Georges Clemenceau

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Georges Clemenceau.
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Georges Clemenceau. (credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)
(born Sept. 28, 1841, Mouilleron-en-Pareds, Francedied Nov. 24, 1929, Paris) French statesman and journalist. A doctor before turning to politics, he served in the Chamber of Deputies (187693), becoming a leader of the radical republican bloc. He founded the newspapers La Justice (1880), L'Aurore (1897), and L'Homme Libre (1913) and came to be ranked among the foremost political writers of his time. His support for Alfred Dreyfus brought him into favour, and he served in the Senate (190220). He served as interior minister in 1906 and as premier (190609). During World War I, at age 76, he became premier again (191720), and his steadfast pursuit of the war won him the title Father of Victory. He also helped frame the postwar Treaty of Versailles, endeavouring to reconcile French interests with those of Britain and the U.S. Defeated in a presidential election in 1920, he retired from politics.

For more information on Georges Clemenceau, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Mouilleron-en-Pareds, 28 Sept. 1841; d. 24 Nov. 1929) French; Prime Minister 1906 – 9, 1917 – 20 Clemenceau was born in 1841 in the western department of the Vendée. The son of a gentleman doctor imprisoned for his opposition to the 1851 coup d'état of Louis Bonaparte, he inherited from his father a lifelong detestation of Bonapartism and a commitment to democratic Republicanism; one of his most celebrated sayings was that the French Revolution was a bloc which must be accepted in its totality, including the Terror. He studied medicine in Paris, where he engaged in anti-regime politics, and then emigrated to the United States, from which he returned, complete with American wife, shortly before the fall of the Second Empire. His entry into politics coincided with the twin disasters of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. As mayor of Montmartre he experienced at first hand the brutalities which accompanied the latter and as a member of the National Assembly he was one of the deputies who refused to accept the loss of Alsace Lorraine to Bismarck's Second Reich. By the late 1870s he was the leader of the advanced Radicals, and acquired national prominence as a champion of social reform and hammer of the Catholic church — and also as the wrecker of the Opportunist governments of the early Third Republic. He never held office, however, and in the 1880s his political judgement was called into question by his flirtation with the demagogic General Boulanger and by his friendship with the crooked financier, Cornelius Herz, who was heavily implicated in the Panama Scandal. Having lost his seat in the 1893 parliamentary elections, he looked for a time to be politically finished. His campaigning zeal blazed up again when the Dreyfus Affair appeared to reopen the war between the supporters and opponents of Republicanism. He flung himself into the pro-Dreyfus cause, opened the columns of his newspaper to Zola's famous article "J'Accuse", and in 1903 was elected Senator for the Var.

Though Clemenceau still described himself as a Radical, he took no part in the foundation of the Radical Socialist Party in 1901 and was notably reserved about the government led between 1902 – 5 by the Radical's favourite Émile Combes. In the run-up to the 1906 elections, he was invited to become Minister of the Interior in a coalition government designed to show the unity of the Republican family against its clerical and nationalist opponents. He dealt effectively with the consequences of a mining disaster in Northern France and with the potentially dangerous First of May campaign organized by France's revolutionary syndicalist movement. Four months later, at the age of 64, he became Prime Minister. His appointment was widely regarded as opening the door to the realization of the social programme of Radicalism and his ministerial programme contained proposals for an income tax, old-age pension, and for the nationalization of the Western Railway. Yet although a number of reforms were passed by a government which was one of the longest lasting in the history of the Third Republic, his first ministry is chiefly remembered for the heavy handed way it dealt with labour unrest and for his implacable opposition to public sector trade unionism. Clemenceau insisted that in a democracy force in the defence of the rule of law was justifiable and that public sector officials owed a duty of obedience to the state. His opponents in the Radical Party condemned his disregard for the pieties of Republican unity and the Socialists claimed that his enthusiasm for police repression demonstrated the inability of bourgeois Radicalism to cope with the reality of class conflict. Thus his government witnessed a breakdown in the Socialist-Radical unity which the Dreyfus Affair had created. It gave Clemenceau a reputation as the enemy of organized labour which he would never subsequently lose.

After the defeat of his ministry in July 1909, Clemenceau appeared to settle for the role of Angry, but Isolated, Old Man. If, in the run-up to the First World War he supported the Three Years Law extending military service, he also attempted, unsuccessfully, to prevent the election in 1913 of Poincaré as President of the Republic. When the First World War began, he used his presidency of the Senate Army commission, and his newspaper, to launch ferocious attacks on what he regarded as the incompetent management of the conflict by governments and generals alike. Excesses of tone once again contributed to his reputation for irresponsibility. But in 1917, as war weariness set in at — and behind — the front, he began to be seen as the man who might galvanize national energies. By late 1917, there was open talk of a compromise peace and some evidence that prominent politicians were starting to put out feelers to the enemy. Faced with this crisis, Poincaré turned to the man who had been savaging him in the newspaper ever since 1913, and appointed him Prime Minister. Clemenceau's ministerial declaration was simple — "I make war" — and he dominated his government. He made frequent visits to the troops at the front, established effective relations with the military, and managed to persuade the English to accept Marshal Foch as Allied Supreme Commander. The real war he waged was against proposals for a negotiated peace, and those who made them. He sent a number of German agents to the firing squad, imprisoned a number of prominent politicians on charges of defeatism, and cowed his most prominent rival Briand into silence.

Clemenceau's vigour and determination unquestionably restored France's will to fight. When Germany sued for peace in November 1918, he was greeted with acclamation by the public and was declared by parliament to have deserved well of the country. He remained Prime Minister throughout 1919 and dominated the French delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. As the last surviving representative of the deputies who had refused to accept the 1871 peace settlement, his aims were straightforward — the return of Alsace Lorraine and the destruction of Germany's potential ever again to threaten France. He insisted on the war guilt and reparation clauses of the Versailles Treaty, but was unable to persuade the Allies of the need to separate the Rhineland from Germany. He defended the treaty against the opposition of hard-line nationalists, who argued that it gave too much away, and of the Socialists who regarded it as too harsh. His national popularity remained high and he lent his authority to the anti-Bolshevik Bloc National which swept to power in the November 1919 elections. Thus his victory in the 1920 presidential election looked assured. But at this moment his past reputation destroyed his political future. His uncompromising anti-clericalism alarmed the Catholic right; his equally uncompromising anti-Socialism alienated the radical left; and his bruising attacks on political rivals made him vulnerable to their resentment. On the preliminary vote for the presidency, he was outvoted by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Deschenel. He immediately withdrew from the contest and resigned as Prime Minister. Having spent the last years of his life travelling, writing and defending the Versailles Treaty, he died, at the age of 88 in 1929, and was buried in the Vendée.

