—M. Clemenceau.—

Otago Witness, Issue 2722, 16 May 1906, Page 70

— M. Clemenceau. —

He is the son of a stout Republican, who probably also was the son of a stout Republican. La Vendee, as everybody knows, was the last stronghold of royalty in the days of the French Revolution, and its people even to-day are distinguished from those other parts of France by their piety, their stubbornness, and their love of the land. A somewhat sombre race, tied to the soil, or to the sea ; not rich, but laborious,' simple, credulous, and stubborn, they are still isolated and apart from the rest of their- countrymen. But La Vendee has its sharp contrasts, and these who belong to the creed of the minority — the creed of Fresthought and of Republicanism — bring to their faith something of. the same tenacity and extremeness their countrymen generally give to the altar and the throne. M. Clemenceau curiously enough is a Vendean^ but a Vendean who is in violent hostility to all the ideals of his own people". His father was the came ; he brought up his son from his earliest years as an avowed and irreconcilable Freethinker, and did not make those concessions to convention and to social decorum which even Freethinkers are accustomed "to make in France. M. Clemenceau is one of the few Frenchmen who never were brought into a church from childhood ; he has never been baptised.

It was not unnatural that a youth with such upbringing should come into collision with 6UciKt a Government as that of* the Emperor Napoleon*. Clemenceau was little more than *a boy when he took part in some anti-imperialistic manifestations, and already he began to find that Paris wa^ too hot to hold him. This led to one of the events which has most coloured his life. If you meet M. Clemenceau you are surprised to find that, unlike most* of his countrymen, he speaks English quite perfectly. You may perhaps find some trace in it of a slight American accent, but it is only a trace, for all you hear to the contrary he might have been born and brought up in England? instead of in France. The secret is that he left France for the United States during the closing ypars of the Empire, spent four there, and thus acquired a perfect command of the English tongue. I am not quite sure what h? was in America, but I seem- to recollect that he was a schoolmaster there, or perhaps he praetisrd his profession ; for he is a fully qualified doctor.