CLEMENCEAU, Georges Benjamin Eu gene, lcla-m66.-so, French editor and statesman: b. Chateau de l'Aubraie, Feole, Ven dee, 28 Sept. 1841. He studied medicine at Paris, and began the practice of his profession there.
Before he was 20 Georges was thrown into prison for shouting °Vive la Republique P on the streets of Paris, in the midst of the celebra tion of one of the Imperial anniversaries. He served his term in jail, and then, practically an exile, he came to America.
Between 1865 and 1869 he lived in the United States, chiefly in New York and in Stamford, Conn. Before he left France he had made the acquaintance of William E. Marshall, the artist who made the famous engraving of Lincoln, and it was as his friend, and indeed upon his invitation, that the young physician came to New York. During his stay there Clemenceau studied American ideas, conditions of living, government and language. • He had had an academic knowledge of English when he left France; it soon became idiomatic. He traveled, too, visiting the Middle West, and going as far south as Richmond. But he could not travel further in the South, he said, be cause the condition of that section of the coun try, just defeated in the Civil War, was too sad for him to contemplate. He returned to New York, was a constant reader at the Astor Library, and made a number of good friends, especially Eugene Bushe, a lawyer, who was his neighbor on 12th Street. When Clemenceau failed to build up a medical practice and the money that he got from France proved insuf ficient, Bushe introduced him to the mistress of a girls' boarding school, a Miss Aiken, who em ployed him as teacher of the French language and literature in her °young ladies' seminary') at Stamford.
There Clemenceau translated the works of John Stuart Mill into French, was an inde fatigable student of American politics and be came known as a serious scholar. Early in 1870, he left the school where he had taught for two and a half years, and returned to France.
Throughout the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris Clemenceau was mayor of the district of Montmartre. One of his duties during the siege was to see that 150,000 men were properly fed. Another was to look after thousands of refugees. He was also respon
sible for large amounts of money, and they tell a story that, foreseeing the accusations against any one's honesty that might be made in those trying days, he took the precaution of engaging an expert accountant to °check and make public his use of every sou of public funds. At the end of the war he did all he could to gain °home for Paris, and then found himself the enemy of the Commune. In 1871 he was elected to the General Assembly, and it is inter esting to note that he was opposed to a treaty of peace. From 1871 to 1875 he was a member of the Paris Municipal Council, of which he became president, and in 1876 he was elected member from Montmartre in the Chamber of Deputies, where he soon became leader of the Radicals. From the outset of his career in the French Parliament he was the bitter opponent of the Royalists, and soon became known for his eloquence and independence of action. Men could not predict the action of Clemenceau. He was independent even in his radicalism, and he followed no leader but his own prin ciples. They called him the undisciplined van dal in those early days when he was making a reputation as an upsetter of other men's careers.
His political power was increased by his journalistic activities. In 1880 he founded La Justice, the great daily paper, of which he be came chief editor. He destroyed the Fourton Broglie administration. He overthrew Boulan ger. He caused the fall of Jules Grevy and of Jules Ferry. He wrecked the activities and position of M. Freycinet at least three times. Yet his own policy was a consistent radical Republicanism, clear and practical; he stood for the realization of all that the Revolution had hoped and dreamed. He was opposed, we may note, to the alliance with Russia, determined that his country should not be joined in so close a friendship with a despotic power. He un ceasingly upheld the complete separation of Church and state. He urged constantly the development of French resources to the utmost. And those who have watched his career closely point out the growth of the man's political philosophy from his early reckless radicalism to the saner advocacy of a just and free democracy.