Georges Clemenceau Quotes
I won't budge; I will act like a hedgehog and wait until they come to talk to me. I will yield nothing. We will see if they can manage without me. Lloyd George is a trickster…. I don't like being double-crossed. Lloyd George has deceived me. He made me the finest promises, and now he breaks them.
Germany was the enemy but the allies were fighting with each other over the treaty negotiations. David Lloyd George was the Prime Minister of England who was negotiating for that country.
Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1929, French Premier & Journalist, Statement to his staff at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations, Quoted in Raymond Poincare, diary entry, March 14, 1919
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
and later wife. Stevenson is describing the German foreign minister’s behavior at Versailles and Lloyd George’s angry reaction.
See related quote to consider other’s view of the Greeks at the time. The Crusades were going badly for the Christians at this point. The Greek Emperor had, after promising to be a part of the Christian alliance, made a separate treaty with Saladin and the Muslims, making him an outcast and sewing the seeds of the schism between the Eastern and Western Christian Churches.
He was exactly right. Two decades later Germany had started WWII.
The Germans pretended to maintain the treaty and when the French totally evacuated the Rhineland, Hitler started his preparation for WWII and a little later invaded France. Clemenceau had been snookered.
Barstow the Democratic Governor who had no serious opposition in 1853 found himself challenged for reelection by Coles Bashford of the new Republican Party. The Board of Canvassers reported that Governor Barstow had won reelection but by less than 200 votes in the whole state. The Republicans charged that there had been fraud in some of the rural districts and petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court which ruled that nonexistent precincts had indeed voted for the Governor. Barstow however refused to recognize the decisions of the court claiming that the court had no jurisdiction over the Board of Canvassers who were part of the executive branch. The Republicans held their own inauguration and two men claimed to be Governor. But the Governor claimed that the state constitution did not give the court any authority to deal with the crisis, He even called out the State Militia to maintain his office and intimidate the Supreme Court and keep the “other governor” from the state house. Nonetheless the court ruled that even the Governor had to obey the law and the Supreme Court would determine what the law was. Barstow finally “resigned.” See {587915} & {587917}.
Georges Eugène Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A popular figure of the Independent Radicals, he played a central role in the politics of the Third Republic, most notably successfully leading the country through the end of the First World War.
