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The two were alike in that neither could boast, like Miltiades, a lineage of gods and heroes but, the historian Grote informs us, were of middle-class origin and "politicians of the democratical stamp exercising ascendancy by and through the people, devoting their time to the discharge of public duties and manifesting those combined powers of action, comprehension and persuasive speech which accustomed the citizens to look to them as advisers as well as leaders;" but in other respects there was a marked contrast, "the points which stood most conspicuous in the one being comparatively deficient in the other".

According to Thucydides, who was of the succeeding generation and consequently better informed than later commentators, Themistocles "strikingly exhibited the might of unassisted nature" to a degree unapproached by any predecessor. "He conceived the complications of a present embarrassment, and divined the chances of a mysterious future, with equal sagacity and with equal quickness. The right expedient seemed to flash upon his mind extempore, even in the most perplexing contingencies, without the least necessity for premeditation. He was not less distinguished for daring and resource in action: when engaged on any joint affairs, his superior competence marked him out as the leader for others to follow, and no business, however foreign to his experience, ever took him by surprise, or came wholly amiss to him."

Plutarch supplements the sketch by Thucydides with a more personal estimate. Themistocles, the master biographer declares, had an unbounded passion, not merely for glory, but also for display of every kind. He was eager to vie with others in showy exhibition and not at all scrupulous in methods or procurement of means. "Besides being assiduous in attendance at the Ekklesia and the Dikastery, he knew most of the citizens by name, and was always ready with advice to them in their private affairs. Moreover he possessed all the tactics of an expert party man in conciliating political friends and in defeating political enemies. And though he was in the early part of his life sincerely bent upon the upholding and aggrandisement of his country, and was on some most critical occasions of unspeakable value to it, yet on the whole his morality was as reckless as his intelli

gence was eminent. He was grossly corrupt in the exercise of power, and employing tortuous means, sometimes indeed for ends in themselves honorable and patriotic, but sometimes also merely for personal advantage."

"Of Aristides," Grote proceeds, "we possess unfortunately no description from the hand of Thucydides. Yet his character is so simple and consistent that we may safely accept the brief but unqualified encomium of Herodotus and Plato, expanded as it is in the biography of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, however little the details of the latter can be trusted. Aristides was inferior to Themistocles in resource, quickness, flexibility, and power of coping with difficulties; but incomparably superior to him, as well as to other rivals and contemporaries, in integrity public as well as private; inaccessible to pecuniary temptations as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as well as enjoying the highest measures of personal confidence. He is described as the peculiar friend of Cleisthenes, the first founder of the democracy —as pursuing a straight and a single-handed course in political life, with no solicitude for party ties, and with little care either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies-as unflinching in the exposure of corrupt practices, by whomsoever committed or upheld -as earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not less by his judicial decisions in the capacity of Archon, than by his equity in private arbitrations and even his candor in political dispute and as manifesting, throughout a long public life full of tempting opportunities, an uprightness without flaw and beyond all suspicion, recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timocreon and by the allies of Athens upon whom he first assessed the tribute.

"The abilities of Aristides-though apparently adequate to every occasion on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so remarkable a man as Themistocles-were put in the shade by this incorruptible probity; which procured for him, however, along with the general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private enmity from jobbers whom he exposed, and even some jealousy from persons who heard it proclaimed with offensive ostentation.

"Neither indiscreet friends nor artful enemies, however, could

rob him of the lasting esteem of his countrymen; which he enjoyed, though with intervals of their displeasure, to the end of his life. He was ostracized during a part of the period between the battles of Marathon and Salamis, at a time when the rivalry between him and Themistocles was so violent that both could not remain at Athens without peril; but the dangers of Athens during the invasion of Xerxes brought him back before the ten years of exile were expired. His fortune, originally very moderate, was still further diminished during the course of his life, so that he died very poor, and the State was obliged to lend aid to his children."

However one may view the seeming similarity of Mr. Lloyd George to the brilliant, ambitious and daring Themistocles,-a point upon which there will be a great diversity of opinion, the resemblance of M. Briand to Aristides is clear and unmistakable. Like his famous prototype, Aristide the Second, as we are pleased to depict him, has never forfeited the confidence of the people which gave him his first Premiership in 1909. He combines to a marked degree the straight minded conception of a Coolidge with the "single handed course" of a Borah, "with no solicitude for party ties and with little care either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies".

