compromise and cowardly opportunism, which was upheld even by those who practised it, from Léon Gambetta downwards, only as that which divided them the least. Such Government tactics roused no enthusiasm and solved no problem. Clemenceau always supported every official movement which gave evidence of a desire to meet the wishes of the advanced Party, either in regard to the checking of ecclesiastical influence, the division of the State from the Church, the improvement of social conditions, or the genuine democratization of political forms. But he was absolutely relentless in his opposition to political trickery or trading with reaction in any shape. On these matters and on the necessity for complete freedom of speech and for the Press he never wavered, nor at any moment failed to take the right side, however difficult it might have been for him and his Party to do so. Thus it came about that, only the other day, when the Socialist Party unwisely attacked him as being reactionary in this direction, and grumbled because he made no reply : "That point," said Clemenceau, "it is unnecessary for me to deal with : my record is a sufficient answer to such a charge." In like manner, he remained ever steadfast in his opposition to colonization by conquest. There was not the slightest trace of capitalist Imperialism about him from start to finish. All the energy, all the strength, all the administrative ability, all the financial power were needed, not for wild-cat adventures abroad, but for the more complete and beneficial development of the country at home. Egypt, Tonkin, Cochin China, Madagascar, and Morocco were as nothing as compared with the welfare and growing prosperity of the people: the greatness, the glory, the dignity of the French Republic within the limits of France. So held Clemenceau.

Hence, year by year, Ministry after Ministry fell before the terrible attacks of Clemenceau, at the head of as powerful a Radical group as was ever seen in the National Assembly. And with each fresh victory he increased the exasperation of his enemies of all shades of opinion. The reactionists hated him because he made them look even smaller than they really were. The financiers abhorred him because he interfered with their financing and exposed their Colonial intrigues. The Socialists mistrusted him because, though he was playing their game politically, he refused to accept their views socially. A powerful combination against him, made up of the various elements, was, therefore, possible at any moment, and the trenchant articles by Camille Pelletan, Pichon, Millerand, and others in his journal La Justice helped to intensify the animosity and fear with which he was regarded by the factious of every shade of opinion. It was natural. For Clemenceau's enemies were striving for their own individual advantage. He

and his followers were working for what they believed to be the good of the people.

Clemenceau at the period I am writing about was well over forty and still in the prime of a vigorous life. He looked what he was active, alert, capable, and highly intelligent. His face was an index to his character. It gave an impression of almost barbarous energy which induced his Socialist detractors long afterwards to speak of him as "the Kalmuck." But this was merely caricature. Refinement, mental brilliancy, and high cultivation shone out from his animated features. A teetotaller, abstemious in his habits, and always in training, Clemenceau, with his rapidity of perception, quickness of retort, and mastery of incisive irony combined with trenchant wit, was a formidable opponent indeed. His rule in politics was based upon the soundest principle of all warfare: Never fail to attack in order to defend. The prescription of the American banker, "David Harum," might have been enunciated by Georges Clemenceau the French statesman: "Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it first."

As an orator he was destitute of those telling gestures, modifications of tone, and carefully turned phrases which we associate with the highest class of French public speaking. His voice rarely rises above a conversational level, he is quiet and unemotional in his manner. But the directness of his assaults and the dynamitical force of his short periods gained rather than lost effect on that account. I heard his famous Parliamentary encounter with my friend and comrade, the late Jean Jaurès, and, though my sympathies were entirely with the great champion of Socialism, and I held then, as I believe now, that he had far the stronger case, I was bound to admit that, in the mere question of immediate political dialectics, Clemenceau had the better of the fray. In private conversation Clemenceau is the most brilliant yet unartificial talker to whom I ever listened. Another quality he possesses, which proved uncommonly useful to him at more than one stage of his career. Clemenceau was, and possibly is even to-day, the most dangerous duellist in France. A lefthanded swordsman, and a perfect pistol-shot, no one who valued the integrity of his carcass was disposed to encounter the leader of the Extreme Left. Even the reactionary fire-eater, Paul de Cassagnac, who himself had killed three men, shrank from meeting his quietus from Clemenceau.

The rise and fall of Boulanger was a most dramatic incident in the career of the present French Premier. Boulanger was Clemenceau's cousin, and by his influence the General was appointed War Minister in one of the rapidly shifting Cabinets of those days. Clemenceau hoped that the new Minister, as a

thorough-going Radical, would do something important to improve the position of the rank and file of the French soldiery, and to prevent the spread among them of Catholic and reactionary intrigues. The General carried out the first part of this programme to a considerable extent, and to the great advantage of the French conscripts. But instead of doing the second portion of this work for which he was put in office, he followed precisely the contrary policy. Boulanger turned right round upon himself and his principal supporter, became the mere tool of a reactionary clique and, but for his own weakness, would have proved the most dangerous enemy the Republic has ever had to face.

Curiously enough, Clemenceau himself, who, of course, bitterly attacked this traitor to democracy when he changed his tactics, greatly underrated the danger from his own protégé. When Boulanger was fighting his double candidature for the Nord and the Dordogne, Clemenceau thought that, win or lose, he would not be really formidable. Boulanger carried both seats by large majorities. Then came the bitter contest for the representation of Paris. To a mere looker-on his victory seemed certain. Said Clemenceau to me, and his opinion was supported by my old friend the Socialist Dr. Paul Brousse, then President of the Paris Municipal Council, "Je crois bien qu'il se perd." He did not. But, having triumphantly won Paris at the polls, he lost France at Durand's Restaurant. The last hope of French royalty died a suicide in the Brussels Cemetery because he would not risk making a dash for the Elysée after dinner.

