Clemenceau Speaks

For six years (since 1920) M. Clemenceau pronounced no public utterance. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Frenchmen dubbed him "The Father of Victory," and with that supreme laurel wreathing his brow he has felt it perhaps superfluous to emerge from well earned retirement. Last week, however, he followed the bier of an old friend and broke his long silence as he stood beside the open grave. The dead man thus greatly honored was M. Gustave Geffroy, 71, President de 1'Academie Goncourt, Administrateur de la Manufacture des Gobelins,* a loyal associate of M. Clemenceau in his long fight to secure the freedom of Captain Dreyfus.**

Seemingly much moved, the aged "Tiger of France" declared: "It was the express desire of my departed friend that I should speak here. My words will be few. M. Geffroy asked his friends to avoid vanity and worldly honors at his funeral. . . .

"He asked only that we should bring with us a few flowers, as though he desired to inhale for the last time the perfume and beauty of living things before returning to earth. The perfume of those flowers is wafted over him now and with it the nostalgia of our keen and true friendship. . . .

"He lived and worked and suffered. He has been happy--one must not be afraid to say--it has known life and happiness from every angle. . . ."

Then, with the first evidence of emotion which M. Clemenceau is known to have evinced since the moment of Victory, in 1918, he concluded somewhat brokenly: "Death is a magnificent purification of life. . . . Geffroy left behind him a good example for all Frenchmen: courage, labor, method and will power; lofty hopes which were not all realized. My last word here is: as long as we live, M. Geffroy has not died. Would that the same could be said of all of us."

Bending down, M. Clemenceau placed a wreath upon the coffin. A moment later, he walked in silence to his motor car and was driven away.

*The excessively famed species of tapestry created in the 16th Century by the Gobelin family and manufactured by the State since the days of Louis XIV. Its production requires such extreme skill and care that the most experienced workman can turn out only a few square feet a year, naturally at a price eclipsing that of all but the most valuable oil paintings. The Gobelins, originally a family of dyers from Reims, were able to purchase patents of nobility through the sale of their tapestries and are not mentioned as artisans later than the 17th Century.

**As everyone knows, the condemnation for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, and his subsequent rehabilitation created an international scandal almost without precedent between 1904 and 1906. Anti-Semitism was the basis of the incredibly unjust treatment which Dreyfus received, but the trial stirred animosities which penetrated to the very core of French politics.