So also when the Anglo-French forces had won the great seven days' battle on the Marne, Clemenceau at once uttered a note of warning against undue confidence and excessive elation. "Let us be very careful not to believe that we can reckon upon an uninterrupted series of successes up to the final destruction of the aggressor. The curtain falls on the horrible scenes of foreign invasion in Belgium and France. A mortal blow has been inflicted upon the invincible Kaiser who had never fought a battle. . . . But it would be sheer madness to imagine that we have nearly finished with an enemy who will shortly obtain fresh forces, vast forces even, from his uninvaded territory. A great part of his military resources are still untouched. Automatic discipline will soon reassert itself. The struggle will last very long yet and be full of unforeseen dangers. The stake is too heavy for the German Empire to decide suddenly to give up the game. Remember your mistakes of the past, rejoice soberly in your victory of the present, make ready now for still heavier trials in the future." Such was the counsel of Clemenceau to Frenchmen on September 15th, 1914. Above all, "Leave nothing you can help to chance. Our military leaders have just victoriously undergone racking anxieties. It is for us to show our confidence in them by giving them credit for the patience and firmness which they will desperately need." Similarly in regard to the magnificent series of defensive victories at Verdun, of which Clemenceau gives a fine picturesque account. After justly glorifying the prowess of the heroic French soldiery, whose chances of victory at the commencement of those long weeks of unceasing battle seemed small indeed; after bitter sarcasms on the miserable Crown Prince with his premature jubilations over his supreme carefully stage-managed "triumph"; after a terrible picture of masses of the German troops marching through a hurricane to what they were assured was certain victory and then their dead bodies literally kept erect by the pressure of their dead comrades as a mass of corpses--after all this, and his legitimate pride in the hardly won victory, Clemenceau goes on to remind his countrymen again that this is not the end. "Verdun is the greatest drama of resistance. But all, All must at once set to work to make ready for a thorough offensive: a complete offensive that needs no interpretation. For this we must have _preparation_. For this we must have _science_. For this we must have _method_. For this we must have _manœuvres_. Keep those words well in mind, for nothing can be worse than to forget them. Never too soon: never too late. What would be the cost to us, in our turn, of a _coup manqué_?" That is the tone throughout. But here and there in _L'Homme Enchaîné_ we find Clemenceau the controversialist in a lighter, but not less telling, style. I give an extract from his scathing attack on the Danish littérateur, M. Brandès, in the original:--