Now came a time of stress and strain indeed for his brilliant relation. Clemenceau remained the best-hated man in France by all who, for any reason, desired the downfall of the bourgeois Republic. How very much he had done to weaken the hold of that Republic on the mass of the people I doubt if he himself thoroughly understood. The heavy votes for Boulanger in the Provinces and in Paris partially opened his eyes. But now all his enemies were marshalled together against him, and he would take no steps to split them up. That was the period, too, of the great Panama scandal, which besmirched the reputations of many leading French statesmen and politicians even more completely than the Marconi share-gamble has blackened the characters of several of our own most influential men. As Cornelius Herz, one of the Panamists, had been a subscriber to the funds of La Justice, all that malignity, calumny, lies, and wholesale personal detraction could do to connect Clemenceau with Panama " was done.

M. Judet of the Petit Journal surpassed the greatest masters of mendacity and vilification in his campaign against the great

Radical leader. He had plenty of support outside his own organ. For Clemenceau had not only been a stalwart assailant of colonial annexations, but a close and constant friend of England and in favour of the English Entente. That was still more criminal than Panamism or Anti-Imperialism. It was doubledyed treachery in the eyes of his opponents. How well I remember the gibes about l'Anglais politician, and the insults in broken English that were hurled at him. Clemenceau was quite unmoved. He bided his time. At length his chance came. The whole matter was brought before the National Assembly; and, when Clemenceau rose to defend himself, so great had been the effect of the attacks upon him that no deputy ever stood up to address a more hostile audience. It appeared as if he had not a single friend in the whole House. Not a sound of greeting was heard. Yet so completely did the orator immolate his assailants and dissipate their calumnies that when he finished the whole Assembly rose and cheered him enthusiastically. Demosthenes himself never had a greater triumph. The condemnation in open court of the forgers, upon whose evidence the whole edifice of accusation had been built up, was the climax so far as Clemenceau's personal character was involved.

But this did not by any means end the political warfare against him. "La politique n'a pas d'entrailles ": his persecutors were relentless. It was at this time that I begged Clemenceau to come to some terms with the Socialists who were then gaining ground rapidly in France. Why, by the way, Clemenceau has never been a Socialist, puzzles me. All his speeches and writings contain many passages which every convinced Socialist would many_passages accept. But I suppose the individualism of his personality has throughout hindered him from subscribing to our principles. At any rate I always felt I was arguing with a man who was deaf of both ears to my well-meant suggestions. Socialism, he declared, would never become a political power in France. France, and above all rural France, which meant the bulk of Frenchmen, was and will remain vehemently individualistproperty, property, property. It was as useless to base any practical policy upon Socialists and their principles as to calculate upon their votes. But, I urged, extremes meet: the Catholics and Socialists may combine with the men whose minds have been poisoned by the Petit Journal and turn you out of the Var-the department for which Clemenceau then sat as deputy. He laughed at the very idea of such a defeat. The thing seemed to him beyond the bounds of possibility. Nevertheless the impossible occurred. Clemenceau lost his seat at the General Election of 1893, and was compelled to retire from Parliamentary life after more than seventeen years of active service.

It was a staggering blow. A weaker man would have felt it less and have been more discouraged. I wrote him a letter of sympathy on his defeat, and in his reply he could not conceal his special bitterness at the attitude of the Socialists. He ought, however, I think, to have foreseen and endeavoured to avert their hostility. But Clemenceau defeated showed not a moment's hesitation as to the course he would pursue. He had left the Assembly as the first Parliamentarian in France: he turned round at fifty-two and suddenly became her first journalist. Nothing in his whole life was more remarkable than the manner in which, without in the least changing his opinions, he held his own in this new field of work. During the ten years that le was excluded from Parliament he made a second brilliant reputation as a publicist and man of letters. To survey what he achieved in this department would take me far beyond the limits of the present article.

But his championship of justice for Dreyfus constitutes a splendid record of a fight against odds. Paris and France as a whole were dead against Dreyfus. He was throughout a very unpopular figure. But Clemenceau, with Zola, Jaurès, and other high-minded Frenchmen, was determined that, innocent or guilty, the Jew officer should have fair play. There was a terrible struggle to get it. L'Aurore, of which Clemenceau became editor in 1897, was the organ of the intellectuals who took Dreyfus' side. His own articles fell like bomb-shells into the camp of the militarists, reactionaries, and Jesuits. But he performed even a greater service to the cause when he suggested to Zola that he should write his famous pamphlet, and gave to it the striking title "J'Accuse." I was in Paris often during the crisis of the Dreyfus Affair. Never have I witnessed such furious passion as was then exhibited in that great city. The smell of blood was in the air. Clemenceau told me himself he felt confident that, had Zola been acquitted on his trial, instead of being condemned, there would have been a massacre of the Dreyfusards in court. Clemenceau's courageous action throughout this Dreyfus business is one of his highest titles to general respect and admiration.

Yet, when it was all over, Clemenceau, though now elected Senator for the Var, seemed somehow to drift into a political backwater. So much so that when he and my late friend Jean Jaurès came to a little luncheon I gave at Marguery's, not long afterwards, two or three of us talked as we went away of the sad pity it was for the sake of France that a man of his brilliancy and vigour should be shut out from the high positions to which he was fully entitled. This new eclipse was partly due to the fact that he had not long before allowed M. Combes, instead of