What especially amazed a journalist in conversing with him was the recklessness of candor with which he would discuss anything. Continental Europeans in high office were as a rule discreet-overwhelmingly discreet-but the Chancellor would discuss anything with no reserve at all-the war, the Emperor William, the future of the Pope, Göthe, Belgium, or what you like. This was no mere policy. It was just his way. A certain artlessness of manner and slowness of utterance that suggested one who thinks aloud, heightened the effect of his uncalculated indiscretions. Now and then when he would forget a detail he did not summon a lackey in uniform, as Prince von Bülow would have done, but went himself in search of a paper he wished to lay before the visitor. Everything he said and did was done with characteristic gravity. There were no sweet smiles after the Bülow manner, no epigrams, no airs.

Prussian in origin, Prussian by birth, and most Prussian of all by education, a classmate of the Kaiser at Bonn, Bethmann-Hollweg revealed, neither in manner nor in mode of life, qualities best known to men as Prussian. He represented a survival from an age that glorified Göthe and Schiller and imbibed Kant and Fichte. His simplicity in eating and drinking-his favorite beverage being light beer and his favorite edible cold sausage-suggested the humble professor. He loomed above most men when afoot in Berlin streets, carrying a parcel of books in his hand, instead of riding in the vehicle of his office. For luncheon a table was reserved for him in a quiet little restaurant that never was fashionable and, despite his regular coming, never would be. When accosted he seemed to come out of a brown study into a world he had altogether forgotten. His simplicity was that of one who never considered his own personality, his own interests, or the effect upon his fortunes of whatever he did or said.

Never in his career had he exemplified this trait so completely as in the course of his famous speech in the Reichstag on the invasion of Belgium. When he spoke of "a wrong" his country would be doing, he gave no thought at all to what his enemies might make of the admission. One trait only was shared by him with his brilliant predecessor Bülow-a love of the arts. He surrounded himself with books, pictures, and musical instruments, and had a preference for Verdi over Wagner. Apparently if he had any favorite composer it was Beethoven. He delighted, too, in Brahms. His discriminating taste in pictures revealed itself in a preference for Jan Vermeer, at a time when that Dutch artist had not been recognized except by a few. His supreme resource was his private library, a great sunny room lined from floor to ceiling with well-stocked shelves. The place showed at once that it was the working library of a scholar.

His taste was not for the elegant in literature. One encountered no such author as Merimée, in whom Bülow delighted, nor Carducci, whom the Prince deemed Europe's first modern poet. BethmannHollweg read Kant, whose "Critique of Pure Reason" he placed beside anything from Aristotle or. Plato. He was like Gladstone in devotion to theology, and, like the British statesman, gave much attention to classical literature.

In a remote village of Brandenburg he was born nearly sixty years before the war began, and he had the melancholy temperament of Brandenburgers, the characteristic grave eye and the fervent Christian piety. The Kaiser himself was sometimes called a Brandenburger by which it was implied that he was more prayerful more addicted to theology than the average Prussian. Bethmann-Hollweg was given to the economies of his type, which carefully saves pieces of string for future use, and eats sparingly. He was likewise careful of his clothes, which he wore long after they had ceased to be fashionable. Such thrift was ascribed in part to his comparative poverty for one in his class; but, had he been very rich, he could not have thrown off the habits of a lifetime. These tendencies were inherited from a Frankfort merchant who founded the family early in the last century and was noted for ability to accumulate money.

A more eminently respectable figure than Bethmann-Hollweg on his way to church-which he never missed on Sunday-it would have been hard to conceive. He had a pleasing voice and never shrank from the sound of it when hymns were sung. Members of the little congregation had known him for years. Nothing was thought of the fact that, in flat defiance of all precedent, he slipt into a rear seat and made way readily for any one who afterward came in. Now and then in leaving church he would forget his umbrella, whereupon some little boy would run after him with it. Sometimes he would accept an invitation from the pastor to lunch, and off the pair would go on foot side by side, immersed in theology or philosophy, to some humble street in Berlin, from which the Chancellor would return, still afoot, swinging his long arms, stretching his long legs, a highly respectable gentleman, colliding occasionally with a pedestrian, or menaced by the whip of an impatient driver, or yelled at by a chauffeur. The compelling and original fact about the German Imperial Chancellor of 1914 was his unimportant and inconsequential aspect. The nation which "aroused the world to arms and filled the ears of men with strange new cries, as it revived Napoleonisms and Cæsarisms, confronted the world with a simple-minded Herr Doctor, carrying a shabby umbrella, when you expected to see a Bismarck."

That unassuming personality did not reflect insignificance. He was essentially a man strong in principle and action, unable to be a

mere instrument in the hands of others. Those who knew the court of Berlin at first hand were sure of his moral ascendency over the Kaiser. There existed between them, not only a strong tie of affection dating from Bonn, but a bond based on a perception by the younger man of the heroic moral traits of the elder. There was no sycophancy in the Imperial Chancellor, no yielding of conviction to expediency. The fact that so strong a nature was chosen for so exalted a dignity refuted the charge that William II would endure no criticism. Bethmann-Hollweg was succeeded in his office by a succession of brief-tenured men-Michaelis, Hertling, Prince Maxbut none of these are names that will survive in histories of this war, as will Bethmann-Hollweg's and his "scrap of paper." 34

SIR ROBERT LAIRD BORDEN, PREMIER OF CANADA

A descendant of Samuel Borden, surveyor, who went to Falmouth, Nova Scotia, from the American colonies in 1760, Sir Robert Borden was styled the ablest parliamentarian in Canadian public life, one whose whole attitude stood for everything that was best in the life of the Dominion. The Canadian Law Journal described him as having "a wide and accurate knowledge, fertile of resource, firm of purpose, and a manner that has won for him the friendship and the confidence of all men well posted on public affairs." Such was the man who was elected leader of the Conservative Party in the Canadian House of Commons upon the resignation of Sir Charles Tupper in February, 1901.

