désordre, p. 28.
24 Sorel, "Socialismes nationaux," p. 55.
25 Matériaux, p. 268.
26 La Décomposition du Marxisme, pp. 24, 48.
27 Sorel, "Le Prétendu socialisme juridique," Le Mouvement socialiste (April 1907), 21:336.
28 Charles Maurras, "Les Idées royalistes," La Revue hebdomadaire (March 1910), 3:42.
33 Le Système historique de Renan, p. 133.
34 Courier de l'Est, January 22, 1889, as cited in J. Rey, "Une Campaigne electorale en 1889," Candide, April 30, 1936, p. 5.
35 Lea Déracinés, II:4.
36 L'Avenir de l'intelligence, pp. 13, 44, 77; Mes Idées politiques, p. 136.
37 Daniel Halévy, La République des comités, p. 43.
38 Henry Leyret, La Tyrannie des politicians, p. 65.
39 J. D. Hargreaves, "Entente Manquée: Anglo-French Relations 1895-96," Cambridge Historical Journal (1953), 11:73.