al 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 country his influence on the delegates was decisive. M.
Clemenceau, who before the war was the intimate friend of Austrian
journalists, hated his country's enemies with undying hate. And he loved
France passionately. I remember significant words of his, uttered at the
end of the year 1899 to an enterprising young man who had founded a
Franco-German review in Munich and craved his moral support. "Is it
possible," he exclaimed, "that it has already come to that? Well, a
nation is not conquered until it accepts defeat. Whenever France gives
up she will have deserved her humiliation."

At the Conference M. Clemenceau moved every lever to deliver his country
for all time from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist,
he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was
wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an
effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the
litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the
self-determination of peoples which it became the fashion to raise to
the inaccessible heights where those ideals are throned which are to be
worshiped but not incarnated. The public somehow never took his
conversion to Wilsonianism seriously, neither did his political friends
until the League bade fair to become serviceable in his country's hands.
M. Clemenceau's acquaintanceship with international politics was at once
superior to that of the British Premier and very slender. But his
program at the Conf