Nevertheless, this furious minority, in conjunction with Socialists of political intrigue, among whom Jean Longuet (son of Charles Longuet the member of the Commune and grandson of Karl Marx) was the leader, became eventually the majority, owing to the weakness of the heads of the patriotic section. This success laid the French Socialist Party open to the charge of being not only anti-patriotic but definitely pro-German. It led to the retirement of forty-one Deputies from the "unified" combination. The violent animosity of the main body to Clemenceau at the time when he was forced into office, and the refusal of Socialists to accept portfolios in his Cabinet, when the cause of the Allies was at its lowest point, from November, 1917, to July, 1918, looked to outsiders a miserable policy for the party, not to be explained by the devotion of its members to MM. Malvy and Caillaux.[D] Personal malevolence and political pusillanimity together were the imputations made against those who thus declined to serve France in her utmost need. Happily for Europe, their strength was not equal to their ill-will, and Clemenceau, after his first month of power, was able to treat them as a negligible quantity. So they remain to-day. A very great opportunity of serving the workers of their country has been missed: that the bitterest enemy of France and of freedom has not been greatly helped in her war for universal domination is no fault of theirs. During the first three years and more of the war, however, a conspiracy was being conducted which, aided unfortunately by much of apathy and ineptitude on the part of successive French Governments, and supported unintentionally or intentionally by one of the leading statesmen of France, went near to wrecking the fortunes of the Republic. That this fateful plot failed to achieve the full success which the Germans anticipated from it is due to Clemenceau. Sordid monetary sympathy with the enemy is difficult to forgive: Socialist fanaticism and Socialist intrigues which must tell to the disadvantage of the nation are hard to reconcile with common honesty; but downright infamous treachery, bribery, corruption, and wholesale attempts to organise defeat put all who are guilty of them outside the law. Yet matters had come to such a pass that all these various forms of treason to France, to the Allies, and to soldiers at the front could be carried on with impunity.