The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-02-23
PREMIER CLEMENcEAU LEAVING 4Ae VERSAILu
CONFERENCE.
Strong Man of Nation Has
Mind Trained by Sixty
Years of Struggle

infallibly to the man whose force and
rigidity and singleness of purpose
could arouse all France to the supreme
drive which called for every ounce of
her strength. He took up the burden
with cheer. The heavier the stress the
more magnetic his call.
France believed in him. It was he
who believed in Gen. Foch. who COM
oelled the unified command and made
Foch the supreme commander.
Here you see the signs of the
superman. II was not in vain that
they called him Tiger. He has in hu-
man guise that sliding of tremendous
muscles under a velvety skin in per-
feet grace of movement which betoken
! the tiger. his capacity TO spring on his
prey with lightning stroke and crush
| ing power. He slew an opponent with
an article or a speech with the same
| precision that he laid his opponent on
| the grass when he pointed his pistol.
Another capacity of his was never to
| accept defeat as final while he
breathed.
Consider the France in which he
lived and moved. Run down the list
of men who shone at the forefront Of
France from 1865 to 1919. Passing
over the Ave years remaining to the
| empire Of Napoleon III.-with their
Roulier. olivier, Jules Favre, de
Cassignac, 9Emile de Girardin, Alex
| andre Dumas, &c.-to the France, the
Paris, after Sedan-Thiers, Victor
Hugo, MacMahon, Gambetta, Dau-
diffret. Pasquier. Jules Greyy, de Brogiie,
Jules Simon, waddinston. Jules Ferry,
de Freycinet, Emile lola, Alexandra
Dumas, fills, and Henri Rochefort, TO
mention a few Of the men OF brilliance
| now all but forgotten. 1t was some
thing to shine among them and their
successors, and 1t was at their level
that the redoubtable talents Of the
Tiger wssA called apSa - tell.
Born in Land of RoyalisBa.
About his birthplace one thing is
notable that It was in La Vandee, the
| country of royalism, OF reaction
against the Revolution, namely at the
| little remote. rustic village OF 1900
souls, Mouillion- en- Pareds, on Sep
| TENDER IS, 1874. A child with curly,
coal black locks and eyes, Georges
| went to the local school and afterward
| to the Lycee Of Nantes, where later
Jules Verne and Jules Vallees learned
their first lessons. He was not a
! brilliant boy, but reflective. He took
three years there and then was packed
of to Paris to- in his nineteenth year,
study medicine. His life In the Latin
Quarter was that OF the students Of
the times of Napoleon H.. parading
/ the Boul' Michel, haunting the Luxem-
bourg Gardens in crowds disseminat-
| ing republican ideas eating at the
PAYS latin tables d'hote and living up
| five flights and taking the courses by
day at the medical school or the lee
lures at the Sorbonne.. To be i'm
perialist there was to be unpopular
omen of the future of France. 1t was
| free. gay life and Georges Clemen-
ceau. led 1t, but he fell readily under
the spell OF the budding writer's who
| burned midnight gas composing es-
! saws on free thought and democratic
government.
They brought out little newspapers
Of short life printed furtively. The
| brasseries. the cabarets, the Closerie
des Lilas saw less and less of him. He
made one OF a group OF students who
stroye to guide the formation or an