On With the War

Levin Daily Chronicle, 27 July 1918, Page 1

On With the War

-t-— "TIGER" TO FRENCH SOCIALISTS. VICTORY IK LAST FIFTEEN MINUTES. From his first day in otb' „o, Cleuienceau has beeiifl heckled by suspicious Socialists. What is his aim 1 they ask. Is ho for a reasonable pcaec, like President Wilson, or a blind and" savage bitter-ender? Because he is an old man himself, with nothing further to live for, would he bleed the world white in mere wanton rage? Here is his answer to such an attack immediately before the big offensive:— "X am not a danger to the national defence because I can have no ambition in this world (he is 76 years old) . No thing remains to me but the ardent desire to aid, in. the measure of my strength, my country to issue from the situation in which it now is. I am going to tell you all my thought—and afterwards you can combat me as you will. As the war keeps on you see that moral crisis developing which is at the «;nd of all wars. After all the material test of armed force, brutality, violence, rapine, murder, massacres, it is the moral crisis in which one or the other side ends. The side that can hold out longest morally is tho conqueror. The great eastern people which has undergone for centuries its historic test of war has expressed this thought in ono word: '' ' The conqueror is the one who is able to believe, for a quarter of an hour longer than his adversary, that he is not conquered I' "I came to the Government with this idea, that the country's moral must be kept up (a Socialist member had the grace to call out, 'You have succeeded! ') Moral is an excellent thing. You (Socialists) have no property in a moral recipe—it is the great misfortune of the churches to think that, and you are only a church. "All my policy tends to this one end —to keep up tho French people's moral through a crisis that is the worst in its history. Our men hav e fallen by millions. Who ever know anything like it? ' . . Think of the man fighting gun in hand, and obliged to turn away his mind to his wife, who is perhaps in the invaded country, to his old parents, from whom he is without news, to his comrades in arms who are dying of hunger in abominable German gaols! And, in such conditions, you come talking to me of questions of persons? I know of no persons I have said publicly I will do nothing against you (tl>- Socialist party). I have done >u;'

against you." A Socialist Deputy, Emilc. felt impelled to answer: "T" dent of the .Council has not the i o ;it to say that he has taken no measures against us —there is none to be taken." , • Clenienceau: "I am glad of it-—but how do you explain that every time I act you mount the tribune to show me that my act is directed against the working class? *'. . . Among our acts I defy you to find a single one that is not inspired by this one thought—to safeguard the integrity of the French people's heroic spirit. . . There may be circles in which it has become more difficult than before. There is the excuse of fatigue and evil words and the talk of enemy agents—the excuse of German propaganda. But, in spite of all, th e moral of the French people is unchangeable —and civilians are not in- . ferior to poilus. And, I, too, have the desire of peace, and everybody desires it. He would be a great criminal who had any other thought—but we must know what we want. It is not by Wonting- for peace that we can silence Prussian militarism. "My foreign policy and my home policy are all one—foreign policy, the war! Russia be troys us—l go on with the war! Rumania is forced to capitulate —I go on with the war. And I shall keep on to the Inst quarter of an hour—for it is we who shall have the last quarter of an hour!"