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 go to 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.'"