Then there were the Socialists to consider. True, they had taken office in the Cabinet of M. Briand, whose policy towards strikers of anarchist methods had been even more stern than that of M. Clemenceau. But they regarded Clemenceau as an unforgivable enemy. The calling in of the military at Courrières, at Narbonne, Montpellier and St. Béziers had never been forgotten. Clemenceau for them was the Tiger crossed with the Kalmuck. It was far more important, the French Socialists apparently thought, to hamper Clemenceau and prevent him from forming an administration than it was to beat the German armies and clear France of the Boches. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of a minority, which afterwards became the majority, of the party. Therefore, even Socialists who thoroughly sympathised with Clemenceau in his policy towards Germany, and had previously taken part in a Cabinet pledged to carry on the war "_jusqu'au bout_," would have nothing to do with a Clemenceau Administration. The upshot of these fatuous, anti-patriotic and anti-Socialist tactics on their part will be seen later. Yet the knowledge that the Socialists as a whole would give him at best a lukewarm support, and at worst would vigorously oppose him, was not an encouraging factor in the general calculation of what might occur. Neither could high finance be relied upon. The great bankers, great brokers, and great money institutions as a whole, were heartily sick of the war. They wanted peace with Germany on almost any terms, if only they could get back to business and begin to recoup their losses during more than three years of war. Nor, apart from downright treachery of which he held positive proof, could the proposed new Premier close his eyes to the fact that German influence had so subtly and thoroughly pervaded the French money market that many Frenchmen were still looking at the economic problems of France through spectacles made and tinted in Germany. There was consequently a combination possible which might drive Clemenceau headlong out of office at any moment, if he entered upon his second attempt to control French affairs at such a desperately critical stage of the war. But the formidable old Radical leader did not hesitate. Sceptic as he might be in all else, one entity he did believe in: the unshakable greatness of France: one Frenchman he could rely upon--himself. CHAPTER XIX THE ENEMY WITHIN