,TAURES, AUGUSTE MARIE JOSEPH JEAN 1914), French socialist leader, was born at Castres (Tarn) on Sept. 3, 1859. His ancestors on his father's side included two admirals, of whom one was ambassador to Spain and to Russia, and Minister of Marine. Jaures was educated at the college of Castres, at the College Sainte Barbe, the Lycee Louis le Grand and the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. His career at the normal school was the most brilliant possible, and his fellow stu dents, among them being Henri Bergson, predicted for him a great political future.
After having passed the "concours d'agregation" Jaures was elected, in 1881, master of philosophy at the Lycee d'Albi. In 1883 he became lecturer in the university of Toulouse. But he had already set his mind upon a parliamentary career, although his mother did her best to dissuade him. At the legislative elec tions of Oct. 4, 1885, he was elected deputy for Tarn. He was 26 years old. During the first two years of his term, he took little part in debates. His poetic and burning eloquence embarrassed parliamentarians accustomed to the so-called "britannique" elo quence of Clemenceau, Waldeck-Rousseau, Ribot, Pelletan, Frey cinet and others. His maiden speech was delivered Oct. 21, 1886, on a question relating to primary education. On every question with which he dealt in the Chamber, he adopted a courageous attitude which showed him incapable of sacrificing his principles to parliamentary compromise or to motives of self-interest. With out allying himself to any party, he devoted himself passionately to the public good and to the general welfare; but at the close of the session the meagre results of his efforts discouraged him so much that he decided to abandon politics, and asked to be rein stated in his post of professor at the University of Toulouse. Persuaded by his friends, however, he stood for Castres, and failed. In November Jaures resumed the professor's chair. His lectures were now thronged with students, workmen, middle class folk, other professors, men of science, men of learning. During this period he wrote his theses for the doctorate. His French thesis was entitled De la realite du monde sensible. In his Latin thesis he traced the origins of German socialism De primis social ismi gerinanici lineamentis aped Lutherum, Kant, Fichte et Hegel.
In the articles which he wrote at this time for the local organ La Depeche his ideas on politics and economics were seen to turn more and more towards Socialism, to which, at the close of 1890, he at last publicly announced his adhesion. After the strike at Carmaux, in the course of which he defended the claims of the miners, Jaures was elected deputy, in 1893, at a local election, and his term of office was renewed at the general elections of Defeated again in 1898, he was re-elected in 1902; and his elec torate remained faithful to him from that time on. In the Cham ber he took a large part in the debates on the Panama and Bou langist crises, in discussions of agrarian and colonial questions, on fiscal policy and protectionist measures, on syndicalism and the separation of Church and State, on military laws and electoral reform. In the Dreyfus affair his energetic intervention captured the Socialist party, which hesitated at first to take part in a con flict which seemed not to concern the proletariat. His campaign in favour of Dreyfus, a "living witness to military lies, to political cowardice, to the crimes of authority" did not cease until Dreyfus was definitely rehabilitated.
Led by the logical development of his metaphysical and re ligious ideas to social conceptions which obliged him to accept the Socialist teaching, Jaures adhered closely to the rapidly growing Socialist party. The socialism of Jaures differed essentially from the Marxian doctrine. "Our socialism," wrote Jaures, "is French in origin, French in inspiration, and French in character." His ulti mate aim was harmony founded on justice. Social harmony im plies the disappearance of an injustice which provokes conflicts, hatreds and their horrible consequences, an injustice originating in capitalist ownership. Jaures was a socialist because "the domination of one class is an outrage against humanity." Into this doctrine he breathed his own glowing and generous ideas and, at the same time, drew from it the strength with which he animated it. "No serious social programme can be realised without a definite social doctrine," he wrote, and for him the whole socialist ideal must inspire organic reformatory action and thus establish a socialism, democratic, republican and lay. Jaures strove to bring about unification of the various socialist groups. At the Con gress of 1901, a section of groups rallied to him . under the name of the parti socialiste francais, while the others formed the parti socialiste de France! After the Amsterdam Congress in 1905, the two groups coalesced and Jaures became, in fact, their moral and intellectual chief. Thereafter his political activity was bound up
with that of the unified Socialist party, whose parliamentary activ ity he directed with great skill. He drafted most of the resolu tions at Socialist congresses and defended them in an admirably conciliatory spirit.
