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gle for life or death upon whose issue her very existence was staked.

Hence judicial scruples, lawyer's discussions, and magistrates tirades, counted for nothing with Clemenceau. The war had to be won. Caillaux, and all those who shared his opinions, were so many obstacles to its victorious continuation. Caillaux maintained publicly that victory was impossible, that it would be purchased far too dearly, that it was useless and even dangerous to go on with so desperate a struggle in the vain hope of ever winning it.

Without a moment's hesitation, with one bold stroke, Clemenceau removed that obstacle. He had Caillaux imprisoned, tried, and condemned.

From that moment everyone knew what to expect. It was an event that caused a great stir both at home and abroad.

It showed that France was using to the utmost its moral and material strength.

Clemenceau summed up that state of feeling in one of his terse, abrupt sentences, so characteristic of hím: "I'm making war"! He would repeat it at all times. Meaning, that nothing outside that vast preOccupation of successfully carrying through the war, was of the slightest importance to him.

In acting thus, he was followed in the steps of the heroes of the French Revolution. It was another rait in his character recalling theirs.

Never did he show more indomitable energy, a more implacable will than in the spring and summer of 1918, just after Ludendorf's victorious offensive all along the French front. It was chiefly after the German victory of the Chemin des Dames on May 27th that the whole outlook seemed desperate indeed. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the French armies, that buckler of the Allied Forces, had received a terrible setback. One part of the front had been forced and a large breech opened that seemed a problem indeed for the supreme command of the Allies to fill in. In many circles in Paris, more particularly amongst the parliamentary ones, always easily alarmed, great despondency reigned.

Marshal Foch was criticized. He was blamed for having allowed his troops to be attacked by surprise, for having imprudently exposed the centre of his armies. Many clamoured for his dismissal.

It was during those most.critical days that Clemenceau showed his greatest strength. The slightest wavering on his part, (we may own it now) and all would have been lost. Any alteration in the supreme command of the Allies might have spelled disaster. Clemenceau never wavered, never weakened. Summing up all his strength to brave the storm, he called upon England to send every available man they had to the front, and rushed up the American reinforce

ments. Above all he took the part of Foch against all his detractors.

A few months later that energy received its reward. The war was won. It is to those weeks that history will refer when speaking of him.

What is the essence of that combative spirit, that unlimited confidence that rises above all weakness knowing no despondency?

Just as with the founders of the French Revolution, it is derived from a deep sense of patriotic feeling, and the idea that love of one's native land should predominate all else, that all man's possessions here below, even life itself, should be willingly sacrificed to country.

That is the essence of the doctrine dominating the French Revolutionists. Theirs was above all a spirit of self-abnegation and sacrifice. Individual man was of no account. The only thing that mattered was patriotism; the spirit which holds succeeding generations in one chosen spot of the Earth, labouring and struggling to hand down to future generations the sacred heritage of love of country.

When it attains to such imperious heights this spirit of sacrifice becomes one of purely religious feeling, capable of accomplishing miracles. Love of country in Clemenceau's eyes signifies love for a land

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.

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