M. Clemenceau has once more kept his head above water.
On Friday week there was a debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the wine crisis, and though his Ministry came out of it with a diminished majority, it still came out. Few other French Cabinets could have done that. "I did my best," said M. Clemenceau, according to the Paris corre- spondent of the Times, "to avoid sending troops into the South. But there is a limit to such a state of insurrection as that of the three or four departments known as the federated departments." He added : "When I resolved to intervene with armed force it was the cruellest moment of my life." He then gave details of all the rioting, the mutineering, and the casualties in the street-fighting. An important and interesting passage of his speech was that in which he exposed the part played by reactionaries, who made all this Southern fermenta- tion serve their own political ends. Handbills were circulated stating that the " Judaeo-Masonic Republic" was ruining the country. In fact, M. Clemenceau accused the Right of directing the insurrectionary policy. The general sense of the Chamber was that this was no time to "swop horses." Perhaps the painful experience when M. Rouvier resigned during the Algeciras Conference was still a sobering memory. Truly M. Clemenceau is one of the threatened men who live long.
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