Gambetta, with all his great reputation, being overthrown, straightway his old Secretary of 1871, de Freycinet, came again to the front. The affairs of Egypt, always with Clemenceau's genial assistance, made short work of him. The Anglo-French Condominium having fallen through and England having thought proper to suppress a people "rightly struggling to be free," de Freycinet was anxious to reassert the claims of France in Egypt after a fashion which threatened unpleasantness with Great Britain. Whatever Clemenceau may have thought privately of English policy at this juncture, he would have none of that. His arguments convinced the Assembly that French intervention in Egypt against England would be dangerous and unsuccessful. France, said Clemenceau, had neither England's advantages nor England's direct interests in Egypt. France is a continental, not a great sea power. Her apprehensions are from the East. Do nothing which may drive England into the arms of Germany. What was much worse, the same colonial expansion which had been carried out in Tunis was now followed up in Tonquin, Annam and Madagascar, at great expense and to little or no advantage. Clemenceau still opposed this entire policy on principle. Ferry thought France would recompense herself for the disasters of 1870-71 by these adventures: Clemenceau was absolutely convinced to the contrary. "Why risk £20,000,000 on remote expeditions when we have our entire industrial mechanism to create, when we lack schools and country roads? To build up vanquished France again we must not waste her blood and treasure on useless enterprises. But there are much higher reasons even than these for abstaining from such wars of depredation. It is all an abuse, pure and simple, of the power which scientific civilisation has over primitive civilisation to lay hold upon man as man, to torture him, to squeeze everything he has in him out of him for the profit of a civilisation which itself is a sham." There could be no sounder sense, no higher morality, no truer statesmanship than that. Clemenceau had aspirations that France should lead the world, not by unjustifiable conquests over semi-civilised populations, but by displaying at home those great qualities which she undoubtedly possesses. His attacks were inspired, therefore, not by personal animosity against Jules Ferry or any other politician, but against a megalomania that was harmful to his country and the world. Unfortunately, Clemenceau could not, this time, persuade the Assembly or his countrymen to recognise the dangers and disadvantages of expansion by conquest in the Far East, until the disaster of Lang Son and the demand for additional credits enabled him to push the perils of such a policy right home. Then M. Ferry was once more discharged, practically at Clemenceau's behest.