For most of his fifty-year career, Clemenceau was a deeply controversial figure. Self-opinionated and aggressive, he could be almost wantonly destructive and he certainly helped create the culture of government instability which became a characteristic of Third Republic politics. Yet he was consistent in his anti-clericalism, his advocacy of good relations with Great Britain, his commitment to the Republican ideal, and, above all, his blazing patriotism. The leadership qualities he demonstrated in 1917 – 19 brought France victory and the photograph of the old, moustachioed man talking at the front to ordinary soldiers (he took to his grave the bunch of wild flowers which one such group gave him) is one of the potent images of the First World War. He remains France's most celebrated civilian politician of the twentieth century.

Oxford Companion to Military History:

Georges Eugène Benjamin Clemenceau

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Clemenceau, Georges Eugène Benjamin (1841-1929). ‘War. Nothing but war’: thus did Georges Clemenceau accurately summarize his policy as wartime premier in his inaugural address to the French National Assembly on 20 November 1917. His contribution to French victory ensured his place in the pantheon of French national heroes. A virulent critic of the French failure to prosecute the war successfully, he came to power in the wake of the failed Nivelle offensive, widespread French mutinies, and the most disastrous period of the war for the Allies, to set about shoring up national morale. Intolerant of pacifists, seekers of a compromise peace, and shirkers, in 1918 he imposed the aggressive Foch as supreme Allied commander above the more defensive commander of the French armies, Pétain. His attitude and determination galvanized the French war effort, ensured victory, and secured a personal prestige unrivalled among his contemporaries, allowing him to speak for France in the peace negotiations. He pursued French demands for reparations and for arrangements which would guarantee security; though he did not go far enough to please Foch and the nationalists, he obtained the best terms he could get.

Clemenceau had never been a stranger to conflict. Born in the religious and anti-Republican Vendée region he was an anticlerical Republican. As a medical student he demonstrated in 1862 against the Second Empire and received a short prison sentence. With his medical degree he emigrated to the USA in 1865 and returned with an American wife four years later whom he divorced in 1891. Mayor of Montmartre during the Franco-Prussian war, he helped organize the National Guard to defend Paris. Under the early Third Republic he kept to the left of the Republican movement gaining a reputation for harrying moderate governments. Temporarily tainted by financial scandal associated with construction of the Panama Canal in 1893, he turned to journalism and more than restored his reputation during the Dreyfus affair through a passionate defence of the innocent army captain. Returning to politics in 1902 as a senator he held office for the first time in March 1906 as interior minister and by October was combining it with the premiership, where he remained until July 1909 in one of the longest uninterrupted periods of any political leader of the Third Republic. In the two years prior to WW I he vigorously campaigned for France to increase her army and stand up to Germany. Despite his wartime record, he failed to secure the presidency of the Republic in 1920 and spent his nine remaining years travelling and writing. But he remained affectionately remembered as ‘Père-la-victoire’ (Father Victory).

Bibliography

  • Duroselle, J.-B., Clemenceau (Paris, 1988).
  • Watson, David R., Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London, 1974)

— J. F. V. Keiger

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Clemenceau, Georges (1841-1929) French statesman, journalist, premier (1906-09, 1917-20), and minister of war, nicknamed “the Tiger.” For several years before World War I broke out, Clemenceau wrote against Germany and advocated French military preparedness. Becoming prime minister in 1917 after three years of war, Clemenceau restored France's morale and will to win, and advocated a unified allied command. After the armistice, he led the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, where he pressed for German disarmament. He opposed President Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George's plans for a League of Nations, preferring instead an anti-German alliance. He was dissatisfied with the Treaty of Versailles, but succeeded in persuading Wilson to continue U.S. and Allied military occupation of the Rhineland.

Clemenceau regarded Wilson as too idealistic and is reported to have quipped about Wilson's Fourteen Points, “The good Lord had only ten.”

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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The French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) was twice premier of France, in 1906-1909 and 1917-1919. He led France through the critical days of World War I and headed the French delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.

Georges Clemenceau was born on Sept. 28, 1841, at Mouilleron-en-Pareds in the Vendée. Following the family tradition, he studied medicine at Nantes and Paris. In 1865 he traveled to the United States, where he served as correspondent for a Paris newspaper and taught riding and French in a girls' academy at Stamford, Conn. He married one of his pupils, Mary Plummer. They had two daughters and one son but separated after 7 years.

Early Political Career

In 1869 Clemenceau returned to France; after the Revolution of 1870 he was appointed mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris, comprising Montmartre. After being elected as a representative to the National Assembly from Paris in February 1871, he voted against the Treaty of Frankfurt. When the Communard uprising began on Montmartre on March 18, he tried unsuccessfully to prevent bloodshed. Later Clemenceau tried to mediate between the Commune and the Versailles government. Failing again, he resigned his position at Paris and his seat in the Assembly. He was elected in July 1871 to the municipal council of Paris, where he remained until 1876, becoming president in 1875.

In 1876 Clemenceau returned to national politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as representative of the 18th arrondissement of Paris. At that time his graying hair was close-cropped, his bushy eyebrows overhung large, black eyes, and his thick, drooping moustache was still black. His highly individual debating style, marked by a caustic wit, soon won him undisputed leadership of the radicals. While he was uncompromisingly atheistic and anticlerical, advocating separation of church and state, Clemenceau believed in human perfectibility through scientific knowledge and moral effort. He firmly upheld liberty and natural rights and was influenced by the ideas of Auguste Comte, J. S. Mill, and Charles Darwin.

