nomic crimes for the more radical papers, and exposed the financial irregularities of deputies. He nibbled rather than ate, and looked over a newspaper while doing so. His luncheon was often brought in to him at the ministry from neighboring restaurants. A waiter once returned to find his food untouched. "I declare," said Briand, looking up with astonishment, "I thought I had eaten it." 37 GEORGES CLÉMENCEAU, PREMIER OF FRANCE Little was left unsaid during the war of the public and private life of Clémenceau, his energy, notwithstanding his age, his good humor, animated rejoinders, and general "tiger" characteristics. He was much praised for his admirable spirit, his nervy and solid good sense during the most critical months of the war as head of the French Government. Beyond all the sympathetic traits that made him so popular, he remained one of the greatest characters in contemporaneous Europe, and one of the greatest leaders of men. He belonged to a line that had come down from the Revolution. Philosopher, writer, man of science, orator, author, he testified through his entire public career to the fact that ideas guide the world, drawing men and their interests in their train. The war had been an immense economic conflict, since it was in the name of democracy, justice, and liberty that the world rose to win it. It was for these three magic words, democracy, justice and liberty, that Clémenceau had fought all his life, in untiring opposition to everything that could limit their sway or dull their glow. Of all political heads of the Third Republic he was the one who had exercised the greatest influence on the present generation and had most vigorously directed the people of his country toward democracy. Impartial history will some day perhaps tell what struggles Clémenceau had to undergo in the Inter-Allied Councils, as well as at the head of the French Government, in order to make certain ideas and solutions prevail-such as unity of command in the appointment of Foch as Generalissimo. It will relate what fatiguing physical effort was exacted from him in uninterrupted visits to the front, questioning soldiers and exhorting commanders, exposing himself to first-line fire; doing this in spite of all advice to spare himself; simply to fill his rôle as a chief, and knowing the immense power of personal example-the embodiment to all eyes of the spirit of duty. For half a century he had battled in the van of democracy, when in 1917 he assumed the reins of political power resolved to make an 37 Adapted from an article in The Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), and from a compilation by Alexander Harvey in Current Opinion, based on articles in The Daily News and The Daily Chronicle (London), and the Matin, Humanite, Gaulois, and the Journal des Débats (Paris). end of the war and recover the lost provinces. No public man ever realized a like destiny-none ever knew such consecration to a lifetime of effort. All his former life had predestined Clémenceau to the great rôle he played in the war. He seemed ordained by fate to meet Wilson. The two were worthy of standing face to face and deliberating as to democracy's future. When Clémenceau in 1917 was again called to be Prime Minister, France turned to "a wrecker of Cabinets" in her hour of need, to a man once described as having "torn, clawed and bitten his way to power." His enemies had been legion, but now the nation chose Clémenceau to lead her Government. No one had ever doubted his patriotism. His every act of construction, or destruction, had been in the interest of what he considered the welfare of France. He had wielded his power with a fearless pen in his newspaper, L'Homme Libre (The Free Man). His paper was suspended once early in the war because he refused to suppress certain passages in an article. He met the condition by changing the name of the paper to L'Homme Enchâiné (The Chained Man). Afterward the paper reappeared under its old title. While Clémenceau was in office as Prime Minister his name appeared on his newspaper only as "founder," instead of as "political director" as before. He would not write for it while in office. Clémenceau was no longer a young man-he was seventy-six in 1917, but his powers were unimpaired. A friend once asked him how many ministries he had overturned, and he replied pleasantly that he was quite unable to recall the number. Some of the titles he won during his long career besides "wrecker of Cabinets" was the "Stormy Petrel of French Politics," the "Red Indian," the "KingMaker" and the "Tiger," the latter of which clung to him. Having married an American girl, at one time his pupil during his exile in America, an epithet applied to him by his opponents was the "Yankee School-teacher." The storms that attended his career began early. His father was imprisoned by Napoleon III, at the time of the coup d'état that destroyed the Second Republic. The son was thus a child of Revolution. It was characteristic of him that he supported General Boulanger, as long as he believed him to be working in the interests of the Republic, but when the "Man on Horseback" began to scheme for the return of the Bourbons, Clémenceau rose up and drove him from power. Before he was twenty he was arrested for shouting on the streets of Paris, in the midst of a celebration of one of the imperial anniversaries, "Vive la Republique!" Having served his term in jail be became practically an exile and came to America. Between 1865 and 1869 he lived in New York near Washington Square, and in Stamford, Conn. Having been educated as a physician he started in practise on West Twelfth Street, New York. Before he left France he had made the acquaintance of Marshall, the artist, who made famous portraits of Washington and Lincoln. By invitation from Marshall he had come to New York. His father had been a physician before him. Generations of his family had followed the medical profession, but he was not successful like the others of his line as a doctor of medicine. The chief reason was said to be that he was not deeply interested in that calling. Even as a student in Paris he had found time to inform himself on political questions and to contribute controversial papers to reviews. In New York he gråvitated naturally toward the study of social and political conditions and drew his income, not so much from the practise of his profession, as from letters about things in America which he sent to papers at home. His first impression of Americans was that they had "no general ideas and no good coffee." Failing to build up a medical practise, and his funds running low, Clémenceau obtained a position as teacher of French language and literature in a young ladies' seminary in Stamford, Conn. The future celebrity appears in after years to have looked back on Stamford with real pleasure. He once told how he had "accompanied young ladies on walks and pleasant and easy rides along charming wooded roads that lined the