that is free, republican and democratic; here again. can be traced the influence of his French Revolutionary ancestors. He is firm in the belief that a country like France which has for years endeavored to be governed by representatives, freely chosen, is more worth while than a country like Germany, that has allowed itself to be docilely, servilely governed by its rulers. The patriotism of the one is of higher, purer substance, than that of the other, for the simple reason that man's dignity is on a higher level in a free country, than in an autocracy.

The love and passion for struggle, the cult of liberty and democracy, such are the chief points in Clemenceau's political doctrine.

His philosophical doctrines are borrowed entirely from the sages and philosophers of the last century, -Auguste Comte, and John Stuart Mill. Clemenceau is a positivist. He has the same faith in science that he has in democracy. But that positivism glows and radiates with the warmth of the idealism which is the predominant feature of the French statesmen who were the artisans of the Revolution of 1848.

They loved mankind; and were convinced that in spite of all, notwithstanding a thousand obstacles, mankind was ever tending towards a higher and better destiny.

There is a great deal of idealism in Clemenceau's

nature. Not to know that side of his character is not to know the real Clemenceau at all. It truly radiates in his deep sympathy towards all suffering humanity.

Clemenceau has expressed that philosophical turn of mind in one of his books, the finest he has ever written, called "Le Grand Pan." He heads the preface with the well known sentence taken from Renan's "St. Paul,"--"Life means giving one's blossom, then one's fruit; what more can it give?”

Clemenceau gives Plutarch's anecdote about the Grecian travellers who were sailing on the Ionian Sea when they heard, or fancied they heard, when nearing the Island of Paxos, the words reechoed again by the echoes "Great Pan is dead."

He sums up in these pages his whole conception of life, the outcome of all he has read, thought about, observed. He gives the impressions of his native Vendée, with its sea-beaten shores, where during his long life of ups and downs, he always returns to gain renewed vigor and strength. Leaving the country he turns to the city, particularly to Paris where he has spent so many years of his life, showing the city's landscapes, its dramas, its seamy side of life, with its prostitution, its police courts, scenes of Montmartre, the working men and women of its suburbs, its prisons, even its scaffold.

I have insisted upon Clemenceau's political and philosophical qualities, it now remains to examine his defects.

No modern statesman can hope to accomplish a lasting work, can hope to be really great, unless he has mastered, at least to a certain extent, the problems of economics.

For it is the economic problems that govern the world. All its upheavals, its revolutions, its wars, inevitably end in economic solutions.

Now, Clemenceau belongs to a generation, to a formation of mind, that was almost totally ignorant of that subject. It appears almost non-existent to him.

Toward the end of the war, when victory seemed almost a certainty, he was implored to give his attention without further delay, to the solving of the terrible financial problems that could not fail to accumulate at the end of the war; reparations, interallied debts, etc.

With his customary abruptness Clemenceau dismissed the subject, saying, "I'm making war! I cannot be bothered with anything else! Let us first win the war, all the rest can be quite easily settled.'

The Allies won the war.

Unfortunately for them, the peace, with its financial problems, was not so easily settled.

If at the present moment Europe is floundering amid a thousand difficulties of all kinds, it is partly owing to that negligence by Clemenceau of the economic questions of the world,

That ignorance, or rather disregard for the science of economics is not confined to Clemenceau alone. The same reproach might be made to all the other statesmen who collaborated with him in the drawing up of the Treaty of Versailles.

It is one of the great misfortunes of the present age. Every day sees economic, commercial, and industrial questions that outrank in importance the purely political or diplomatic ones. It was not so a hundred or even fifty years ago. The most important and essential points in the composition of a Treaty at that time were the limiting of the boundaries; the conferring of a province or town on a certain State. Nowadays the changing of boundary lines plays quite a secondary part, and by far the most important business is concerned with the economic relations between nations, their debts, their exchange, etc.

The most startling of paradoxes lies in the fact that all the great treaties drawn up after the greatest war of modern times, were negotiated and compiled accord

ing to the old methods of fifty and even a hundred years ago. Experts and technicians were no doubt consulted upon the matter, but in addition to the fact that many were chosen on purely political grounds, without regard to their professional capacities, their advice was often discarded when dealing with questions of the most vital interest to the world at large. The most important decisions were often made by the statesmen themselves, who were ill fitted, both by temperament and training, to deal with the intricate problems they had to solve.

Clemenceau is a great writer and in his own way, a great speaker. Both his style and eloquence bear the imprint of his peculiarly combative temperament.

By far his best articles were written in the heat of controversy, during the Dreyfus affair, for instance, when dealing with home affairs; in the Franco-German crises, when dealing with foreign ones.

He was one of the men who, during the Dreyfus affair, contributed most towards the final triumph of justice and truth, throwing himself body and soul into the fray.

For years he was always on the war-path, always ready to attack, alternately aiming terrible blows, now to the reactionary "Right," and, now to the socialist "Left."