erence was simple and coherent, because independent
of geography and ethnography: France was to take Germany's leading
position in the world, to create powerful and devoted states in eastern
Europe, on whose co-operation she could reckon, and her allies were to
do the needful in the way of providing due financial and economic
assistance so as to enable her to address herself to the cultural
problems associated with her new role. And he left nothing undone that
seemed conducive to the attainment of that object. Against Mr. Wilson he
maneuvered to the extent which his adviser, M. Tardieu, deemed safe, and
one of his most daring speculations was on the President's journey to
the States, during which M. Clemenceau and his European colleagues hoped
to get through a deal of work on their own lines and to present Mr.
Wilson with the decisions ready for ratification on his return. But the
stratagem was not merely apparent; it was bruited abroad with indiscreet
details, whereupon the first American delegate on his return broke the
tables of their laws--one of which separated the Treaty from the
Covenant--and obliged them to begin anew. It is fair to add that M.
Clemenceau was no uncompromising partisan of the conquest of the left
bank of the Rhine, nor of colonial conquests. These currents took their
rise elsewhere. "We don't want protesting deputies in the French
Parliament," he once remarked in the presence of the French Minister of
Foreign Affairs.[50] Offered the choice between a number of bridgeheads
in Germany and the military protection of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, he
unhesitatingly decided for the latter, which had been offered to him by
President Wilson after the rejection of the Rhine frontier.

M. Clemenceau, whose remarkable mental alacrity, self-esteem, and love
of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and
epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate
of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with
circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country.
For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a _bon mot_,
however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more
importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to
carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of
Britain and France is worth recording, both as characterizing the man
and as extenuating his offense again