His philosophy of history, unlike that of Marx, did not hold that the development of society is explained by historical mate rialism ; he postulated for it an intelligent directing force and an ideal wisdom. To uphold his convictions, Jaures, after the Amsterdam Congress in 1905, struggled alone against the entire International for a share of power and for the preservation of the democratic-socialist bloc. He violently attacked and denounced as impotent the German Social Democracy which dominated the Congress and was supported by the old French Socialist organisa tions. On April 17, 1904, Jean Jaures, with Aristide Briand, founded l'Humanite, which has become the daily organ of the So cialist party. His daily leading article in it was written for the most part from his seat in the Chamber.
Jaures early foresaw that the unstable equilibrium of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente was bound to end in a catastrophe, and he wished to avert it by the simultaneous international action of the proletariat. A passionate lover of France, he sought to spare his country the horrors of devastation by war. While he maintained that a democracy should not have an aggressive policy, he did not deny the duty of every nation to defend itself. To prevent misunderstanding between socialism and patriotism he wrote : "A nation which could not count, in days of crisis or when its life is in danger, upon the national devotion of the working class, would be a wretched thing indeed." He supported the policy of arbitration and all measures to secure international peace, but at the same time, in the name of the workers of France, he insisted "that the nation organise all its military forces, irrespective of class or caste, for the sole purpose of national defence." Against Germany, militarist and absolutist, stood France, a nation in arms, practising "a policy of supreme national defence which would lead not only to peace but to the assurance of peace." Jaures expounded and developed his ideas on the organisation of "a nation in arms" in his great book, L'Armee nouvelle.
The policy of world-wide solidarity which Jaures proclaimed was of no avail against the blind forces Which precipitated the War, but Jaures continued to strive for peace. On July 28, before the outbreak of war, he, and some of his most eminent Socialist colleagues, went to Brussels to confer, in the name of the French Socialist party, with representatives of international labour on the best means of averting the threat of war, which he still thought could be avoided. But he was none the less full of anguish over the fate of France, compelled to defend herself against aggression. On this particular subject, he certainly felt no hesitation, for he had always been animated by the purest patriotism.
Il y a un groupement historique qui s'appelle la France, qui a ete constitue par des siecles de souffrances communes, d'esperances communes; les lentes formations monarchiques en ont peu a peu juxtapose et soude les morceaux, et les ardentes epreuves de la Revolution l'ont fondu en un seul metal. C'est la patrie francaise . . . Oui, it y a des luttes, des antagonismes profonds de classe. Mais quels que soient ces luttes politiques, ces divisions economiques, ces antagonismes sociaux, ils ne peuvent pas porter atteinte a l'idee meme de la patrie. . . . Si notre patrie est menacee . . . nous serions des premiers a la frontiere pour defendre la France dont le sang coule dans nos veines, et dont le fier genie est ce qu'il y a de meilleur en nous.
These noble words leave no doubt as to the attitude which Jaures would have taken, or of the role which he would have played in the "holy war for our beloved France if ever she were attacked." But on the very eve of mobilisation, in Paris, on July 31, 1914, at 9.4o, Jaures succumbed to the bullets of an assassin—a wretched half-wit, impelled to this stupid crime by the calumnies of the adversaries of the great tribune. His ob sequies were celebrated on Aug. 4 in the midst of an immense popular gathering, and his body was interred at Albi. In 1925 his mortal remains were brought back to Paris, and, borne on the shoulders of his faithful miners of Carmaux, deposited in the Pantheon. (E. HE.)