Foreign News: Armistice

Months ago a group of British and U. S. correspondents waited day after day in a draughty courtyard in the Rue de Crenelle playing cards, drinking beer, arguing, squabbling, waiting for Marshal Foch to die. Last week the identical men were waiting in another courtyard, across the Seine in the Rue Franklin beneath the window of Georges Clémenceau.

M. Clémenceau did not take kindly to his death watch.

“Fiche moi le camp! Go to hell!” he shouted from his bedroom. “I want to die in peace and I will do all I can to fool you. You shall not learn of my death until 24 hours after I have been shut in my coffin. And now goto hell again!”

Scorning his self-designed “Japanese” bed with its carved and gilded dragon headboard, he sat upright by his desk, his soft felt trench cap on his big head, grey woolen gloves on his hands, writing, correcting proof, revising his new book that is so nearly ready, between fits of drowsing in his chair.

A fortnight prior the 88-year-old War Prime Minister had returned to Paris from his summer cottage, told friends that he did not expect to live through the winter. Early last week his valet found the old Tiger in bed, breathing heavily, unconscious from a sudden heart attack. Worried specialists rushed to his bedside, administered oxygen, strychnine, summoned his son, his daughter, his grandson. They privately gave up hope that the old man could live through the night. They forgot the implacable will of Georges Clémenceau. The man who carried France through the dark winter of 1917 by the sheer force of his personal hatred of Germany, whose wool-gloved fists so impressed all observers of the Versailles Peace Conference, does not give up easily. He was ready to die this year, but not while there was work to be done. He had to write the history of his War years, the written reply to such critics as the late Marshal Foch. He had no time to die.

Thirty-six hours after his attack he was, by sheer force of will, able to greet Dr. Laubry, his specialist, standing on his own feet. Anxiously hovering near was his trained nurse, white-coifed Sister Theoneste. Ten years ago during the Peace Conference, Clémenceau was shot-wounded by a young anarchist named Cottin.* It was Sister Theoneste who nursed him back to health. Last week when his battle for life was hardest, Clémenceau, the confirmed atheist, had called for Sister Theoneste again. She it was who despite his grumbling protests gave him hypodermic injections of camphorated oil to relieve the congestion in his chest, prepared his frugal diet (vegetable soup, mashed potatoes, stewed fruit) and tried ineffectually to keep him from writing.

Down in the Courtyard the Death Watch waylaid Dr. Laubry for news.

“An amazing reaction, gentlemen!” said he. “A few more days like this one and M. Clémenceau may be considered out of immediate danger. Unfortunately the nights are very much harder on him than the days. Perhaps in your stories it would be safer for you to use the word ‘Armistice’ than ‘Victory.'”

The next morning Correspondent Ralph Heinzen passed through the “Death Watch,” entered M. Clémenceau’s bedroom. He found the old gentleman at his desk again, scratching at his manuscript, still grumbling at patient Sister Theoneste, looking with his cap, his drooping mus—Of Anarchist Emile Cottin Tiger Clémenceau has exclaimed: “The idot! They condemned him to be guillotined. I signed his pardon myself!” tache and slanting eyes more like a venerable Chinese idol than ever.

“America will be surprised to learn I am better, eh?” said he. “Heh, heh, I am reserving still greater surprises for America in my book. . . .*

“How well you look this morning. What a fine overcoat! If I had one like that I’d go to the theatre tonight! . . . Look at all these letters, they are mostly from women, if they could see me now they wouldn’t fall in love with me, would they?

“I passed a bad night. I don’t feel well, but I try to work. Things don’t go well. … I just slept a little here in my chair, but I am weak and they won’t let me eat.”

As Correspondent Heinzen prepared to leave the old man whispered:

“Goodbye. I can’t accompany you to the door, the doctors would be angry. It’s my legs you know. Tell those fellows in the courtyard to go to hell.”

Not the book that was keeping him alive, but another book by Georges Clémenceau appeared on U. S. bookstalls last week.** In two ponderous volumes the Tiger agilely avoids autobiography, memoirs, history; explains at great length his carefully reasoned atheism under such headings as: Abstraction; Myths; Religious Bargains and Their Results; Philosophic Doubt; Diffusion; Cosmogonies; Cosmology.

Of the Savior, the Holy Virgin and the Deity he writes: “Ancient and modern myths are only meaningless pictures which are fading out. Sooner or later the celestial personalities will be no more than a memory of fairyland. Face to face with the universe, man will be the sole evidence of his audacious dreams of divinity, since the god he vainly sought is himself.”

Testily the Tiger asks: “Is war really the natural condition of all living creatures? The controlling law of the universal struggle for existence so decrees! We have only to look about us to become convinced of the fact. Everything conflicts. . . . ‘Economic war’ is the current phrase for describing this state of affairs. … I will not dwell on the pacific phraseology in which we disguise economic war, which, quite as much as armed conflicts, sheds the blood of the weak in order to increase the vital resources of the strong. The case is too plain to admit of argument.”

*Publishers Harcourt Brace & Co. will spring the surprise. They paid a reputed $35,000 for the U. S. book rights. First U. S. publisher to discover that the Tiger would write his memoirs was astute Albert Boni of Albert Charles Boni, Inc. From Paris last spring he went out to see the old gentleman. He learned that the best offer Clémenceau had had for world rights on the book was 25,000 francs ($1,000), from a French publisher. Publisher Boni offered $25,000. Amazed, delighted, M. Clémenceau struck the bargain then and there. But Publisher Boni had no check with him. When he returned, the Tiger was reserved, apologetic—and equipped with a U. S. lawyer. He had received, he said, a better offer than Publisher Boni’s—$30,000.

Publisher Boni offered $35,000, and again the deal was made—but not signed. Clemenceau said he must notify the other bidder which was, he said, the New York Times. He agreed to give Publisher Boni a chance to match any higher bid.

Then the fun began. By fives and tens of thousands, up went the price. Clemenceau each time explaining that the Times had gone higher. When $80,000 was reached, Publisher Boni telephoned from Paris to Manhattan. He suggested to the Times that they were cutting each other’s throats. Whereat the Times expressed great surprise because it had not been bidding at all. Off went Publisher Boni well content to let the Tiger whistle for his $80,000.

The eventual sale of the U. S. book rights only to Harcourt Brace, leaves M. Clemenceau free to dicker with bidders for the U. S. serial rights and other rights abroad. He may yet reap more than $80,000.

**THE EVENING OF MY THOUGHT—Georges Clemenceau—translated by Charles Miner Thompson and John Heard Jr.—Hough-ton Mifflin ($12.50).