To see him was difficult. To interview him an impossibility. He spends half his time at the front, and the other half working. Rarely did he find time to visit the Chamber of Deputies. His speeches came at rare intervals, and were never announced beforehand. So the foreign office informed me. The best I could do was to sit down with people who knew the prime minister and get from them the extraordinary history of the man. Added to that I followed day by day in the newspapers the amazing progress of his policies announced last November when he took office. “You ask my war aims?” he said to the Chamber. “I have only one--to win.” Part of the programme of winning the war was the suppression of the tribe of traitors and defeatists that disgraced the name of France. These, including the unspeakable Bolo and the former minister, Caillaux, Clemenceau had fiercely attacked in his newspaper. When he told the Chamber that he intended to push the prosecution of the accused men to the finish, some one called out unbelievingly, “What! Caillaux?” naming the man who wielded immense power, and who, while Clemenceau was making his speech of acceptance, was seated in the Chamber a few feet from the tribune, a cynical smile on his lips. Thus challenged, Clemenceau paused just long enough to turn and fix his blazing black eyes on the man he had so often accused. He did not say a word. He just looked. Turning furiously red, Caillaux half rose from his seat. Clemenceau’s fierce eyes bored him through, and, try as he might, Caillaux could not return the gaze. He sank in his seat with averted head. Turning once more to the deputies Clemenceau said simply that as a newspaper man he mentioned names, but as premier he would merely deal with indicted criminals. He has dealt with them. Bolo has been executed. Almereyda, one of the worst of the lot, died a violent death in prison, Duval followed Bolo to the fatal glade in the Park of Vincennes, Humbert was exiled and Caillaux is in prison with the strongest possible prospect of being shot as a traitor. A whole raft of smaller treason mongers have received prison terms. Clemenceau is doing what the former governments seemed to find impossible. He has adjourned politics. And when I found that out I understood why this man, the “Tiger,” as he is styled, is also called the savior of France. For France has been cursed with politics and politicians, and it is no affront to the most universally loved and admired of all nations to make that admission. I have no intention of trying to explain the political parties of France, or the minute shades of opinion that separate them. The Chamber of Deputies has a right, or conservative, a left, or radical, and a center. But every one of the three has a right, left and center, and each one of the subdivisions seems to have. This explains why France, or at least Paris, has more newspapers than any place in the world.