Evening star., 1928-12-02

the foreign Office He had some able
| collaboratorS, but none worked quickly
enough for him. He accepted data and
recommendations from them, but all the
logical construction of note or men,
orandum was worked out and decided
upon by him; most frequently even all
the wording was his own. Incapable of
using the labor of others as a substi-
tute for his own labor, he is like a
sculptor who wants to be quarryman
! also.
Time for Everything.
With an astounding capacity for
work, he finds time for everything. A
few months ago. tired of waiting for
certain trif1ing sums that the French
administration owed me for a small
property at sunny Sainte- Maxine, near
Toulon, l wrote to him. After 20 days
/ received his answer-and the check.
But nothing had been done in a dicta-
! torial way, to please so-called impor-
| tant foreigner. -. No, he had gone
through the channels of the admins
tration, he had discovered where the
delay had occurred and he had seen to
| it that everybody involved in the case
was paid, not only the important for
eigner."
| This omniScience. of his is the secret
both of his lasting successes and of his
| psychological failures-becauSe, by his
methods, leaving nothing to imagina-
| tion, to improvisation, to instinct, M.
Poincare runs the risk sometimes of
becoming the prisoner of his own men,
tai processes. He wins his way with his
colleagues in the cabinet-men having
the moral size and the mental impor-
tance of BRAND and of Herriot-by
| the sheer force of a mind made up.
Nf ifNI @f {aI
| limitation. Nothing, in my opinion,
would be more erroneous. And there
| lies, so I always felt, the tragedy of M
Poincare's Soul-of soul whose inner
secrets he discloses to none, not out of
pride, but out of a sort of mental pudic-
ity a trait which Is not infrequently
found in the noblest French minds.
Repeats His Phrases.
Once he has constructed formula
exactly expressing his thoughts about
something essential, like the German
reparations or the French occupation of
the Rhineland or the French debt to
the United States, he repeats his phrases
with unrelenting regularity in speech
| after speech. week after week. So ex-
treme appears his mental rigidity that
he gives the impression of complete
inability to admit of controversial
discussion.
Thus Poincare gives such an irritat-
| ing impression of mapping out affairs
in strict order of his own, leaving no
| margin for give and take. that one
often sighs, Such a great ruler this
man would be-if only the human race
we're a collection of mechanical toys"
. In reality, the more have
| thought about him, the more have
ended by considering this ironical bou-
tade as a supreme injustice.
I came to this conclusion after
careful study of Poincare's mind during
what some have considered his main
political error-the occupation of the
Ruhr.
On the arrival to power in Italy of a
group of men for whom I felt deep
intellectual distrust, I at once resigned
my ONCE of Italian Ambassador to
France and maintained my resignation
in spite of kilograms sent to me by the
new chief of the Italian government,
asking me to withdraw 1t.
Sorry as I was to give up work
which I had hoped would further the
peace of our peoples, there was one rea-
son which brought ME a feeling of
secret. relief My frequent converse
tions with M. Poincare had left me
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