Clemenceau possessed a genius for destructive criticism and won the appellation of the "Tiger" for his role in destroying Cabinets. Strongly opposed to imperialism, he brought down the Ferry Cabinet on the Tunisian question in 1881, attacked the Freycinet Cabinet for its desire to intervene in Egypt the following year, and destroyed the Ferry Cabinet of 1885 during the Indochinese crisis.

In 1886 Clemenceau first supported Gen. Boulanger as minister of war in the Freycinet Cabinet but later actively opposed him. Clemenceau also played a prominent role in the Wilson scandal, forcing President Grévy to resign. He subsequently backed Sadi Carnot for the presidency against Jules Ferry and is credited with having said, "I shall vote for the stupidest." This incident contributed to the tradition of a weak presidency that plagued the Third Republic. Clemenceau was denounced as a friend and associate of Cornelius Hertz, a key figure in the Panama scandal, and was also accused of being in the pay of the English. He was greeted with campaign posters showing him juggling English coins, and he failed to win reelection in 1893.

Journalistic Career

Between 1893 and 1903 Clemenceau built a new career in journalism. At first he wrote daily articles for La Justice, but in 1897 he began writing for L'Aurore, which had a larger circulation. Selections of his articles were published as Le Mêlée sociale (1895) and Le Grand Pan (1896). In 1898 he published a novel, Les Plus forts, and a volume of sketches on Jewish subjects, Au pied de Sinai. Another book of articles, Au fil des jours, appeared in 1900.

On Jan. 13, 1898, Clemenceau ceded his usual space in L'Aurore to Emile Zola's inflammatory article on the Dreyfus Affair, which Clemenceau headlined "J'accuse." Henceforth Clemenceau became a dedicated partisan of the Dreyfus cause. In 1900 he began publishing a weekly, Le Bloc, most of which he wrote himself, but he soon returned to L'Aurore as editor. Meanwhile, he published his Dreyfusard articles in five volumes.

Senator and Premier

In 1902 Clemenceau was elected senator for the Var, and he accepted the post of minister of interior in the Sarrien ministry in 1906. He used troops to control a strike of miners in the Pas-de-Calais following a mine disaster in that district and employed military engineers to break a strike of electrical workers in Paris.

When the Sarrien ministry resigned in October 1906, Clemenceau became premier. He was confronted with new strikes and used the army to control the most formidable, which involved agricultural workers of the Midi. When Paris postmen struck, Clemenceau denounced strikes by civil servants. Later he created a ministry of labor and negotiated nationalization of the Western Railway. In foreign affairs Clemenceau continued to cultivate close relations with Great Britain and to build up the French alliance system. He refused to apologize to Germany for an incident in Morocco. He was forced out of office in July 1909 in a dispute on naval policy.

After a lecture tour through Brazil and Argentina in 1910, Clemenceau became a member of the senate commissions for foreign affairs and for the army. In 1913 he founded a daily paper, L'Homme Libre (The Free Man), to express his views on armaments and the German menace.

World War I

In September 1914 Clemenceau's paper was suppressed because of its criticism of government weaknesses, but it reappeared immediately with the title L'Homme Enchainé (The Enchained Man). In this journal Clemenceau strove to foster the French will to victory, and to expose all forms of inefficiency in the war effort.

On Nov. 17, 1917, when French morale was near its nadir, President Poincaré asked Clemenceau to form a ministry. He served as minister of war, as well as premier, and summed up his policy: "Je fais la guerre" (I wage war). Clemenceau restored France's self-confidence. He welcomed Marshal Ferdinand Foch's appointment as commander in chief of the Allied armies in April 1918 and gave him unqualified support. When the Germans had advanced to Château Thierry, 18 miles from Paris, Clemenceau proclaimed: "The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garonne, we will fight even on the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea. But as for asking for peace, never!" Clemenceau's confidence in his military commanders proved justified, and by June, Foch and Pétain were able to take the offensive. On Nov. 11, 1918, Germany signed the armistice.

Peace Conference

As leader of the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, Clemenceau played a major role in drafting the Treaty of Versailles and determining conference policies. He tried to obtain a strong League of Nations backed by military force, and when this failed he proposed other measures to ensure French security: German reparations to pay the whole cost of the war; French annexation of the Saar basin; and creation of a separate Rhineland state under protection of the League of Nations. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and British prime minister David Lloyd George offered an Anglo-American guarantee of France's frontiers as compensation and forced Clemenceau to compromise all these points. Consequently, the French legislators, who found Clemenceau's rule autocratic and resented being excluded from the peace negotiations, condemned the peace treaty as too lenient and debated 3 months before ratifying it. After the elections of 1919 Clemenceau resigned as premier. An attempt to elect him president in 1920 failed.

Clemenceau retired from parliamentary politics. In 1922 he made a tour of the United States in an attempt to recall that country to its obligations after American rejection of the Versailles Treaty and the Anglo-American guarantee of French security. During the remaining years of his life he divided his time between Paris and the Vendée and devoted himself to writing. In 1927 he had completed a two-volume philosophical testament, Au soir de la pensée (In the Evening of My Thought). His memoirs of the war and the peace settlement were published after his death as Grandeurs etmisères d'une victoire (Grandeur and Misery of Victory) in 1930. He died in Paris on Nov. 24, 1929.

Further Reading

The most detailed and judicious biography of Clemenceau written in English is Geoffrey Bruun, Clemenceau (1943). Probably the best of the many biographies written at the height of his career is H. M. Hyndman, Clemenceau: The Man and His Time (1919). Interesting sidelights are in Clemenceau's Clemenceau: The Events of His Life as Told by Himself to His Former Secretary, Jean Martet (trans. 1930). A specialized study of one aspect of Clemenceau's policy is Jere Clemens King, Foch versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment, 1918-1919 (1960). One of the best works for general historical background is Sir D. W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France, 1870-1934 (1940; rev. ed. 1966). David Thomson, Democracy in France (1946; 4th ed. 1964), provides information on the political and social dynamics of the Third Republic.

