Georges Clemenceau Quotes

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?

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.

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 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.

Now that one of its principal clauses had lapsed along with the Guarantee Pact, what was to happen to the Treaty as a whole, so closely correlated in all its parts? The country that had made the greatest sacrifices for the least return found herself, without even the ghost of an explanation, grievously wronged by the withdrawal of the clause that had been our military guarantee of security. Could we let this pass without protest, when it was a matter of life and death for France? ... The Treaty had fallen to the ground, since its mainstay, which had been provided by America in conjunction with England, had been taken away. We had given up the Rhineland because an offer had been made us to replace the German sentry on the Rhine by an English and an American soldier, side by side with the French soldier.

Who need wonder in these circumstances that the Germans tried, without loss of time, to evade the most important of their obligations? The history of the last ten years is a series of surrenders on the part of the Allies, of successes for Germany.

Above all, do not be so ingenuous as to believe that you will disarm, by methods of persuasion, the Powers who see you strengthening against every eventuality your means of defence, which might turn into means of aggression.

It took defeat to bring Germany to words of quasi-peace, soon belied by a renewal of implacable activity. It is the same policy of cunning and pretence that she used, with so much success, against Napoleon. Without troubling overmuch to make any secret of it, the vanquished are devoting their best efforts to concentrating and ordering their energies, whereas the victors, divided, are drowning themselves in a deluge of verbose invocations to a metaphysics of peace, adapted to all kinds of immediate self-interest. Who then can shut his eyes to the impending menace of a return to the policy of domination by arms, the revenge for the Treaty of Versailles by a stiffening of the will-power on the part of the beaten aggressor?

Über Alles—there we have Germany, who professes to improve mankind by her ‘Kultur’ of iniquity; Russia writhes in the throes of internal decomposition, and Austria, who once fought to be free of the German monster, would to-day like to resume the old Bismarckian chain. The danger lies in the crowds who offer themselves for servitude in order that they may be permitted, in their turn, to tyrannize over the conquered nations. In this respect Germany's watchword is only the puerile hallucination of a return to primitive dominations, and allows no one to feign a misapprehension over which neither the aggressor nor the victim could be deceived. We have only to submit to the implacable law of the strongest, and join the ranks of the conquered territories, to enjoy the servitude with which our masters are only too ready to favour us. To be victims or tyrants, that is the only thing left to us.

Can we then be excused for not accepting, without other guarantees than “faith sworn and forsworn,” these relations of good neighbourhood with the nation that proclaims itself the masterpiece of humanity? For has anyone in any authority ever tried to deny or tone down these bold and cynical words? Ask the mobs, whose first cry on every occasion is “Deutschland über Alles”. This is what our public men rely upon in recommending to us a peace of trust with a Germany animated by the sentiments her spokesmen have just disclosed.

Whether we wish it or not, it is not the International Parliament of Geneva, subtle epitome of all the Parliaments of this world, with no executive powers, that will determine the peace of the future.

From the German point of view the monstrous problem thus set must inevitably be solved by the apotheosis of the German peoples. In the meantime, far from ‘German culture’ seeming disposed to reform itself, we hear it proclaiming louder than ever a universal right to supreme domination, which confers on it the right of life and death over the nations, to be asserted and enforced by all possible means. Ought we not all to feel menaced in our very vitals by this mad doctrine of universal Germanic supremacy over England, France, America, and every other country?

And what is this “Germanic civilization,” this monstrous explosion of the will to power, which threatens openly to do away entirely with the diversities established by many evolutions, to set in their place the implacable mastery of a race whose lordly part would be to substitute itself, by force of arms, for all national developments? We need only read Bernhardi's famous pamphlet Unsere Zukunft, in which it is alleged that Germany sums up within herself, as the historian Treitschke asserts, the greatest manifestation of human supremacy, and finds herself condemned, by her very greatness, either to absorb all nations in herself or to return to nothingness.

The [Anglo-American] Guarantee Pact thus assumed the position of the keystone of European peace, far above all theories. Its rejection, for that very reason, amounted to an indirect invitation for the thwarted aggressor to try again.

As for myself, what more can I say? I am bitterly censured for having refused to give my country a strategic frontier. How can I take seriously those who, both great and small, reproach me with this, since they know that I could not—apart from any question of the rights of peoples—annex the Rhineland without breaking off our alliance, <small>WHICH NO ONE DARED TO SUGGEST TO ME</small>?