Joffre occupied himself with his accustomed method to the work of preparing the Government victory. Some one has recalled a conversation which he had with Joffre at this time. The General sits in an armchair looking steadily into space. His visitor insists on the impossibility of increasing the annual contingents to the French Army. But, he says persuasively, you can supplement the number by enrolling the black man. "The black man," repeats Joffre, and his mind goes back, no doubt, to his colonial days. He is again building the railway from Kayes to Bafoulabé, he is again on the Niger at Goundam, where they brought him news of Bonnier’s massacre with his eleven officers and sixty-four _tirailleurs_. And he asks suddenly: "But what sacred fire will animate them? Will they ever equal our own soldiers defending, field by field, their own soil?" Joffre, indeed, had realised the impotency of numbers unless animated by the spirit of a great cause. He would not hear of reinforcing the French regiments by those newly acquired citizens of France in Central Africa. "No, no," he said; "the Three-Years Law is a vital question; do not give the enemies of the measure the pretext they seek." The Generalissimo went to the Chamber, to act, with General Pau, as Government Commissioner during the progress of the great debate. I imagine that the experience was more painful to him than first facing fire in a Paris fort in 1870. For the Socialist opponents of the Bill heckled the Commissioners, challenging not merely their arguments but also their figures. The temptation was strong upon Joffre at times to retort angrily upon the obstructionists, but he kept his temper and a cold, even tone of courtesy. In his rare interventions he spoke briefly and directly to the point, figures in hand. He maintained throughout an impassive attitude, and looked a formidable figure as he stood resolutely to his guns dominating the wilderness of talk. Even in the lobbies of the Chamber, in the _entr’actes_ of the debate, he did not unbend from his attitude of reserve, which, though it angered the obstructionists, impressed them in spite of themselves. Here was the man who could keep his head—the _tête froide_ demanded by Napoleon as the first essential of a battle-chief. Pau, on the other hand, was much less calm and was visibly vexed at the shameless opposition. The fingers of his whole arm (for he had lost the other in the War of ’70) clinched and unclinched as if anxious to meet the foe at close quarters.