population.

M. Georges Clemenceau, the "parliamentary tiger," who, although
remaining outside the Cabinet, is one of the greatest personal forces of
France, has made a stirring statement to Mr. Somerville Story, editor of
the _Daily Mail_. M. Clemenceau said:

"Yes, their guns are almost within sound of Paris. And what if they are?
What if we were yet to be defeated again and again? We should still go
on. Let them burn Paris if they can. Let them wipe it out, raze it to
the level of the ground. We shall still fight on.

"This is not my personal resolve alone. The Government, too, is just as
grimly determined. Do you know, it is strange that one should have been
able to come to feel like this, but the Germans could destroy all these
beautiful places that I love so much; they may blow up the museums,
overthrow monuments--it would only leave me still determined to fight
on.

"France may disappear, if you like. It may be called Frankreich, if you
like. We may be driven back to the very Pyrenees. It will not abate one
fraction our vigor and our decision.

"And in this terrible war we must all realize how unutterably great are
the stakes. It is we in France and our friends in Belgium who are doomed
to suffer the most bitterly. England will be spared much that we must
endure. But we must all make sacrifices almost beyond reckoning. We are
fighting for the dignity of humanity. We are fighting for the right of
civilization to continue to exist. We are fighting so that nations may
continue to live in Europe without being under the heel of another