"He almost ceased to believe in human virtue. That was the foundation of his attitude to such things as the League of Nations. They seemed to him too good to be true; what Napoleon called ideology. Often when I visited him he has begun the conversation by saying: "I like the League of Nations," and then, with an ironic challenge: "but I don't believe in it." But that did not prevent him from being very kind to me personally. He was called fierce and pitiless and he may have been so. When I saw him he was courtesy and consideration personified. He never made phrases. He said what he wanted to say in the plainest and most pointed language he could command—and sometimes it was very plain and pointed. He never talked for the sake of talking—only because he had got something to say. His oratory was not emotional. It was destructive, especially of falsity and pretence. His critical power was great. He used it to destroy mercilessly whatever he despised and he despised a good many things and people... What he saw, he saw clearly, without ambiguity or self-delusion."
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Academics from FrancePrime Ministers of FrancePoliticians from FranceDefense ministersInterior ministers
Original Language: English
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Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, BBC radio broadcast upon Clemenceau's death (1929), quoted in Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, All the Way (1949), pp. 153-154
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Georges_Clemenceau
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Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who led the nation in the First World War. A leader of the Radical Party, he played a central role in politics during the Third Republic. Clemenceau served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. He was one of the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles at the France Peace Conference of 1919.
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