Additional Sources

Dallas, Gregor, At the heart of a tiger: Clemenceau and his world, 1841-1929, New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993.

Duroselle, Jean Baptiste, Clemenceau, Paris: Fayard, 1988.

Ellis, Jack D., The early life of Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1893, Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1980.

Erlanger, Philippe, Clemenceau, Paris: Perrin, 1979.

Holt, Edgar, The Tiger: the life of Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1929, London: Hamilton, 1976.

Jackson, J. Hampden (John Hampden), Clemenceau and the Third Republic, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979.

Newhall, David S., Clemenceau: a life at war, Lewiston, N.Y., USA: E. Mellen Press, 1991.

Watson, David Robin, Georges Clemenceau; a political biograph, London Eyre Methuen 1974.

Clemenceau, Georges (1841-1929), nicknamed ‘Le Tigre’. He qualified as a doctor, but suffered prison and exile for his opposition to the Second Empire. Under the Third Republic he edited the Radical newspaper La Justice and had a turbulent career as politician and journalist, but his finest hour came as war leader (prime minister 1917-20). Among other writings he left a political testament, Au soir de la pensée (1927).

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Georges Clemenceau

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Clemenceau, Georges (zhôrzh klāmäNsō'), 1841-1929, French political figure, twice premier (1906-9, 1917-20), called "the Tiger." He was trained as a doctor, but his republicanism brought him into conflict with the government of Napoleon III, and he went to the United States, where he spent several years as a journalist and a teacher. Returning to France in 1869, he was mayor of Montmartre in Paris after the overthrow (1870) of Napoleon III. His political career, beginning in Revolution, continued to be a stormy one punctuated by verbal and physical duels. As a Socialist, he opposed the moderate Léon Gambetta; drove Jules Ferry from power; and first supported but then bitterly opposed General Boulanger. A member of the chamber of deputies from 1876, he failed to win reelection in 1893 after being implicated in the Panama Canal scandal and then unjustly accused of being in the pay of the British. During the next nine years he devoted himself to journalism, writing a daily article in La Justice and founding (1900) Le Bloc. He was a passionate defender of Alfred Dreyfus in the Dreyfus Affair. In 1902, Clemenceau was elected senator, and in 1906 he became minister of the interior and then premier. During his tenure the first crisis over Morocco was settled and the alliance with Great Britain strengthened. In 1909 his cabinet fell and Aristide Briand became premier. In the next years Clemenceau vigorously attacked Germany and pressed for military preparedness. His newspaper, L'Homme libre (after its suppression in 1914, L'Homme enchâiné), attacked the government for defeatism even after the outbreak of World War I. Succeeding Paul Painlevé as premier in Nov., 1917, Clemenceau formed a coalition cabinet in which he was also minister of war. He renewed the dispirited morale of France, persuaded the allies to agree to a unified command, and pushed the war vigorously until the final victory. Leading the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, Clemenceau insisted on Germany's disarmament and was never satisfied with the Versailles Treaty. He was the main antagonist of Woodrow Wilson, whose ideas he viewed as too idealistic. Ironically, he was defeated in the presidential election of 1920 because of what was regarded as his leniency toward Germany. Alexandre Millerand succeeded him as premier. Clemenceau retired to his native Vendée, where he wrote In the Evening of My Thought (tr. 1929) and other works.

Bibliography

See biographies by G. Bruun (1943, repr. 1962) and J. H. Jackson (1946, repr. 1962); study by J. King (1960).

1841 - 1929

French socialist journalist and statesman; French premier, 1906 - 1909 and 1917 - 1920.

In foreign policy, Georges Clemenceau pressed for military preparedness against German expansionism through closer strategic alliance with Great Britain and the expansion of military conscription among France's colonial populations. This brought Clemenceau into contact with the leaders of the Young Algeria movement: gallicized Muslims who were formed in the colonial educational system but found limited opportunities in the local administration or economy. Their proposals for military service in exchange for full civil rights found favor with Clemenceau and other liberal policymakers, especially after the armistice, when he led the effort to compensate Algerians for their payment of the "blood tax." The resulting Jonnart Law of 1919 was nevertheless greatly diluted by settler (colon) opposition to colonial reforms, and its failure to satisfy native demands may be considered a defining moment in the development of Algerian nationalism. Clemenceau headed the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, where he united with British prime minister Lloyd George to undermine the initiatives of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and to realize the territorial provisions of the Sykes - Picot Agreement that pertained to the Arab provinces of the former Ottoman Empire. After his electoral defeat in 1920 Clemenceau retired from public life and devoted his remaining days to writing his memoirs.

Bibliography

Dallas, Gregor. At the Heart of a Tiger: Clemenceau and His World,1841 - 1929. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1993.

— ZACHARY KARABELL UPDATED BY O. W. ABI-MERSHED

(klem-uhn-soh, klay-mahnn-soh)

A French political leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the premier of France at the end of World War I and afterward. He presided at the peace conference after the war, which produced the Treaty of Versailles. Less forgiving than the American president, Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau wanted a peace treaty that would punish Germany for having started the war and would compensate France for its losses.

Quotes By:

Georges Clemenceau

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Quotes:

"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed -- I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself."

"America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

"War is too important a matter to be left to the military."

"A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action.. You must act as you breathe."

"When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking."

"It is far easier to make war than to make peace."

See more famous quotes by Georges Clemenceau

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Georges Clemenceau

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Georges Clemenceau
Prime Minister of France
In office
16 November 1917 – 20 January 1920
President Raymond Poincaré
Preceded by Paul Painlevé
Succeeded by Alexandre Millerand
In office
25 October 1906 – 24 July 1909
President Armand Fallières
Preceded by Ferdinand Sarrien
Succeeded by Aristide Briand
Personal details
Born 28 September 1841
Mouilleron-en-Pareds
Died 24 November 1929(1929-11-24) (aged 88)
Paris
Political party Radical
Profession Physician, newspaper publisher

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau[1] (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ bɛ̃ʒamɛ̃ klemɑ̃so];[2] 28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French journalist and statesman. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices designing the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference in the aftermath of the war. Nicknamed "Le Tigre" (The Tiger) he took a very harsh line against defeated Germany.

