although defeated, were not dismayed, and piled up a mass of interpolations upon every imaginable question of home and foreign politics. On Jan. 1 6 1 9 1 9 there were no fewer than 1 3 inter- pellations before the Chamber waiting for a day to be fixed for their discussion. Clemenceau said that he could not possibly agree to resume the debate which had already ended in a vote of confidence for the Government. He pointed out that the Peace Conference had already begun its labours, and that if the Govern- ment were to be allowed to work properly therein, the Chamber must exercise its right of interpellation in a moderate spirit, and refrain in public debate from making capital out of supposed divergencies of opinion between different Governments. As in the matter of choice of the French peace delegation, so in this matter, Clemenceau relied upon his popularity with the country to get for him his own way. Instead of nominating, as he had been urged to do, eminent politicians to the peace delegation, he chose his collaborators at the Conference from his own Ministry and his own officials. M. de Tasta, French ambassador at Berne, was appointed general secretary of the Conference; the other delegates being Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Klotz, Minister of Finance; Jules Cambon, former French ambassador in Berlin, and Andre Tardieu (b. 1876), High Commissioner for Franco-American Affairs. Of these men the last was, after Clemenceau, the most important member of the delegation, and he was destined in later days to become the chief defender of Clemenceau and the Treaty of Versailles in the long campaign made against both in Parliament. He was an attache at Berlin in 1897, acted as prime minister's secretary under Waldeck-Rous- seau until 1902; he then became foreign editor of the Temps, where he made his influence widely felt; he has held chairs at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques and at the Ecole de Guerre; he entered French politics in 1914; acted as censor at the beginning of the war; served in the field until he was invalided out, when he was appointed French High Commissioner to the United States.
Clemenceau and the Opposition. In France more than in any other country the actions and deliberations of the first six months of 1919 were to form the bulk of the political raw material of the country for years to come. The presence of the Peace Conference in Paris, moreover, had a very great influence upon the whole affairs of the country. Delegates swarmed in the streets of the capital. There were no fewer than 70 of them at the first sitting. Each of them was accompanied by a cloud of experts, secretaries and other minor officials. They filled the hotels and restaurants, and contributed very largely to increasing the almost prohibitive cost of living. The British delegation occupied two giant estab- lishments, the Hotels Astoria and Majestic; the Baltimore and La Perouse hotels accommodated minor officials; and special printing works were built for the British delegation in the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour occupied large flats in the rue Nitot opposite the Bischoffsheim residence which President Wilson, after leaving Prince Murat's palace, made his home. The American delegation was housed at the Hotel Crillon, and there was hardly a single state represented which did not have one hotel of its own. The press had the over-magnificent residence of the late M. Dufayel in the Champs Elysees placed at its disposal as a club. In spite of this gathering of diplomats, the hangers-on of diplomacy, and statesmen, there was but very little of the public " junketing " which marked the Congress of Vienna. Clemenceau would have none of it, and this feeling was shared by Lloyd George and President Wilson. Any socially brilliant functions which might have been held, would have aroused comment in Parliament, and both Clemenceau and Lloyd George were acutely conscious throughout the proceedings of the importance of looking after their respective Chambers.
Clemenceau, although strong in repeated and heavy votes of confidence, was nevertheless aware that the trust reposed in him by the Chamber of Deputies was due rather to the fact that the Chamber of Deputies had no alternative than that it loved him for himself alone. On several occasions during the Confer- ence, when a point which he considered vital for France was at stake, he threatened to resign rather than to ask his Parliament to accept the suggested compromise. He was attacked with the
utmost ferocity in the years which followed the signature of peace, for having sacrificed the interests of France to the friendship, both personal and political, which he had always entertained for Great Britain. During the progress of the Conference, however, his critics either did not dare or did not care to come into the open. Clemenceau's appearances in the Chamber were few and far between. He reserved his strength, his patience and his passion for the discussion of peace, and left the Chamber to glean what information it could through the public press and the workings of its various committees.
He was forced to suspend his work for a time on Feb. 19. As he left his house in the rue Franklin to drive to the Ministry in the morning a French anarchist, Emile Cottin, emptied a Browning pistol into his car. He was wounded by one of the bullets below the left shoulder-blade, and stood the shock with extraordinary calmness, transacting business in his own house within a few hours of the attempt. As week after week passed without show- ing any perceptible advance towards the conclusion of peace, and without there being any sign of the Government intending to con- sult Parliament with regard to the terms, considerable dissatis- faction was shown. It was expressed in violent criticism in a debate in the Chamber on March 26 by Franklin-Bouillon, presi- dent of the Foreign Affairs Committee; by the Budget Committee of the Chamber, which expressed to Clemenceau its regret that he did not intend to communicate the peace terms to the Chamber until after their signature, and that while the country was in a situation without any precedent Parliament should thus be con- fronted with a. fait accompli, and should have no other method of expressing its opinion of the peace than by accepting it or reject- ing it in all its clauses; and by the Senate, where an unofficial manifesto was signed by every member present, reminding Clem- enceau of what France expected to find in the Treaty of Peace. At the same time, the Confederation Generale du Travail had placarded Paris and the provinces with a vigorous protest against what it termed the sabotage of peace.
Internal French Situation. Clemenceau's strength as a war fighter and his pertinacity as a negotiator of peace, cannot be denied. Neither can the failure of his administration to cope with current economic and labour questions be disputed. From the start of his Ministry the more or less Draconian decrees as to food restrictions were not applied in the spirit in which they were drawn up. The Food Minister, Vilgrain, opened a number of State stores for the sale of groceries and other food-stuffs, but was unable by this method tq make any impression upon prices. A bill was introduced on Feb. 5, inflicting drastic penalties upon speculative profiteering, but that measure also remained without effect. A hundred municipal butchers' shops were opened, but they also failed to stem the rising tide. These economic factors, together with political aspirations aroused by the course of events in Russia, led to a number of labour disturbances during the first four months of the Peace Conference.
Clemenceau was never a popular figure with Labour; his action in suppressing strikes had been far too vigorous for the workman's taste. They were therefore all the more surprised when, on Jan. i, Clemenceau received the syndicalist delegates and asked the Confederation Generale du Travail to submit to him their economic demands, so that he might communicate those which were ripe for discussion to the Peace Conference. The moderate leaders, however, who were quite willing to accept this offered cooperation of Clemenceau, were unable to control the rank and file movement which led to a transport strike in Paris on Jan. 24, which brought to a standstill nearly all the city's methods of communication. Claveille immediately placed those services under military control, and the next day work was again resumed. On Jan. 27 there was further trouble on the P.L.M. system where a one-minute strike was called by the local executive.
The acquittal of Villain on March 30 for the assassination of Jaures gave to Labour's economic discontent a political impetus, and in spite of the introduction of an eight-hour-day bill by M. Colliard, Minister of Labour, on April 8 Labour remained sulky. The bill was adopted after three days' discussion, on April 18. In spite of this and other indications of the conciliatory attitude
