present. So it was with the heroes of the Commune. The more capable of its leaders, full of enthusiasm, not wanting in high executive ability-Paris was never better managed than during the Commune, and many important reforms then introduced have been adopted ever since and thoroughly justified in their resistance to attempted reaction, were nevertheless unable to grasp the truths of the situation either within or without. Fighting, as the old Communist sergeant of the guard nobly said, for “la solidarité humaine," the men at the top fought one another within the walls of the beleaguered city with truly fraternal intolerance.

Victory was from the first impossible on the lines chosen. Even had the Versailles troops of M. Thiers been beaten-as they could have been in the early days of the struggle the conquering German army still lay cantoned on the other side of Paris, ready to apply the most relentless methods of repression to the Communists if they had won. It was as hopeless an attempt to make twelve o'clock at eleven as has ever been seen on the planet. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was not less certainly doomed to failure than was the sudden revolt of the Paris Communists of 1871. But the Socialists of Europe, like the Abolitionists of America, celebrated the Commune and have deified its martyrs for many a long year. Such brave and unselfish champions of the proletariat as Delescluze and Courbet hold the same position in the minds of Socialists that John Brown held among the friends of the negro before the great Civil War.

Clemenceau had a personal experience of revolutionary democracy under the Commune which may have influenced his views about Socialism in practical affairs in later life. He was, when it began, the duly elected and popular Republican Mayor of Montmartre. He was the deputy sent to Bordeaux by a vast majority to sit on the extreme left, and his sympathies were at first entirely with the Federals. No more fervent admirer of the aspirations and idealism of the city of Paris ever lived. To him Paris is a personality, as the city of the violet crown was to the Athenian statesmen of old. All that went for nothing. The new Committee wanted their own man at Montmartre, and Clemenceau was not that man.

So Mayor he ceased to be, but earnest democrat and devoted friend of the people he remained. Unfortunately for him, he could not believe that mere possession of the capital meant control of France by the Parisians, or the freeing of his country from German occupation. For once he advocated prudence and compromise. It was an unlucky experience. The Communists Pyat, Vermorel, and others so resented his moderate counsels that they issued an order for his arrest. Failing to get hold of Clemenceau himself,

they captured a speaking likeness of the tribune of the Eighteenth Arrondissement in the person of a young Brazilian. Him they were about to shoot, with all due formality, when they discovered that their proposed victim was the wrong man.

It is highly creditable to Clemenceau that a few years later one of his greatest speeches, that on the Amnesty of the Communists (May 1876), was given in favour of the liberation and recall from exile of the very same people who would have silenced him for good and all when they were in power. He escaped their well-meant intentions and went on a tour of Radical propaganda through the provinces. But this was quite as objectionable to Thiers and the reactionists as his previous conduct had been to Pyat and the extremists. On his return to Paris consequently he was nearly butchered by the conquering Versailles troops, just as he had been nearly perforated by the defeated Communists. Gallifet and Thiers, it is said, used far less ceremony in their wholesale slaughter of their Parisian countrymen than the Fédérés did in the removal of single "suspects." Men of ability and judgment are apt to be caught between two fires when passion takes control on both sides. It was, in fact, little short of a miracle that the Prime Minister of France to-day did not complete his services to his country in 1871 by dying in the ditch under the wall of Père Lachaise at the early age of thirty.

The Commune was crushed and the Republic of Reaction reigned in its stead. Peace was established in Paris under circumstances of almost incredible horror. "La République, mon ami, said Clemenceau to me a few years afterwards, "c'est l'Empire républicanisé." And so it was. Bourgeois domination of the narrowest and meanest kind, leading, so the reactionaries hoped, to the restoration of the monarchy, had its will of Paris and all that Paris at its best stood for. As we look back upon that period of pettifoggery the marvel is that the royalists were not successful. If they had had a king worth fighting for, they might have been. But during the whole of this time of political doubt and difficulty, when the atmosphere was full of reactionary intrigues, Clemenceau as member, secretary, and then President of the Municipal Council of repressed Paris, and from 1876 as Radical deputy in the National Assembly, steadily fought the good fight for democratic Republicanism and the freedom of all. Bitterly opposed alike to monarchy and priestcraft, an enthusiastic champion of the rights of the people as the best and safest outlet and remedy for discontent, and the surest means of securing social change and thorough education for the benefit of the whole of France, he stood steadily to his guns.

It was a great part he then played. For fifteen years he was the leader of the Extreme Left against the policy of hesitating

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, 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