Contents

Biography

Early years

Clemenceau was a son of the Vendée, born at Mouilleron-en-Pareds. In Revolutionary times the Vendée had been a hotbed of monarchist sympathies but now it was fiercely republican. It was also remote, rural and poor. Clemenceau's mother Sophie Eucharie Gautreau (1817–1903) was from a Huguenot family. His father Benjamin Clemenceau (1810–1897) came from a long line of physicians but he lived off his lands and investments and did not practice medicine himself. He also had a reputation as an atheist and a political activist who was briefly arrested in 1851 and again in 1858. He instilled in his son a love of learning, devotion to the Revolution, and a hatred of Catholicism. After his studies in the Nantes Lycée, Georges received his baccalaureate of letters in 1858 and then studied medicine in Paris, but never practiced.[3]

Journalism and exile

Clemenceau portrait by Nadar.

In Paris young Clemenceau became a political activist and writer. He co-founded a weekly newsletter in December 1861 Le Travail along with some friends. On 23 February 1862 he was arrested by the police for having placed posters summoning a demonstration. He spent 77 days in the Mazas prison.

In the midst of all of this he became a doctor on 13 May 1865, found the time to take part in founding several magazines, and wrote many articles, most of which attacked the Imperial regime of Napoleon III. It soon became advisable to leave when the Imperial agents began cracking down on dissidents (sending most of them to Devil's Island).

Clemenceau worked in New York 1865-69, where he maintained a medical office but spent his time in political journalism for a Parisian newspaper. He then took a post teaching French and horseback riding at a girls' school in Stamford, Connecticut. He later married in New York City, New York, on 23 June 1869 one of his students, Mary Elizabeth Plummer (1850–1923), daughter of William Kelly Plummer and wife Harriet A. Taylor, with whom he had three children before the marriage ended in divorce. During this time he joined French exile clubs in New York opposing the imperial regime.[4]

The beginning of the Third Republic

He returned to Paris after the fall of the regime with the defeat at Sedan. He took part in the Paris Commune but was there to establish the third Republic. His political career began in earnest at this time.

He was elected to the Paris municipal council on 23 July 1871 for the Clignancourt quarter, and retained his seat till 1876, passing through the offices of secretary and vice-president, and becoming president in 1875.

Chamber of Deputies

In 1876 he stood again for the Chamber of Deputies, and was elected for the 18th arrondissement. He joined the far left, and his energy and mordant eloquence speedily made him the leader of the Radical section. In 1877, after the Seize Mai crisis, he was one of the republican majority who denounced the de Broglie ministry, and he took a leading part in resisting the anti-republican policy of which the Seize Mai incident was a manifestation. His demand in 1879 for the indictment of the de Broglie ministry brought him into particular prominence.

Portrait of Clemenceau by Edouard Manet, c. 1879–80.

In 1880 he started his newspaper, La Justice, which became the principal organ of Parisian Radicalism. From this time onwards, throughout Jules Grévy's presidency, his reputation as a political critic and destroyer of ministries ("le Tombeur de ministères") who yet would not take office himself grew rapidly. Leading the Far Left in the National Assembly, he was an active opponent of Jules Ferry's colonial policy (which he opposed on moral grounds and also as a form of diversion from the “Revenge against Germany”) and of the Opportunist party, and in 1885 it was his criticism of the Tonkin disaster which principally determined the fall of the Ferry cabinet.

At the elections of 1885 he advocated a strong Radical programme, and was returned both for his old seat in Paris and for the Var, district of Draguignan, selecting the latter. Refusing to form a ministry to replace the one he had overthrown, he supported the Right in keeping Freycinet in power in 1886, and was responsible for the inclusion of General Boulanger in the Freycinet cabinet as War Minister. When Boulanger showed himself as an ambitious pretender, Clemenceau withdrew his support and became a vigorous opponent of the heterogeneous Boulangist movement, though the Radical press and a section of the party continued to patronize the general.

By his exposure of the Wilson scandal, and by his personal plain speaking, Clemenceau contributed largely to Jules Grévy's resignation of the presidency in 1887, having himself declined Grévy's request to form a cabinet on the downfall of Maurice Rouvier's Cabinet. He was also primarily responsible, by advising his followers to vote for neither Floquet, Ferry, or Freycinet, for the election of an "outsider" (Sadi Carnot) as president.

The split in the Radical party over Boulangism weakened his hands, and its collapse made his help unnecessary to the moderate republicans. A further misfortune occurred in the Panama affair, as Clemenceau's relations with Cornelius Herz led to his being included in the general suspicion. Although he remained the leading spokesman of French Radicalism, his hostility to the Russian alliance so increased his unpopularity that in the 1893 election he was defeated for his Chamber seat, having held it continuously since 1876.

Dreyfus Affair

Duel between Georges Clemenceau and Paul Déroulède.

After his 1893 defeat, Clemenceau confined his political activities to journalism. His career was further overclouded by the long-drawn-out Dreyfus case, in which he took an active part as a supporter of Emile Zola and an opponent of the anti-Semitic and Nationalist campaigns. In all, Clemenceau published 665 articles defending Dreyfus during the affair.[5]

On 13 January 1898 Clemenceau, as owner and editor of the Paris daily L'Aurore, published Émile Zola's "J'accuse" on the front page of his paper. Clemenceau decided that the controversial story that would become a famous part of the Dreyfus Affair would be in the form of an open letter to the President, Félix Faure.

