M. Lauzanne was born in 1874 and is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of Paris. Believing that journalism opened to him a wider avenue of usefulness than the legal profession, he preferred--as the event showed most wisely--to follow a journalistic career. In this choice he may have been guided by the fact that he was the nephew of the most famous foreign correspondent in the history of journalism. I refer to M. de Blowitz, who was for many years the Paris correspondent of the London _Times_, and as such a very notable representative of the Fourth Estate. No one ever more fully illustrated the truth of the words which Thackeray, in Pendennis, puts into the mouth of his George Warrington, when he and Arthur Pendennis stand in Fleet Street and hear the rumble of the engines in the press-room. He likened the foreign correspondents of these newspapers to the ambassadors of a great State; and no one more fully justifies the analogy than M. de Blowitz, for it is profitable to recall that when in 1875 the military party of Germany secretly planned to strike down France, when the stricken gladiator was slowly but courageously struggling to its feet, it was de Blowitz, who in an article in the London _Times_ let the light of day into the brutal and iniquitous scheme, and by mere publicity defeated for the time being this conspiracy against the honor of France and the peace of the world. Unfortunately the _coup_ of the Prussian military clique was only postponed. Our generation was destined to sustain the unprecedented horrors of a base attempt to destroy France, that very glorious asset of all civilization. De Blowitz took great interest in his brilliant nephew and at his suggestion Lauzanne became the London correspondent of the _Matin_ in 1898, when he was only twenty-four years of age. This brought him into direct communication with the London _Times_ which then as now exchanged cable news with the _Matin_, and it was the duty of the young journalist to take the cable news of the "Thunderer" and transmit such portions as would particularly interest France to the _Matin_, with such special comment as suggested itself. How well he did this work, requiring as it did the most accurate judgment and the nicest discrimination, was shown when he was made Editor-in-Chief of the _Matin_ in 1901. His tenure of office was destined to be short for, when the world war broke out, M. Lauzanne, as a First Lieutenant of the French Army, joined the colors in the first days of mobilization and surrendered the pen for the sword. His career as editor had been long enough, however, for him to impress upon the minds of the French public the imminency of the Prussian Peril. As to this he had no illusions and his powerful editorials had done much to combat the spirit of pacificism, which at that time was weakening the preparations of France for the inevitable conflict.