social reforms, Clemenceau brought out the Machiavelianism in the attitude of Jaurès, when he is confronted with popular illusions: he shelters his conscience beneath "some cleverly balanced sentence," but so cleverly balanced that it "will be received without thinking by those who have the greatest need to probe into its substance, while they will drink in with delight the delusive rhetoric of terrestrial joys to come" (Aurore, December 28, 1905). But when it is a question of the general strike, it is quite another thing; our politicians are no longer content with complicated reservations; they speak violently, and endeavour to induce their listeners to abandon this conception.
It is easy to understand the reason for this attitude: politicians have nothing to fear from the Utopias which present a deceptive mirage of the future to the people, and turn "men towards immediate realisations of terrestrial felicity, which any one who looks at these matters scientifically knows can only be very partially realised, and even then only after long efforts on the part of several generations." (That is what Socialist politicians do, according to Clemenceau.) The more readily the electors believe in the magical forces of the State, the more will they be disposed to vote for the candidate who promises marvels; in the electoral struggle each candidate tries to outbid the others: in order that the Socialist candidates may put the Radicals to rout, the electors must be credulous enough to believe every promise of future bliss;[1] our Socialist politicians take very good care,
- ↑ In the article which I have already quoted, Clemenceau recalls that Jaurès made use of these outbidding tactics in a long speech which he made at Beziers.
the ridiculousness of the novels of Bellamy, which have had so great a success. These novels needed criticism all the more, because they presented to the people an entirely middle-class ideal of life. They were a natural product of America, a country which is ignorant of the class war; but in Europe, would not the theorists of the class war have understood them?
