But in 1893 he fell. He fell with a com pleteness that was universally believed to be hopeless. He was disgraced, finished. He was accused of complicity in disloyalties and dis honesties in connection with the Panama Canal scandals. He met every charge against his integrity. The attack on him in the Chamber utterly broke down. But his own constituents turned against him. He was literally put out of politics. For nine years he had no connection with the government of France. But two years after his overthrow a very different Clemenceau made his appearance in the world of French letters. The wily politician, the reckless duelist, the insolent hounder of his foes, was gone. In his place was a philosopher and litterateur, a man who wrote exquisite prose, a lover of nature, a friend of humankind. Among his writings during that period were a book on the philosophy of nature, 'Great Pan' ; a novel of social life, The Strongest); a play of which the scene was laid at the court of China, and some notable criticisms. But he returned in a few years to journalism. His old paper had gone down in the wreck of its chief's career. But when the Dreyfus affair suddenly burst upon France, a new journal, L'Aurore, edited by M. Clemenceau, made its appearance. It i was devoted to the proving of Dreyfus's nuo- cence. Clemenceau was back in the active world of French affairs with a vengeance. With his tireless defense of Dreyfus, he be came, as some one has said, "the sentient con science of France in print." It was in Clemen ceau's paper that Zola published his famous (J'accuse.' Month after month Clemenceau wrote articles of which Sydney Brooks states: "They remain, I suppose, the most brilliant mas terpieces of polemics that French literature has produced since Pascal's famous 'Provincial Letters.' At the time of their appearance their effect was prodigious. No publicist did more, very few did as much, to guide French opinion through the mazes of that exhausting crisis." And the political world that Clemen ceau thus dramatically re-entered, he has never left. In 1902 the same constituency that had forsaken him in his hour of trial returned him triumphantly to the Senate. In the spring of 1906 he was appointed to public office as Min ister of the Interior. In November of that year, upon the retirement of M. Sarrien, he became Premier. While he was in office the most important thing that happened was the great miners' strike, which the Socialists organ ized. Knowing his revolutionary tendencies, the miners expected his sympathy, especially when he went personally to investigate their complaints. But with the first outbreak of violence Clemenceau became a ruler of iron.
The soldiers were called out and the riots were put down. Clemenceau found himself attacked by the Socialists and involved in a personal controversy with Jaures. But when he asked the latter whether he, in a position of authority, would have acted differently, the Socialist leader was unable to reply. In 1909 his old enemy, Delcasse, rose up suddenly and over threw his Ministry. A discussion over naval affairs sprang up almost over-night. There were scandals, investigations, controversies. In a verbal duel with Delcasse— in the early years of Clemenceau's activity his duels were fre quently not verbal—the Premier, to quote a newspaper dispatch, "seemed, for the first time in his Parliamentary career, to lose his head.° Certainly he lost his temper, declared that Delcasse had "humiliated France," and stalked out of the room. The President shortly after offered the Premiership to M. Leon Bourgeois.
But Clemenceau's power was not broken. He kept his place in the Senate. In 1912 he overthrew Caillaux's Ministry. In 1913 he wrecked Briand's Cabinet on the issue of pro portional representation. He started a new paper, L'Homme Libre. When the war began in 1914 he entered the Viviani Ministry. For some time he was chairman of the Parliamen tary Committee on the Army.
His patriotism is well known, but he has never hesitated in the midst of the stress of war to argue, criticise and actually attack where he believed that a need for opposition existed. In September 1914, he published in his paper— which he had moved to Toulouse — a plea for preferential treatment for German prisoners from Alsace. For this his journal was ordered suspended for eight days. Clemenccau did not stop publication. He changed the name of his paper L'Homme Libre (The Free Man) to L'Homme Enehoine (The Man in Chains). And its editor continued to criticise. The paper was temporarily suppressed several times.
In April of 1917 he was outspoken in his censure of the management of the allied offen sive. He was somewhat scornful of America's long-continued neutrality, but was enthusiastic in his welcome when the United States entered the war. In the autumn of 1917 Clemenceau began the parliamentary attack against "Bolo ism" and on that issue the Painleve Ministry fell in November. Clemenceau was summoned to the premiership and immediately set about forming his Cabinet. He has written plays, novels, philosophic essays and sociological studies, including