In 1900 he withdrew from La Justice to found a weekly review, Le Bloc, in which Clemenceau was practically the sole contributor. Le Bloc lasted until 15 March 1902. On 6 April 1902 he was triumphally elected senator for the Var, district of Draguignan although he had previously continually demanded the suppression of the Senate, considered a strong-house of conservatism. He was senator of Draguignan until 1920. He sat with the Radical-Socialist Party and moderated somehow his positions, although he still vigorously supported the Combes ministry, who spearheaded the anti-clericalist Republican struggle. In June 1903 he undertook the direction of the journal L'Aurore, which he had founded. In it he led the campaign for the revision of the Dreyfus affair, and for the separation of Church and State, which was implemented by the 1905 Act.[6]

In cabinet

In March 1906 the fall of the Rouvier ministry, owing to the riots provoked by the inventories of church property, and the Radicals' victory during the 1906 legislative election, at last brought Clemenceau to power as Minister of the Interior in the Sarrien cabinet. On a domestic level, Clemenceau reformed the police forces and ordered repressive policies towards the workers' movement. He supported the formation of scientific police by Alphonse Bertillon, and founded the Brigades mobiles (French for "mobile squads") led by Célestin Hennion. These squads were nicknamed Brigades du Tigre ("Tiger's Brigades") after Clemenceau himself.

The miners' strike in the Pas de Calais after the disaster at Courrieres (more than a thousand victims), leading to the threat of disorder on 1 May 1906, prompted him to employ the military; and his attitude in the matter – as well as the repression of the wine-growers' strike in the Languedoc-Roussillon – alienated the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) socialist party, from which he definitively broke in his notable reply in the Chamber to Jean Jaurès, leader of the SFIO, in June 1906.

This speech marked him out as the strong man of the day in French politics; and when the Sarrien ministry resigned in October, he became premier. During 1907 and 1908 his premiership was notable for the way in which the new Entente cordiale with England was cemented, and for the successful part which France played in European politics, in spite of difficulties with Germany and attacks by the Socialist party in connection with Morocco (First Moroccan Crisis in 1905–06, settled by the Algeciras Conference).

Clemenceau was defeated however on 20 July 1909 in a discussion in the Chamber on the state of the navy, in which bitter words were exchanged between him and Théophile Delcassé, former president of the Council, and whose downfall had been aided by Clemenceau. Clemenceau refused to respond to Delcassé's technical questions, and resigned after his proposal for the order of the day vote was rejected. He was succeeded as premier by Aristide Briand, with a reconstructed cabinet.

Between 1909 and 1912, Clemenceau dedicated his times to travels, conferences and also to the treatment of his sickness. He went to South America in 1910, traveling to Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina (where he went as far as Santa Ana de Tucuman in the North-West of Argentina). There, he was amazed by the influence of French culture and of the French Revolution on local elites.[7] In 1912, he was operated on because of a problem of the prostate.

He published the first issue of the Journal du Var on 10 April 1910, before creating L'Homme libre (The Free Man) newspaper, based in Paris, on 6 May 1913, in which he published daily his editorial. In these tribunes, Clemenceau focused more and more on foreign policy, and condemned the Socialists' anti-militarism. When World War I broke out, his newspaper was one of the first to be censored, being completely suspended from 29 September 1914 to 7 October. In response, Clemenceau changed its name to L'Homme enchaîné (The Man in Chains), and criticized both the lack of transparency of the government and its inefficacity, while defending the patriotic Union sacrée against the German Empire.

World War I

When World War I broke out in 1914 Clemenceau refused to act as justice minister under the French Prime Minister.

1917

Clemenceau as Prime Minister of France

In November 1917 Clemenceau was appointed prime minister. Unlike his predecessors, he discouraged internal disagreement and called for peace among the senior politicians.

When Clemenceau became Prime Minister in 1917 victory seemed to be a long way off. There was little activity on the Front because it was believed that there should be limited attacks until the American support arrived. At this time, Italy was on the defensive, Russia had virtually stopped fighting – and it was believed they would be making a separate peace with Germany. At home the government had to combat increasing resentment against the war. They also had to handle increasing demonstrations against the war, scarcity of resources and air raids – which were causing huge physical damage to Paris as well as damaging the morale of its citizens. It was also believed that many politicians secretly wanted peace. It was a challenging situation for Clemenceau, because after years of criticizing other men during the war, he suddenly found himself in a position of supreme power. He was also isolated politically. He did not have close links with any parliamentary leaders (especially after years of criticism) and so had to rely on himself and his own circle of friends.

Clemenceau's ascension to power meant little to the men in the trenches at first. They thought of him as "Just another Politician", and the monthly assessment of troop morale found that only a minority found comfort in his appointment. Slowly, however, as time passed, the confidence he inspired in a few began to grow throughout all the fighting men. They were encouraged by his many visits to the trenches. This confidence began to spread from the trenches to the home front and it was said "We believed in Clemenceau rather in the way that our ancestors believed in Joan of Arc."

Clemenceau was also well received by the media because they felt that France was in need for strong leadership. It was widely recognised that throughout the war he was never discouraged and he never stopped believing that France could achieve total victory. There were sceptics, however, that believed that Clemenceau, like other war time leaders, would have a short time in office. It was said that "Like everyone else … Clemenceau will not last long- only long enough to clean up [the war]."

1918: Clemenceau's crackdown

As the situation worsened in early 1918, Clemenceau continued to support the policy of total war – "We present ourselves before you with the single thought of total war" – and the policy of "la guerre jusqu'au bout" (war until the end). His 8 March speech advocating this policy was so effective it left a vivid impression on Winston Churchill, who would make similar speeches on becoming British Prime Minister in 1940. Clemenceau's war policy encompassed the promise of victory with justice, loyalty to the fighting men, and immediate and severe punishment of crimes against France.

Joseph Caillaux, a former French prime minister, disagreed with Clemenceau's policies. He was a believer in negotiating peace by surrendering to Germany. Clemenceau observed Caillaux as a threat to national security. Unlike previous ministers, Clemenceau publicly stepped against Caillaux. As a result, the parliamentary committee decided that Caillaux would be arrested and imprisoned for three years. Clemenceau believed, in the words of Jean Ybarnégaray, that Caillaux's crime "was not to have believed in victory [and] to have gambled on his nation's defeat".

