"The Germans are at Noyon," His confidence in his countrymen was immeasurable; but his impatience at mistakes, at lack of courage, at blindness beyond restraint for three years, grew more and more vocal.

When ruin was in sight France had turned to Clémenceau, as the Allies, spurred by his urgings, afterward turned to Foch. France once more became the corner-stone of the Alliance, the foundation on which victory could be built, and Clémenceau was the embodiment of France. Before the end those who had opposed him shrank from challenging a man whose voice had become the voice of their country. In defeat he made the nation believe victory was possible, and when victory came it seemed only the logical conclusion of his leadership. This war produced more great generals than brilliant statesmen, and the achievement of one general, Ferdinand Foch, was a farshining triumph, which would endure through all history; yet without Clémenceau, Foch might have failed, and when France came to decide to whom she most owed her "lost provinces" she might name this man of seventy-seven who, in the national legislation of 1871 had forbade the cession, and now had redeemed the loss. It had been a wonderful career and a wonderful old man was Clémenceau.37a

THEOPHILE DELCASSÉ, FOREIGN MINISTER OF FRANCE

Altho Delcassé during the war was still living but not in the public eye, his career in the French Foreign Office before the war had an intimate relation to the world conflict. Writers like Morton Fullerton went so far as to say that, while various reasons were found for the failure of the German advance through Belgium and northern France to the Marne, and while the first stumbling-block to the Germans was the resistance of Belgium, that was not so real a thing, counting all the late years, as the remarkable personality, the shrewd and agile brain, of Delcassé. He it was who undid the work of Bismarck by making possible an alliance between Great Britain and France.

One morning in France the work of Delcassé was particularly brought to Mr. Fullerton's attention. He had spent that morning with the French Minister to Belgium, and in leaving was suddenly arrested by a musical note alien to French music. It was the sound of a bagpipe accompanying the march of invisible men. Soon there swung round, out of a side street into an avenue skirting the sea, a column of the new khaki-clad army of Great Britain, followed by an officer on horseback, with a score of terriers, fox and Scotch,

37a Principal Sources: The Tribune, The Times (New York), Alexander Harvey in Current Opinion, and Henri-Martin Barzun in The Review of Reviews.

yelping up and down the line. Regiments soon filled the avenues. Seaward were seen brown French battleships riding at anchor. From marching men came forth the song, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary." Five thousand British lads had just landed on French soil, and were going to trenches in Flanders. At Mr. Fullerton's elbow, there in Havre, stood a Belgian deputy and a French Foreign official. Turning to the Frenchman the Belgian said, "That's the work of your Delcassé." Later in the day Mr. Fullerton had an audience with a Belgian Minister, when the talk associated itself instantly with that landing scene. "Your Excellency," said Mr. Fullerton, "Belgium has saved Europe, to which the Minister replied: "It is not Belgium that has saved Europe. The savior of Europe is M. Delcassé."

For many months, if not a full year, before war actually began, Delcassé had been one of the quietest of 580 members of the French Chamber of Deputies. No one knew what he thought of the situation, and no one took much trouble to find out. Meanwhile events continued to take the road that led directly to the cataclysm. This alert little statesman, no taller than Napoleon, was always seen in his seat, playing an almost silent part in the Parliamentary game, a model of party discipline. Men heard his staccato step in the lobby, noted the directness of his glance through eye-glasses, his frank and unembarrassed manner, his readiness to listen and his reticence in reply. All signs betokened the same energy, straightforwardness of purpose, absence of academic priggishness, but the presence of diplomatic and statesmanlike composure that had enabled him to secure for France those far-reaching diplomatic victories that altered the balance of power in the European system. But now with grim resolution he held his peace. Not even in the press were seen words of his counseling his countrymen. No interview restored him to the limelight. Some thought him dead. Beyond the Vosges, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and across the Channel, his figure, however, was still to close observers one of few still visible to the naked eye. To foreigners Delcassé personified a regenerated France. All competent observers knew that his apparent political burial was only an optical illusion, that before long he or his work would rise again, to incarnate a new national hope.

This confidence was well founded. It is not every man who earns the reputation of being "the man who undid the work of Bismarck" and "encircled" the Germans. Bismarck's plan had been remarkably simple; to involve France with Italy in Tunis, and with England on the Kongo, in Madagascar, and elsewhere, and so to keep all three nations in a fractious state, unfriendly toward one another and dependent on Germany's sympathy for strength. He made his plan

work well and stood by watching his neighbors weakening themselves for his ultimate benefit. All things had gone on well, up to the very point where France and Great Britain would fall out and come to blows, and then, in the person of Delcassé, the stumbling-block appeared.

Great Britain and France had been fatefully and logically brought to an issue in an African desert, where the swords of Kitchener and Marchand had been upraised. It was Delcassé who dared to give the French commander at Fashoda an order to stay his blow and return the weapon to its scabbard. Delcassé had himself, as Minister for the Colonies in an earlier time, been among the most responsible of French statesmen who directed a policy against British colonial ambitions. With Hanotaux, who as Foreign Minister had the responsibility, he pursued a policy of colonial expansion originally conceived years before by Jules Ferry, and helped to wrest from Great Britain coveted strips of African soil, and Pacific islands. When the event of Fashoda occurred, no one better than he understood the full extent of French humiliation. As Hanotaux's usefulness ended, Delcassé was chosen to succeed him and direct the destinies of France.