Before entering into politics Sir Robert Borden was an extensive practitioner in law, both in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia and the Supreme Court of the Dominion. As a master of the political situation in Canada, and as one best qualified to speak of its resources, Sir Robert Borden was summoned by the Government of Great Britain to attend a meeting of the British Cabinet held July 14, 1915. He was the first overseas minister to receive such a summons and represented the Canadian Dominion at the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 and at the Imperial War Conference in 1918. He was born at Grand Pré, June 26, 1854, and has been Premier of the Dominion of Canada since 1911. As a representative of one of the larger Dominions beyond the seas, Sir Robert Borden proved an able representative of his country, and a man of whom Canada had good reason to be proud.35

Adapted from an article compiled by Alexander Harvey for Current Opinion from the Figaro, Temps, and Gaulois (Paris).

35 Compiled from "Canadian Men and Women of the Time" and "Who's Who, 1918-1919" (London).

LOUIS BOTHA, PREMIER OF THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

Louis Botha was born at Greytown, Natal, in 1863. He was a member of the first Volksraad of the South African Republic, and served as field cornet at the beginning of the Anglo-Boer War.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Boer forces he succeeded General Joubert, being in command at the battle of Colenso, and during the remainder of the war. In the interests of his country he visited England in 1902, 1907, and 1911.

He was elected Premier of the Transvaal 1907-1910, and as Honorary General of the British Army commanded the Union forces in Southwest Africa from 1914 to 1915, during which time he succeeded in defeating the Germans and received their surrender, as already stated in the body of this work.36

ARISTIDE BRIAND, PREMIER OF FRANCE

A resemblance to Lloyd George was discernible in Briand, who during the war was at the head of the French Cabinet briefly, but for the third time. The resemblance did not include similarity in tactics as used by the British Minister in his labor difficulties and by Briand when faced with a great railway strike. Briand's method of calling all railway employees to the colors, and thus exposing a persistent striker to charges of insubordination and breach of military discipline if he refused, became instantly efficacious; but it earned for him adverse criticism and suspicion that did much to limit his official career afterward.

Briand had spent fifteen years in a sort of nomadic life, as barrister, journalist, trade-unionist orator, political organizer, and general secretary to the French Socialist party. The clients he cared for most were proletarian victims of economic conditions, whose gratitude was his reward. "Gentlemen of the jury," he was once heard to exclaim, "in defending my client I am defending myself." His popularity with the common people was widespread. They regarded him in France, as fellow workers in England regarded Lloyd George-not as a proud and unsympathetic political officer, but as one of them. They called him "notre Aristide." When he spoke they listened, for he spoke directly to them.

To oratorical gifts Briand owed much of his rapid, tho longdelayed, rise to public prominence. As a boy he delighted in attending public meetings for the purpose of hearing speakers. With a school-fellow-afterward a bootmaker at Saint-Nazaire, proud of a 38 Compiled from "Who's Who, 1918-1919" (London).

Premier's friendship—he used to go assiduously to a Catholic church to profit by the eloquence of the preacher. On his entry into Clémenceau's first Cabinet, an Englishman wrote of Briand's voice: "A penetrating voice, audible in its lowest tones at the remotest corner of the chamber. It is what Carlyle would have called a 'downy voice, a caressing voice, a coaxy voice;' since Gambetta's, the most seductive heard in the Palais Bourbon."

Briand was somewhat tall for a Frenchman and had a slight stoop. His black, straight hair was brushed straight back from a square, massive forehead. His face had usually a somewhat melancholy expression from which dark eyes looked out with a tranquil, searching gaze. Workmen of Saint-Etienne knew his genial, frank, unassuming manner, and would say "Our Aristide is like ourselves." No living statesman had such genius in disclosing himself intimately to his countrymen. That accounted for the swiftness of his rise, his unexampled success in life. He long dwelt in a cheap flat on one of the back streets of Montmartre. No one was ever more human. Some writers attributed this to a peasant origin; but he was of the bourgeoisie. His father had become comfortably situated after success in business at Nantes, and no difficulty was found in educating Aristide for the bar. He had from his early youth what the French call flux of words. He thought of becoming a novelist, of the school of Balzac, whose works he devoured when young. He had the literary gift, but he was without the literary temperament. A man of words, he was likewise a man of action, a combination unusual in France.

Rare ability and exceptional opportunities did not alone account for Briand. He acted always on the theory of "nothing venture, nothing gain." He would risk his whole career upon a single throw, as every one noticed when he faced trade-unions in the railway strike and terminated a great political crisis. It was essentially characteristic of him that he employed reckless chauffeurs. He was in many collisions. The French like that sort of thing. Oratory alone did not make him politically, altho he was perhaps the most daring orator in France. With more imagination than Viviani, and more earnestness than Clémenceau, he had besides inexpressibly graceful gestures. He never pounded the tribune, but walked toward it naturally. This detail meant much to French deputies. Many a speech in France has been wrecked by an epigram, launched in malice as a speaker proceeded from his seat to the fatal tribune. Briand took the trip naturally. Altho, his speeches were compelling, because his voice sent them home, they read like a poet's prose.

He was noted for capacity to sleep like Napoleon, anywhere. It was a survival from his journalist days, when he wrote about eco