“ The strike of miners in the Pas de Calais after the disaster at Courrières, leading to the threat of disorder on the 1st of May 1906, obliged him to employ the military; and his attitude in the matter alienated the Socialist party, from which he definitely broke in his notable reply in the Chamber to Jean Jaurès in June 1906. This speech marked him out as the strong man of the day in French politics; and when the Sarrien ministry resigned in October, he became premier. ”

“ CLEMENCEAU, GEORGES (1841– ) , French statesman, was born at Mouilleron-en-Pareds, Vendée, on the 28th of September 1841. Having adopted medicine as his profession, he settled in 1869 in Montmartre; and after the revolution of 1870 he had become sufficiently well known to be nominated mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris (Montmartre) —an unruly district over which it was a difficult task to preside. On the 8th of February 1871 he was elected as a Radical to the National Assembly for the department of the Seine, and voted against the peace preliminaries. ”

“ He joined the Extreme Left, and his energy and mordant eloquence speedily made him the leader of the Radical section. In 1877, after the Seize Mai (see France: History) , he was one of the republican majority who denounced the Broglie ministry, and he took a leading part in resisting the anti-republican policy of which the Seize Mai incident was a symptom, his demand in 1879 for the indictment of the Broglie ministry bringing him into particular prominence. In 1880 he started his newspaper, La Justice, which became the principal organ of Parisian Radicalism ”