CLEMENCEAU
complished! He speaks, and all the historical organizations of human societies suddenly crumble.
All that man has ever conceived of a social order, all that he has ever wished, all that he has realized of justice, commencing in pain, in sorrow, in blood, since the day when he burst from his caverns to the conquest of his earth, all the secular effort for a better life, all the progress acquired at the price of a labor figured perhaps by millions of years—victory! all that resolves itself into dust; all that enshrouds itself in smoke, and if your eye wishes to follow this smoke into the heavens you there behold a new prodigy; for in sumptuous clouds enchanted palaces rear themselves, whence is banished all human misery. There remains only to fix them in the air and to seat their foundations among us in order that the work of Genesis be reformed for ever.
The social evil that Jehovah could not eliminate from His work shall disappear. There shall remain to us only the evils of human conditions—sufficient, in all conscience. Alas! while this pompous mirage unfolds itself before the charmed gaze of the new creator, I, vacillating
intense interest, and accorded at times great outbursts of enthusiastic applause. He lost no opportunity for indulging in the biting wit and faculty for stinging retort for which he is celebrated. When Jaurès took the tribune to speak again, he described himself as "all bristling with barbs, launched at me by a hand, skilful and always young." M. Clemenceau's speech occupied the greater part of the session of June 18 and 19. Abridged. Translated by Scott Robinson.
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