1914-1918: L'autre front by Patrick FridensonReview by: David E. SumlerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Feb., 1978), pp. 178-179Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1865971 .

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178 Reviews of Books

dating from the Bonapartist Parisis, and encour- aged them to adopt the ideals of Rerum novarum in trying to bring back to the Church miners and urban workers whom his predecessors had allowed to drift away.

The administrations of Parisis and Williez, while the most outstanding, were also typical of the experience of the Pas-de-Calais during the nineteenth century. Throughout the seventy-five years Hilaire studies, the diocese was known for its solidity of clerical organization, the early spread and deep entrenchment of ultramontanism, and the ability of the clergy to adapt the message of Catholicism to local circumstances. Here lies most of the reason why the region remained so markedly Catholic-but only in comparison to the rest of France. A vigorous new clergy, younger, poorer, and more rural, was recruited, but it repelled some by its rigor. The bourgeoisie was polarized in reli- gious attraction, many drawn by Romanticism and their fear of social revolution, others rejecting the Church's authoritarianism. The Roman Ques- tion of the i86os galvanized the fervent but led to fears of excessive Catholic influence within the government. All of these issues had national as- pects, but Hilaire rarely raises his gaze from the diocese of Arras. It is not a serious weakness in a book of many strengths.

BENJAMIN F. MARTIN

West Virginia Wesleyan College

R. D. ANDERSON. France, I870-I9I4: Politics and Society. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1977. Pp. Viii, 215. $12.50.

Robert D. Anderson of the University of Edin- burgh has written a concise and useful analysis of the Third Republic before World War I. The book is primarily a synthesis of the monographs which have proliferated in the past two decades. Ander- son has correctly recognized that numerous spe- cialized studies in economic, social, and religious history and electoral geography have made pos- sible a more nuanced interpretation of the signifi- cant period when French democracy finally took root. At the same time Anderson rightly observes that the Republic's political institutions have only just begun to attract renewed attention. By inter- preting the politics of the Republic within the context of the original research done in other areas, he believes he has written a book which is "more original than might at first appear" (p. vii).

Does Anderson give us a fresh interpretation of the early Third Republic? He is certainly to be commended for emphasizing the complexity of the forces which shaped the Republic. He provides a brief but competent account of the measured in-

dustrial development of France which resulted in more numerous but less disruptive social divisions than elsewhere in Europe. He discusses the re- gional variations in land ownership, historical ex- periences, and religious practices which electoral geographers have associated with variations in po- litical behavior. He deals also with the effect of political leaders and their organizations upon po- litical institutions. Against this background An- derson depicts the emergence of a parliamentary system which provided France with an effective forum for its varied interests and less satisfactory legislative machinery. He depicts too the adequate if not perfect integration of political groups, in- cluding the Right and the Socialists, into the par- liamentary system. Finally he describes the Re- public's foreign and colonial policy as skillful and prudent.

The result is a more positive appraisal of the Third Republic than those to which we have be- come accustomed. Anderson rejects the view of contemporary sociological critics that the Repub- lic was the inadequate government of a stagnant and "stalemate society." Rather, his examination of the most recent scholarship brings him closer to the older laudatory view of the political historian Charles Seignobos. This does not make Ander- son's work invalid or superfluous. If anything he does not go far enough in his positive appraisal. Anderson acknowledges a major latent "weak- ness" of the early Republic which the difficulties of the interwar years exposed: "ministerial instabil- ity" caused by "the absence of a strong party system." Anderson fails to recognize that the "weakness" resulted from the need to develop ef- fective alternative governing choices. This need confronts all democracies and requires time and constant experimentation. The early Republic, therefore, should not be viewed as the incubation period of a chronically ill regime. It should be re- examined as the formative period of an evolving democracy.

MILDRED SCHLESINGER

Michigan State University

PATRICK FRIDENSON, editor. I9I4-19i8: L'autrefront. (Cahiers du "Mouvement Social," number 2.) Paris: Editions Ouvrieres. 1977. Pp. 235. 54 fr.

Although no overt theme ties together the nine articles that comprise this anthology on the French home front, one name keeps appearing: Albert Thomas, first undersecretary of state for artillery and munitions, then minister of armaments. The policies of the French government in regard to industrial mobilization were, these authors argue, by and large policies formulated by Thomas.

