Clemenceau, the Man and His Time by H. M. Hyndman

I read, therefore, with some amusement in Mrs. Humphry Ward’s recent book of Victorian Recollections that, having met Clemenceau at dinner, in the ’eighties, she came to the conclusion that he was “too light a weight to ride such a horse as the French democracy.” A very natural mistake, no doubt, for one of us staid and solemn Victorians to make, according to the young cynics and jesters of to-day who gird at us! It is precisely this inexhaustible fund of animal spirits and his never-failing cheerfulness and brilliancy which have given Clemenceau the power over France which he possesses to-day. Frenchmen have felt the more assured confidence in themselves and their future when they saw, day after day, their own representative and ruler full of go and of belief[9] in himself at the time when the issue for them all was hanging in the balance. No real leader of men can ever afford to be a pessimist. He must assume a certitude if he have it not. There was no need for Clemenceau to assume anything. It was all there.