The Living Present

reless happiness up to the Great War, but also, and from childhood, an uncommonly intere

ife of active usefulness, and began his career as private secretary to Gambetta. His life of that remarkable Gascon is the standard work. He was conspicuously instrumental in securing justice for Dreyfus,

ne of the momentous crises in the French Republic. He also has written on alcoholism and election reforms, an

f French journalists, and several "Intellectuals" more or less connected with the press. The scene was the private banquet room of the Hotel de Crillon, a fine old palace on the Place de la Concorde

c chamber above a dark and quiet Paris the most interesting I ever attended! Perhaps it was because I sat at the

t a rumor began to run around the room and electrify the atmosphere that a great naval engagement had taken place in the North Sea; but it was just after coffee was served that a boy from the office of Le Figaro entered with a proof-sheet for Monsieur Reinach to correct-he contributes a daily colu

and as the Germans admit having lost eight ships we may sa

an overwhelming victory, with the pride of Britain either at the bottom of the North Sea or hiding like Churchill's rats in any hole that would shelter them from further vengeance. People, both French

the fate of Germany, but if that Navy had proved another illusion the bottom had fallen out of the world. Not onl

e day, to say nothing of the fashion in which the British Navy lived up to its best traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of criminal that the English censor should

truth. We all breathed again, and I kept one of my