The statesman may quite honestly accept the theories of economists and sociologists, while compelled to adapt their application to the circumstances of his time. No really capable Socialist who has taken an active part in public life has ever attempted to do anything else. In France the Guesdists, who are certainly the most thoroughgoing Marxists in the country, have always proceeded on these lines in their municipal, and not unfrequently in their State, policy. Jaurès was a specially fine example of the opportunist in public affairs; so much so that he was taunted by more extreme men with being a Ministerialist before he was a Minister. Vaillant the Blanquist, in theory at least an advocate of a physical force revolution where possible, was in favour of an eight-hour law, compensation for injury to workmen, and so on. One and all, that is to say, were ready to use the social and political forms of to-day in order to prepare the way for the complete revolution tomorrow. All Clemenceau's speeches and writings, before and after the Panama crash and its consequences to him, contain many passages which every convinced Socialist would accept. I always felt, nevertheless, that I was arguing with a man deaf of both ears when I put forward my well-meant suggestions. Socialism, Clemenceau then declared--this, of course, was now nearly a generation ago--would never become an effective political power in France. France, and above all rural France, which is the real France, constituting the bulk of Frenchmen, is and will always remain steadfastly individualist--"founded on property, property, property." That was their guiding principle in every relation in life, and, he added, "I have seen them close at every stage of existence from birth to death. It is as useless to base any practical policy upon Socialist principles as it is chimerical to repose any confidence in Socialist votes." "But," I urged, "extremes meet: the Catholics and Socialists, both of whom are your opponents, may combine with the men whose minds have been poisoned by the Panamist and Anglophobe imputations of the _Petit Journal_ and turn you out of your constituency in the Var for which you now sit as deputy." He laughed at the very idea of such a defeat.