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Modern Europe 179

Articles by Gerd Hardach, "La mobilisati)on indus- trielle en 1914-1918: Production, planjfication et ido- logie," and by Alain Hennebicque, "Albert Thomas et la regime des usines de guerre, 1915-1917," are the axis of the volume. Whereas Hardach begins from a view of the total economy evolving toward "state capitalism" and Hennebicque's viewpoint is that of a biographer, both see Thomas as the chief proponent of a planned economy, the concentra- tion of industrial capacity in large cartels and trusts, the reduction of employer-employee conflict through both the militarization of the labor force in key industries and the introduction of arbi- tration committees representative of both labor and management, and, finally, close cooperation between the state and private industry for their mutual benefit. Thomas and other French leftists had espoused this semicorporatist vision before 1914. Even Alphonse Merrheim had urged the state to favor large industrial firms so as to create conditions necessary for a stronger and more "ad- vanced" labor force.

The Hardach and Hennebicque articles are fol- lowed by four other studies of the wartime econ- omy. Two deal with the war's effect on specific industries, the other two with aspects of working- class life. In a study of the carbide industry, Rob- ert 0. Paxton illustrates how Thomas' policies favoring industrial concentration were applied to this industry in spite of demands by the "individ- ualists of the Center-Left" in the Chamber of Dep- uties that the government prosecute the carbide industry under antitrust laws. James M. Laux's companion article describes the expansion of one firm into a conglomerate during and immediately after the war. This motor manufacturer was the beneficiary of Thomas' policy of placing govern- ment orders for material only with the largest and most efficient firms.

Mathilde Dubesset, Francoise Thebaud, and Catherine Vincent explore the impact of the war- time experience on women in a study of "Les mu- niti)onet/es de la Seine. " Women did not acquire new skills because factories were reorganized to place them in the jobs requiring the least training. Moreover, most of these jobs were phased out at the end of the war. Once again Thomas set the theme, advocating "equal pay for equal work" but with the proviso that an employer could deduct the cost of training, supervision, and other special ex- penses from the women's salaries. The result was that women did not share fully in the salary in- creases enjoyed by most male workers. Thomas' theories dominate Gilbert Hatry's article, "Les de- legues d atelier aux usines Renault." Thomas was de- termined that class conflict be avoided. One means to this end was an administrative order requiring that arbitration committees composed of represen-

tatives of both labor and management be consti- tuted in large factories. Thomas was not willing, however, to compel employers to bow to the rec- ommendations of these committees; and the em- ployers, at least in the Renault plants, either fired the workers' delegates to these committees or had them transferred to the battle front when they protested management policies.

The remaining articles use interesting methods of analysis but are of narrow focus. Jean-Jacques Becker's study of reactions to the outbreak of the war in the department of Charente convincingly argues that the war was not welcomed there but caused a fearful and cautious anxiety. In another local study, Louis Koll shows how the German occupation affected one small town in Lorraine. Finally, Serge Berstein argues that the assimila- tion of the Radical Party into the Union sacr~e brought the end of the party's role as an ideologi- cal, although not as a political, force.

Containing excellent examples of scholarship and analysis, this anthology will be of benefit to all historians of twentieth-century France.

DAVID E. SUMLER

Clhestertown, Maryland

SIMONE PETREMENT. Simone [Veil: A Life. Translated by RAYMOND ROSENTHAL. New York: Pantheon Books. 1976. Pp. xiv, 577. $15.00.

This very long biography of a very short life is rewarding to the persevering reader who can over- come irritation at the repetitiveness and the occa- sionally ungraceful style (not entirely a fault of the translator). It involves the reader in a life that may be called exemplary for the attempt-passionate but finally doomed to fail-of a woman to accord her life with her ideas. She failed because she did not give life its due, but not before having applied her prodigious intelligence to many social and po- litical questions of her time and to the spiritual salvation of her soul.

Many readers will regret Simone Petrement's choice not to write a "life and times" and her failure to analyze Simone Weil's work in depth (too often Petrement's comments are reduced to paraphrases of quoted passages), but this chronol- ogy of a life is invaluable and should be read by all those for whom Simone Weil has become an object of fascination.

Weil was a radical and an extremist because nothing ever stopped her from going to the root of a problem. Whether she affirmed that defeat with- out war was preferable to a victorious war, or recommended the abolition of all political parties in order to achieve greater democracy, or insisted that the Church should modify the conditions un-

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