To sink an American transport with several thousand soldiers on board, any U-boat commander in the Germany navy would almost barter his chances in the next world. Can you imagine to what fame he would spring overnight? They would have to invent a new decoration to express the kaiser’s gratitude--his and Gott’s. But nobody has won that decoration yet, and nobody stands much chance of winning it, if only the American father and mother keep cool and stand by their government. We have sent over, Secretary Baker told us in early July, more than a million soldiers, and we have lost less than three hundred men at sea. Think of it! The sea at that rate, even now, with U-boats on both sides of the Atlantic, is safer to cross than Broadway and Forty-second Street. Shall we keep it safe? Or shall we do what the kaiser is probably praying for every day of his life? Shall we please him, help him, by demanding that some of those destroyers be sent home to guard our shores? Never, while we keep our intelligence. CHAPTER XXIX CLEMENCEAU THE TIGER It must be plain to everybody, even to the people of the German empire and her vassal states, that the allies will certainly win the war. The only thing that could possibly alter that fact would be for one of the great powers, England, France or the United States, to make a very serious political blunder. We need not be afraid now that such a thing will happen. We know that President Wilson will stand firmly by the policies which have brought him fame and gratitude throughout the civilized world. Great Britain has had her worst political crisis, and she has survived it. We trust David Lloyd George to work wholeheartedly with Woodrow Wilson for a fight to the finish with German militarism. But what of France? What manner of man is at the helm in the French capital? What about Clemenceau? All I knew about Clemenceau, when I went to France last January, was that he was the editor of a newspaper which seemed to attack everybody in the French government, and which was frequently suppressed by the censor. I had never seen a copy of the paper. I knew that Clemenceau had had a long political career, had been a member of the French Senate, and also of the Chamber of Deputies, which corresponds to our House of Representatives. For a brief period also he was prime minister. Always Clemenceau appeared to be opposing something. I thought of him as a firebrand with a talent for writing ironic newspaper articles. Therefore, when I reached Paris, when I began to read the French papers and found them filled with praises of a man they had previously denounced as a Judas; when I heard the most conservative people speak of him as the savior of France, I was filled with curiosity. I began to ask everybody to tell me all about Clemenceau.