"Then has he risen at dawn for nothing, badly fed, badly clothed, sweating in the sun, shivering in the wind and the rain, exhausting his energies against things which resist his utmost efforts? Do sowing, manuring, labour and the pouring out of life all, too, go for nothing, without rest, without leisure, without any thought but this: I toiled and suffered yesterday, I shall toil and suffer to-morrow? And all this is balanced by no pleasures but drunkenness and lust. No theatres, no books, no shows, no enjoyments of any kind. Hard to others, hard to himself, everything is hard around him." Such is the peasant of Western France. Though the peasant of the South is of a livelier and happier disposition on the surface, both are at bottom the same. And France is still in the main rural France as Clemenceau himself impressed upon me many years ago. That is the influence which holds in check the advanced proletariat of the towns and mining districts. They can see nothing outside private property, property, property: yet it is this very unregulated individual ownership which forces them to fight out their existence against the hardships of nature with inefficient tools, insufficient manure and no adequate arrangements for marketing the produce they have for sale. High prices and a few advantages gained have somewhat ameliorated the lot of the peasant, but it is still a hard, depressing existence which cannot be made really human and happy for the great majority under the conditions of to-day. The only boon the peasant has is that he is not under the direct sway of the capitalist exploiter. What that means in the mines Clemenceau had an opportunity of seeing very close, as a member of the Commission appointed to examine into the coal-mines of Anzin in 1884. He tells of his experience ten years later in one of the pits he descended. "Never go down a coal-mine," wrote Lord Chesterfield to his son. "You can always say you have been below, and nobody can contradict you." Clemenceau did not follow this cynical advice. He went down, "and after having waded through water, bent double, for hundreds upon hundreds of yards through dripping scales which hang from the upper stratum, I crawled on hands and knees to a nice little vein _twenty inches thick_. On this seam human beings were at work, lying on their side, bringing down coal which fell on their faces and replacing it continuously by timber in order not to be crushed by the upper surface. You must not neglect this part of the work!" He was not allowed to talk with the men themselves, and when they came to interview him secretly they implored him not to let the manager or the employers know, or they would be discharged at once! The old story of miners in every country which even the strongest Trade Unions are as yet scarcely able to cope with, though the tyranny in French mines has been checked since the time Clemenceau wrote. These and similar cases