Two roads then lay before France. One led to Berlin and was the road that had been followed for more than twenty years-but it carried the French people further and further away from Alsace and Lorraine, and had now brought them face to face with disaster at Fashoda. The other road, utterly untried, a strange new path through an undiscovered country, led to London. It was now seen that one furthen step on the road to Berlin would lead to war with Great Britain, and Delcassé did not hesitate but chose the path of peace with Great Britain. It had suddenly dawned on him that France and Great Britain had long been playing into Germany's hands. Fashoda was their Damascus road. With this knowledge came a quick decision. France and Great Britain should compose their differences. So believed Delcassé, and he proceeded to make overtures for a settlement of all Franco-British difficulties.

The Fashoda incident of 1898 threatened actual war, and Germany with open arms was ready to make friends with France, but Delcassé, instead, humiliated himself before Great Britain. The English Ambassador who had called to present to France an ultimatum fumbled in Delcassé's presence at his frock-coat pocket preliminary to getting a piece of paper. "Do not undc that button," said Delcassé-so at least the story ran. "I must not see that paper. It is a threat, and if I see it France must fight. Matters will arrange themselves." So was sown the first seed for the entente cordiale, an indispensable seed for France in the World War. The entente cordiale

was afterward built up through private informal conferences in Paris and elsewhere between King Edward VII and Delcassé. The French Ambassador in London and Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister, meanwhile practically stept aside.

Had there been in 1914 no formal declaration of war between France and Germany, the appointment by Viviani of Delcassé, as Minister of War, would have been sufficient, for Delcassé had been like a flare of scarlet to the Teutonic bull. As recently as January, 1913, Germany had virtually ordered his dismissal from the French Cabinet. Delcassé was a little man, of stocky peasant build, whose hair seemed always in disarray, whose brilliant neckties served only to emphasize a muddy complexion, and whose ill-fitting clothes looked as if they might have been bought at the Shop of the Three Balls. He had a face as hard and as strong as marble. Pity, compassion, even the emotion of hatred, seemed unknown to it. He was a Frenchman who had nothing of French volubility. He was a peasant who had the exquisite manners of a prince-when he wished to employ them. When standing beside his wife he was overshadowed by a tall lady of ample proportions, splendidly gowned as befitting the widow of a millionaire, who looked down upon her second spouse with pride, effacing herself before him so completely that the little man seemed to stand alone and to fill the room.38

ENVER PASHA, THE WAR-MINISTER OF TURKEY

For his connection with the Armenian massacres, of which he was everywhere accepted as the chief instigator, Enver's name became probably the most execrated of all names familiar in men's minds during the war. However men might differ about the judicial arraignment of the Kaiser for war-crimes, there was little difference of opinion as to the propriety of trying the chief personages connected with Turkish atrocities. These, besides Enver, were Talaat Bey and Djemel Pasha, but it was Enver who was most responsible, not only for the Armenian massacres but for a proposal that Allied civilians, in 1915, be sent to the bombardment area in Gallipoli as a "reprisal." The apportionment of blame among Talaat, Enver, and the Germans, called for thorough and exact inquiry. For nothing did the world demand a more rigorous meting out of just punishment. Enver was the real head of the Turkish Government, actual control being in his hands and those of Talaat and Djemel. Together they had caused the massacre of perhaps a million Armenians, Syrians, and Greeks-Enver the brains of the crime, the others the brutal directors of its execution. Henry Morgenthau, American 38 Adapted from articles in The World's Work and The World (New York).

Ambassador to Turkey during a part of the war, described Enver thus: "His nature had a remorselessness, a lack of pity, a coldblooded determination, of which his clean-cut, handsome face, his small but sturdy figure, and his pleasing manners gave no indication." When defeat and disgrace came he and Talaat fled, after having first robbed the Turkish treasury of a hundred and more millions of dollars.

Advices in May, 1919, that Talaat had been found among Caucasian Tatars added a new and satisfactory page to the life-history of a man who first saw the light in the household of a Stamboul "layerout" of corpses. Embezzlement was the least crime with which Enver could have been charged because Turkish authorities could have indicted him for assassinations of public men and army officers. Not long afterward the Turks, by court-martial, condemned him to death. He was then supposed to be in Germany. The same sentence was passed on Talaat and Djemel. Concerning "the 1,800,000 Armenians who were in the Ottoman Empire two years ago," said Mr. Balfour in a message to America in February, 1917, "1,200,000 have been either massacred or deported." Enver was a forceful man and for a magnetic personality stood alone among the Turks. In any other country besides Turkey-in England, Germany, or the United States he could scarcely have failed to have a career of some kind, good or bad.

Enver was the evil genius who, by conspiring with the German Ambassador, had brought Turkey into the war at a time when her people were opposed to intervention. He was a tool of Germany and betrayed his country. From the time when Great Britain and France allowed Italy to move in Tripoli, Enver had stood definitely committed to cooperation with Germany, in Turkey's domestic and international affairs. Having received his military training in Berlin, he admired the German military system, and in all ways promoted German interests. His capacity for leadership had made him at thirty a military dictator. At that age most Europeans would not attain to captaincies. He had deep faith in the soundness of the things for which he stood. His early plans and dreams were all to one end the regeneration of Turkey. Of his swordsmanship, his fluency as a linguist, the almost ascetic simplicity of his life, his strange compound of the mystic and criminal in action; his way of exercising influence and authority, often at the expense of discipline, and quite out of proportion to his official or military rank-much has been written by those who knew him well.

Before the war Lewis R. Freeman discerned that he was small in stature, but remarkably well set up, strikingly handsome, and with an indefinable, but compelling, magnetism, which made itself felt