After having acquired a local reputation for the florid and fervid eloquence so dear to the French, he was elected a Deputy at thirty-six, technically as a Socialist but really as a Radical, in consequence of an impassioned appeal to the troops at St. Etienne to revolt and join the workingmen of the Republic in a general strike. He was then, in the laconic phrase of Mr. Wilbur Forrest, a studious correspondent of The New York Herald Tribune, "the dangerous type of revolutionary soapbox orator that Secretary Kellogg would bar from the United States today". But, as almost invariably happens in like instances involving honesty of mind and stirring of conscience, a sense of responsibility brought to Briand's application of his theories a modification of action so distinct that, even while he was demanding complete separation of the Church and State, his associates of the Extreme Left became mistrustful of his tendency, and when finally, having proceeded step by step toward Conservatism, he

prevented just such a strike as he had formerly encouraged by threatening to fetch the railway men under control of the State by conscription, he was denounced violently as a renegade, only to light a fresh cigarette and shrug his broad shoulders.

"Look," he smilingly suggested the other day to friends who had congratulated him upon his break with the Socialists, "at poor Paul Boncourt, entangled in the Socialist organization when he could have progressed much better if, like me, he had become an honest renegade!"

A highly characteristic remark, if ever one was made, revealing both candor and confession, pregnant with meaning, and yet so wholly devoid of sting as to evoke response only of humorous appreciation from his old friend, such as he himself would have made in like circumstances, since he has never been known to cherish resentment against even the most virulent of the many enemies he has made during his stormy career. Some attribute this admirable trait to his philosophy of living; others more frankly, and not without vestige of justification, ascribe it to sheer laziness; none in any case denies his indolence or his indifference to public acclaim. More than once he has connived at resignation simply because he was bored and wanted to withdraw to his little farm in Normandy and recline for hours under trees lining the banks of a tiny stream, apparently fishing but actually smoking and sleeping alternately until dusk should set him trudging home with basket either empty or forgotten and left behind. Like Mr. Lloyd George, M. Briand never reads the newspapers, but, unlike his astute contemporary, he has no précis of their contents prepared for his inspection by capable secretaries. He reads no books; he possesses none. Like our own most remarkable journalist of his time, Samuel Bowles, he gleans essential information from the utterances of others who have laboriously mastered subjects under consideration. One day, long ago, the scholarly Freycinct delivered a long address elaborating all aspects of a certain question with extraordinary skill and comprehensiveness, but so monotonously that his exposition made no impression upon his wearied auditors.

When others had spoken and the end of the discussion was approaching, M. Briand arose and enchained the attention of all

with an oration charged with profundity and teeming with eloquence.

"What a remarkable fellow he is!" exclaimed Freycinct. "How was it possible for him to make so brilliant a speech upon such a topic?"

"It is quite simple," his colleague replied. "He knew nothing about the matter when he came here; he got it all from you an

hour ago.

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Just as many writers, among them the unassuming novice who now sits before you, never know where pens once taken in hand may lead them, M. Briand never can tell what he is going to say when he rises to speak. Intuition furnishes the key, memory the facts, logic the argument, and a veritable gift the persuasive expression which has reversed the attitude of many a Chamber. Talking is his delight. With unsurpassed readiness of wit and suavity of humor serving as a background, he exudes aptness, drollery, satire, brightness, brilliancy and wisdom with voice, eyes and gesturing hands in joint and constant play, yet as simply and unaffectedly as the great Benjamin Franklin himself, his only real rival in history as the idol of the drawing rooms of Paris; the two incidentally alike in preferring no favorites, although differing in that our own hero took unto himself a thrifty wife for what Mr. Hoover would call economic reasons while Aristides the Second, from sheer apathy, has never married at all, and recently created a sensation by reaching from his tiptoes in a railway station to touch with silken moustache both cheeks of the statuesquely beautiful wife of the prim, monocled British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs-a unique exploit which even the most audacious of Frenchmen would hardly have essayed and could not have achieved without the coöperation of the tactful English gentlewoman herself, who was obliged perforce to incline her head in the interest of patriotism and the entente cordiale.

This pleasing episode so firmly established the success of the Locarno conference that Mr. Chamberlain was accorded a Knighthood, a Garter and a dinner at Guildhall, and his vicariously sacrificial helpmate was created by His grateful Majesty a Dame Commander of the British Empire.

That these honors were well earned all agree. The straight

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