It was believed by some in Paris that the arrest of Caillaux and others was a sign that Clemenceau had begun a Reign of Terror. The many trials and arrests aroused great public excitement, one newspaper ironically reported "The war must be over, for no one is talking about it anymore". These trials, far from making the public fear the government, inspired confidence as they felt that for the first time in the war, action was being taken and they were being firmly governed. The claims that Clemenceau's "firm government" was a dictatorship found little support. Clemenceau was still held accountable to the people and media. He relaxed censorship on political views as he believed that newspapers had the right to criticize political figures – "The right to insult members of the government is inviolable". The only powers that Clemenceau assumed were those that he thought necessary to win the war.

In 1918, Clemenceau thought that France should adopt Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, mainly because of its point that called for the return of the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine to France. This meant that victory would fulfill the war aim that was crucial for the French public. Clemenceau was however sceptical about some other points, including those concerning the League of Nations, as he believed that the latter could succeed only in a utopian society.

As war minister Clemenceau was also in close contact with his generals. However, he did not always make the most effective decisions concerning military issues (though he did heed the advice of the more experienced generals). As well as talking strategy with the generals he also went to the trenches to see the Poilu, the French infantrymen. He would speak to them and assure them that their government was actually looking after them. The Poilu had great respect for Clemenceau and his disregard for danger as he often visited soldiers only yards away from German frontlines. These visits contributed to Clemenceau's title Le Père de la Victoire (Father of Victory).

1918: the German spring offensive

On 21 March the Germans began their great spring offensive. The Allies were caught off guard as they were waiting for the majority of the American troops to arrive. As the Germans advanced on 24 March, the British Fifth army retreated and a gap was created in the British/French lines – giving them access to Paris. This defeat cemented Clemenceau's belief, and that of the other allies, that a coordinated, unified command was the best option. It was decided that Foch would be appointed to the supreme command.

The German line continued to advance and Clemenceau believed that they could not rule out the fall of Paris (see appendix 2.0). It was believed that if "the tiger" as well as Foch and Pétain stayed in power, for even another week, France would be lost. It was thought that a government headed by Briand would be beneficial to France because he would make peace with Germany on advantageous terms. Clemenceau adamantly opposed these opinions and he gave an inspirational speech to parliament and "the chamber" voted their confidence in him 377 votes to 110.

1918: the Allied counter-offensive and the Armistice

As the Allied counter-offensives began to push the Germans back, with the help of American reinforcements, it became clear that the Germans could no longer win the war. Although they still occupied allied territory, they did not have sufficient resources and manpower to continue the attack. As countries allied to Germany began to ask for an armistice, it was obvious that Germany would soon follow. On 11 November an armistice with Germany was signed – Clemenceau saw this was Germany's admission of defeat. Clemenceau was embraced in the streets and attracted admiring crowds. He was a strong, energetic, positive leader who was key to the allied victory of 1918.

Versailles

It was decided that a peace conference would be held in Paris, France. (The treaty signed by both parties was signed in the Palace of Versailles, but deliberated upon in Paris). On 13 December Woodrow Wilson received an enormous welcome. His Fourteen Points and the concept of a League of Nations had made a big impact on the war weary French. Clemenceau realised at their first meeting that he was a man of principle and conscience but narrow minded.

It was decided that since the conference was being held in France, Clemenceau would be the most appropriate president. He also spoke both English and French, the official languages of the conference.

The Conference progress was much slower than anticipated and decisions were constantly being tabled. It was this slow pace that induced Clemenceau to give an interview showing his irritation to an American journalist. He said he believed that Germany had won the war industrially and commercially as its factories were intact and its debts would soon be overcome through ‘manipulation’. In a short time, he believed, the German economy would be much stronger than the French.

France's diplomatic position at the Paris Peace Conference was repeatedly jeopardized by Clemenceau's mistrust of David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, and his intense dislike of French President Raymond Poincaré. When negotiations reached a stalemate, Clemenceau had a habit of shouting at the other heads of state and storming out of the room rather than participating in further discussion.

Georges Clemenceau by Cecilia Beaux (1920).

Attempted Assassination

On 19 February 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, as Clemenceau was leaving his house in the Rue Franklin to drive to a meeting with House and Balfour at the Crillon, a man jumped out and fired several shots at the car. One bullet hit Clemenceau between the ribs, just missing his vital organs. Too dangerous to remove, the bullet remained with him for the remainder of his life. Clemenceau's assailant, Emile Cottin, was seized by the crowd following the leader's procession and nearly lynched. Taken back to his house, Clemenceau's faithful assistant found him pale but conscious. "They shot me in the back," Clemenceau told him. "They didn't even dare to attack me from the front."[8]

Clemenceau often joked about the "assassin's" bad marksmanship – “We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery."

Rhineland and the Saar

Clemenceau in his office

When Clemenceau returned to the council of ten on 1 March he found that little had changed. One issue that had not changed was a dispute over the long running Eastern Frontier and control of the German province Rhineland. Clemenceau believed that Germany’s possession of the territory left France without a natural frontier in the East and so simplified invasion into France for an attacking army. The issue was finally resolved when Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson guaranteed immediate military assistance if Germany attacked without provocation. It was also decided that the Allies would occupy the territory for 15 years, and that Germany could never rearm the area.

There was increasing discontent among Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson about slow progress and information leaks surrounding the Council of Ten. They began to meet in a smaller group, called the Council of Four, Vittorio Orlando of Italy being the fourth, though less weighty, member. This offered greater privacy and security and increased the efficiency of the decision making process. Another major issue which the Council of Four discussed was the future of the German Saar province. Clemenceau believed that France was entitled to the province and its coal mines after Germany deliberately damaged the coal mines in Northern France. Wilson, however, resisted the French claim so firmly that Clemenceau accused him of being ‘pro German’. Lloyd George came to a compromise and the coal mines were given to France and the territory placed under French administration for 15 years, after which a vote would determine whether the province would rejoin Germany.

Although Clemenceau had little knowledge of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, he supported the causes of its smaller ethnic groups and his adamancy lead to the stringent terms in the Treaty of Trianon which dismantled Hungary. Rather than recognizing territories of the Austrian-Hungarian empire solely within the principles of self-determination, Clemenceau sought to weaken Hungary just as Germany and remove the threat of such a large power within Central Europe. The entire Czechoslovakian state was seen a potential buffer from Communism and this encompassed majority Hungarian territories.