smiling shores of Long Island Sound." He added that in those "happy and light-hearted years" at Stamford his temperament "became strengthened and refined." It was during one of his "charming horseback rides" that he ventured to propose to one of the young American "misses"-Mary Plummer, of Springfield, Mass., whom he afterward married. Returning to France in 1870, Clémenceau's natural inclinations led him into politics. During the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris, Clémenceau was Mayor of Montmartre. One of his duties during the siege was to see that 150,000 men were properly fed, and another to look after thousands of refugees. In this work he became responsible for large amounts of money. Foreseeing that accusations against any one's honesty might be made in such trying times, he engaged an expert accountant to "check-up" and make public his use of every sou of public funds. Next year he was elected to the General Assembly, and opposed the treaty of peace with Germany. From 1871 to 1875 he was a member of the Paris Municipal Council, of which he became President, and in 1876 was elected member from Montmartre in the Chamber of Deputies, where he became leader of the Radicals. From the outset of his career in the French Parliament he was the bitter opponent of the Royalists, and soon became known for eloquence and independence of action. He was inde pendent even in his radicalism, and followed no leader but himself. Some men called him "an undisciplined vandal" who was making a reputation as an upsetter of other men's careers. His political power was increased by his journalistic activities. In 1880 he founded La Justice, a daily paper with which he destroyed the Broglie administration, overthrew Boulanger, caused the fall of Jules Grévy and Jules Ferry and wrecked the position of M. de Freycinet at least three times. Clémenceau's policy was a consistent but radical Republicanism; he stood for a realization of what the Revolution had hoped for and dreamed of. He was opposed to the alliance with Russia, determined that his country should not be joined in close friendship with a despotic power, unceasingly upheld the complete separation of Church and State, and urged the development of French resources. In 1893 Clémenceau's career apparently was wrecked when, during the Panama scandals, he was accused of dishonesty, but he met every charge and beat down attacks in the Chamber. His constituents, however, deserted him, and so he dropt out of politics. It was nine years before he was again officially in public life. For that period he was a man of letters, instead of a politician, a reckless duelist, and a hounder of his foes. As a philosopher and litterateur, who wrote exquisite prose, a lover of nature and a friend of humankind, he flourished again. Among his writings were a book on the philosophy of nature, "Great Pan"; a novel of social life, "The Strongest"; a play of which the scene was laid in China, and some notable criticisms. He returned afterward to journalism, his old paper having gone down in the wreck of his political career. When the Dreyfus affair was stirring all France, a new journal called L'Aurore, edited by Clémenceau, made its appearance. It was devoted to proving Dreyfus innocent. Clémenceau thus got back into the active world of French affairs. Because of Clémenceau's tireless defense of Dreyfus, Zola published in his paper his scathing denunciation of conditions, "J'Accuse." In 1902 the same constituency that had forsaken Clémenceau in his hour of trial returned him to the Senate, and in the spring of 1906 he was appointed to public office as Minister of the Interior. In November of the same year he became Premier. Three years later his old enemy, Delcassé, overthrew his ministry, but his power was not broken, for he kept his place in the Senate. In 1912 he overthrew Caillaux's Ministry and 1913 wrecked Briand's Cabinet. When the war began he was in the Viviani Ministry. Clémenceau's patriotism was widely recognized. He never hesitated in the midst of the stress of war to argue, criticize, and actually to attack where he believed a need for opposition existed. In the late autumn of 1918, after Clémenceau had been Prime Minister a little more than a year and the war had been won, it was possible to measure his achievement. He came to office when the army had failed on the Aisne and for the first and only time was shaken in morale. A monstrous defeatist campaign had begun in France. A break on the home-front and then on the firing-line was forecast. Not willingly did France turn to Clémenceau. His strength all men recognized, but his strength and his weakness alike terrified his contemporaries. If his eloquence in his newspaper had again and again roused the nation, his long political struggles had made enemies and his destructive course over half a century had left him with few political friends and a host of enemies. "Briand will fail and go," Caillaux had said in Rome in 1917. "There may be another, and then will come Clémenceau, who will try and fail, and thenthen I will come." The whole game had been set for Caillaux to come and make peace with Germany; then Clémenceau came and Caillaux languished behind the bars. Ere long the armies of France were in Strasbourg and Metz. After The first task of Clémenceau was to restore the home-front. terrible sacrifices for more than three years, with the Russian revolution destroying the Entente's Eastern Ally, and a new invasion in sight, France faced a crisis which had only two solutions—collapse, or the discovery of a great leader. Without leadership nothing more was possible. Then almost in an hour the atmosphere cleared. Backed by Clémenceau, Pétain reorganized the army; singlehanded, Clémenceau wrestled with weaklings. To every protest, every feeble whine, he responded: "Je fais la guerre." Did men ask him questions, did they make motions in the Chamber, did they seek to trap and entangle him, his answer, ever clearer and clearer, was the same, "I make war," and he would add, "Victory is to the side which endures to the last quarter of an hour." Clémenceau faced hostile critics in the Chamber with the dust and mud of battlefields on his clothes; left the tribune to reappear at the front, as scornful of personal danger as he was impatient of intrigue. Armies knew him better than did the politicians. When the German line broke before Amiens, in 1918, he was promptly on the scene and took back to Paris the first authentic news that the German flood had been checked. So, too, in Flanders when Haig's army stood with its "back to the wall." As he returned from Bethune, he announced in Paris, "The skies are already brightening." "There was a time," Clémenceau once said, "when I despaired of my countrymen. I believed France was finished, but now-now, look about for yourself. I have not one word to say." That was in the Verdun time of 1916 when Clémenceau had been daily thundering forth that, |