“Georges Clemenceau, President of the Council and Minister of War, and Marshal Foch, General-in-Chief of the Allied armies, have well deserved the gratitude of the country.”  
That is the Resolution which, by the unanimous vote of the Senate of the French Republic, will be placed in a conspicuous position in every Town Hall and in the Council Chamber of every commune throughout France. The Senators of France are not easily roused to enthusiasm. What they thus unanimously voted, in the absence of Clemenceau, amid general acclamation, is a fine recognition of his pre-eminent service as well as of his indefatigable devotion to duty at the most desperate crisis in the long and glorious history of his country. Nothing like it has ever been known. The reward is unprecedented: the work done has surpassed every record.
 
It is well that the great statesman should be honoured in advance of the great military commander. Marshal Foch has accomplished marvels in more than four years of continuous activity, from the first battle of the Marne to the signing of the armistice of unconditional surrender. All Europe and the civilised world are indebted to him for his masterly strategy and successful man?uvres. But France owes most to Clemenceau.
 
Towards the close of this historic sitting Clemenceau himself entered the Senate. He received an astounding welcome. Everyone present rose to greet him. Men who but yesterday were his enemies, and are still his opponents, rushed forward with the rest to applaud him, to shake hands with him, to thank him, to embrace him. The excitement was so overwhelming[296] that Clemenceau, for the first time in his life, broke down. Tears coursed down his cheeks and for some moments he was unable to speak. When he did he, as always, refused to take the credit and the glory of the overthrow of the Germans and their confederates to himself. In victory in November, as when he was confronting difficulty and danger in March and July, his first and his last thoughts were of France. The spirit of France, the citizens of France, the soldiers and sailors of France: these were they who in comradeship with the Allies had achieved the great victory over the last convulsions of savagery. He had been more than fully rewarded for all he had done by witnessing the expulsion of the foreigner and the liberation of the territory. His task had merely been to give full expression to the courage and determination of his countrymen.
 
Clemenceau spoke not only as a French statesman, as the veteran upholder of the French Republic, but as one who remembered well the horrors and defeats of 1870-71, now followed, forty-eight years later, by the horrors and the triumphs of 1918. The Senators who heard him and acclaimed him felt that Clemenceau was addressing them as the man who had embodied in himself, for all those long years, the soul of the France of the Great Revolution, and now at last was able to show what he really was.
 
This moving reception in the Senate had been preceded by an almost equally glowing display of enthusiasm in the Chamber of Deputies. There too—with the exception of a mere handful of Socialists whose extraordinary devotion to Caillaux and Malvy blinds them to the genius of their countryman—the whole Assembly rose up to welcome and cheer him. Clemenceau, speaking there, also, under strong emotion, after two stirring orations from M. Deschanel and M. Pichon, assured the Deputies that the armistice which would be granted to Germany could only be on the lines of those accorded to Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Marshal Foch would decide the details, which now all the world knows.
 
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But, after having dealt with the armistice implored by Germany, Clemenceau went back to the past and said: “When I remember that I entered the National Assembly of Bordeaux in 1871, and was—I am the last of them—one of the signers of the protests against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine . . . it is impossible for me, now peace is certain and our victory assured, to leave the tribune without paying homage to those who were the initiators and first workers in the immense task which is being completed at this moment.
 
“I wish to speak of Gambetta” (the whole House rises with prolonged cheering) “—of him who, defending the territory under circumstances which rendered victory impossible, never despaired. With him and with Chanzy I voted for the continuation of the war, and in truth, when I think of what has happened in these fifty years, I ask myself whether the war has not continued all the time. May our thoughts go back to them; and when these terrible iron doors that Germany has closed against us shall be opened, let us say to them: ‘Pass in first. You showed us the way.’”
 
The French Premier went on to speak of the problems of peace, which could only be solved, like the problems of war, by national unity for the common cause, “for the Republic which we made in peace, which we have upheld in war, the Republic which has saved us during the war.” He appealed “First for solidarity with the Allies, and then for solidarity among the French.” This was needful for the maintenance of peace and the future of their common humanity. Humanity&rsqu............