Reparations

Clemenceau was not experienced in the fields of economics or finance, but was under strong public and parliamentary pressure to make Germany’s reparation bill as large as possible. It was generally agreed that Germany should not pay more than it could afford, but the estimates of what it could afford varied greatly. Figures ranged between £2,000 million which was quite modest compared to another estimate of £20,000 million. Clemenceau realised that any compromise would anger both the French and British citizens and that the only option was to establish a reparations commission which would examine Germany’s capacity for reparations. This meant that the French government was not directly involved in the issue of reparations.

Presidential bid

Clemenceau was defeated for the French Presidency on January 16, 1920, after which he retired from political life.[9]

Clemenceau's First Ministry, 25 October 1906 – 24 July 1909

  • Georges Clemenceau – President of the Council and Minister of the Interior
  • Stéphen Pichon – Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • Georges Picquart – Minister of War
  • Joseph Caillaux – Minister of Finance
  • René Viviani – Minister of Labour and Social Security Provisions
  • Edmond Guyot-Dessaigne – Minister of Justice
  • Gaston Thomson – Minister of Marine
  • Aristide Briand – Minister of Public Instruction, Fine Arts, and Worship
  • Joseph Ruau – Minister of Agriculture
  • Raphaël Milliès-Lacroix – Minister of Colonies
  • Louis Barthou – Minister of Public Works, Posts, and Telegraphs
  • Gaston Doumergue – Minister of Commerce and Industry.

Changes

  • 4 January 1908 – Aristide Briand succeeds Guyot-Dessaigne as Minister of Justice. Gaston Doumergue succeeds Briand as Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts. Briand remains Minister of Worship. Jean Cruppi succeeds Doumergue as Minister of Commerce and Industry.
  • 22 October 1908 – Alfred Picard succeeds Thomson as Minister of Marine.

Clemenceau's Second Ministry, 16 November 1917 – 20 January 1920

  • Georges Clemenceau – President of the Council and Minister of War
  • Stéphen Pichon – Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • Louis Loucheur – Minister of Armaments and War Manufacturing
  • Jules Pams – Minister of the Interior
  • Louis Lucien Klotz – Minister of Finance
  • Pierre Colliard – Minister of Labour and Social Security Provisions
  • Louis Nail – Minister of Justice
  • Georges Leygues – Minister of Marine
  • Louis Lafferre – Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts
  • Victor Boret – Minister of Agriculture and Supply
  • Henry Simon – Minister of Colonies
  • Albert Claveille – Minister of Public Works and Transport
  • Étienne Clémentel – Minister of Commerce, Industry, Maritime Transports, Merchant Marine, Posts, and Telegraphs
  • Charles Jonnart – Minister of Liberated Regions and Blockade.

Changes

  • 23 November 1917 – Albert Lebrun succeeds Jonnart as Minister of Liberated Regions and Blockade.
  • 26 November 1918 – Louis Loucheur becomes Minister of Industrial Reconstitution. His office of Minister of Armaments and War Manufacturing is abolished.
  • 24 December 1918 – The office of Minister of Blockade is abolished. Lebrun remains Minister of Liberated Regions.
  • 5 May 1919 – Albert Claveille succeeds Clémentel as Minister of Merchant Marine. He remains Minister of Public Works and Transport, while Clémentel remains Minister of Commerce, Industry, Posts, and Telegraphs
  • 20 July 1919 – Joseph Noullens succeeds Boret as Minister of Agriculture and Supply.
  • 6 November 1919 – André Tardieu succeeds Lebrun as Minister of Liberated Regions.
  • 27 November 1919 – Léon Bérard succeeds Lafferre as Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts. Louis Dubois succeeds Clémentel as Minister of Commerce, Industry, Posts, and Telegraphs.
  • 2 December 1919 – Paul Jourdain succeeds Colliard as Minister of Labour and Social Security Provisions.

Personal life

Clemenceau was a long-time friend and supporter of the impressionist painter Claude Monet. He was instrumental in convincing Monet to have a cataract operation in 1923, and for over a decade encouraged Monet to complete his donation to the French state, the "Nymphéas" (Water Lilies) paintings that are now on display in Paris' Musée de l'Orangerie in specially constructed oval galleries (which opened to the public in 1927).[10] [11]

Legacy

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Clemenceau's name is spelled with an ⟨e⟩ and not with the ⟨é⟩ that is normally required in French for the pronunciation /e/.
  2. ^ Clemenceau himself preferred the pronunciation kləmɑ̃so, but current usage has adopted the vowel [e] (by analogy with the name Clément). See P. Fouché, Traité de prononciation française, Paris, 1956, p. 65.
  3. ^ David Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (1976) p. 16-22
  4. ^ David Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (1976) p. 23-32
  5. ^ http://www.musee-clemenceau.html (accessed 28 June 2010)
  6. ^ See the 30 September 1906 discourse in La Roche-sur-Yon (French)
  7. ^ G. Clemenceau, Notes de voyage dans l'Amérique du Sud, Hachette, 1911
  8. ^ Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Random House: New York, (2003) 150
  9. ^ "Battu à l'élection présidentielle du 16 janvier 1920, il se retire de l'action politique." _________. "Monet: Le cycle des ‘Nymphéas’" (Paris : Musée national de l’Orangerie, 1999), 61.
  10. ^ Roberta Smith, Serenade in Blue, New York Times, 10 September 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/arts/design/11monet.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 28 June 2010)
  11. ^ __________. Monet: Le cycle des ‘Nymphéas’ (Paris : Musée national de l’Orangerie, 1999).
  12. ^ Musée Clémenceau

References

  • Holt, E., The Tiger: The Life of Georges Clemenceau 1841–1929, (London : Hamilton, 1976)
  • Jackson, J. Hampden. Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1962) online edition
  • MacMillan, Margaret. Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001)
  • Watson, David R. Georges Clemenceau: France: Makers of the Modern World (2009), 176pp excerpt and text search
  • Watson, David R. Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (1976) online edition

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