M. Clemenceau is the incarnation of the tireless spirit of destruction.  Pulling down has ever been his delight, and it is largely to his success in demolishing the defective work of rivals—­and all human work is defective—­that he owes the position of trust and responsibility to which the Parliament raised him during the last phase of the war.  Physically strong, despite his advanced age, he is mentally brilliant and superficial, with a bias for paradox, epigram, and racy, unconventional phraseology.  His action is impulsive.  In the Dreyfus days I saw a good deal of M. Clemenceau in his editorial office, when he would unburden his soul to M.M.  Vaughan, the poet Quillard, and others.  Later on I approached him while he was chief of the government on a delicate matter of international combined with national politics, on which I had been requested to sound him by a friendly government, and I found him, despite his developed and sobering sense of responsibility, whimsical, impulsive, and credulous as before.  When I next talked with him he was the rebellious editor of L’Homme Enchaine, whose corrosive strictures upon the government of the day were the terror of Ministers and censors.  Soon afterward he himself became the wielder of the great national gagging-machine, and in the stringency with which he manipulated it he is said by his own countrymen to have outdone the government of the Third Empire.  His alter ego, Georges Mandel, is endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his venerable chief.  His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate.  A striking illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part of 1918.  Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in Washington, and because he had omitted to despatch it through the War Ministry, M. Mandel, who is a strict disciplinarian, proposed that he be placed under arrest.  It was with difficulty that some public men moved him to leniency.

M. Clemenceau, the professional destroyer, who can boast that he overthrew eighteen Cabinets, or nineteen if we include his own, was unquestionably the right man to carry on the war.  He acquitted himself of the task superbly.  His faith in the Allies’ victory was unwavering.  He never doubted, never flagged, never was intimidated by obstacles nor wheedled by persons.  Once during the armistice, in May or June, when Marshal Foch expressed his displeasure that the Premier should have issued military orders to troops under his command[48] without first consulting him, he was on the point of dismissing the Marshal and appointing General Petain to succeed him.[49] Whether the qualities which stood him in such good stead during the world struggle could be of equal, or indeed of much, avail in the general constructive work for which the Conference was assembled is a question that needs only to be formulated.  But in securing every advantage that could be conferred on his own