Freedom of person, of speech and of the press were cardinal points in his programme. He demanded that Paris should be released from all exceptional measures of repression inflicted by the so-called Conservatives upon the whole of the inhabitants of the capital as revenge for the rash action of a small number of fanatical idealists and as a means of keeping down any agitation against their own corruption and incompetence. He claimed also that no perpetual disability, in the shape of imprisonment and exile, should attach to the members of the Commune of Paris, and he called for the fullest pardon and freedom even for the irreconcilable Anarchist, Blanqui. On questions of political rights, universal secular education, the separation of Church and State, the generous treatment of the rank and file of the army, the prevention of the intrigues of the Catholics, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, Clemenceau took the line of an out-and-out democrat. So, likewise, in regard to the treatment of the working classes. Though not really a Socialist, the Radical leader recognised clearly the infinite hardships suffered by the wage-earners under the capitalist system, and proposed and supported palliative legislation to lessen and redress their wrongs. In foreign affairs he was a man of peace, never forgetting the outrages committed by the German armies in the war nor the territory seized and the huge indemnity exacted by the German Government at the peace; but hoping always that the friendly development of the peoples of both France and Germany might avert further antagonism and eventually lead to a full understanding which would assuage the hatreds of the past and lay the foundations of mutual good feeling in the future. To colonisation by conquest and colonial adventures generally Clemenceau was steadfastly opposed. The entire policy of expansion he regarded as injurious to the true interests of the country, diverting to doubtful enterprises abroad resources which were required for the development of Republican France at home. Such colonial schemes also were apt to create difficulties and even to risk wars with other nations which could in no wise benefit the people, while they might strengthen the financiers whose malefic power was already too great. Such in brief was the general policy which Clemenceau set himself to formulate and put to the front on behalf of the only party which at that moment could exercise any serious influence in the political world. The whole programme was closely knit together, and for many years stood the brunt of the bitterest Parliamentary warfare conceivable. It was a conflict of ideas that Clemenceau entered upon. He conducted it throughout on the most approved principle of all warfare: Never fail to attack in order to defend. The advice of the American banker, "David Harum," might have been enunciated as the motto of Georges Clemenceau the French statesman: "Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it _first_."