speeches embodying the spirit
of fighting France were read and admired the world over. Many persons
consider Rene Viviani France's greatest orator. Volumes of his speeches
have had a wide sale.

M. Viviani was succeeded in the Premiership by M. Briand, and recently
he became Minister of Justice in the Ribot Cabinet. He is a man of great
culture. Though an excellent Latin and Greek scholar, he speaks no
English. Rene Viviani has had some experience as a newspaper man, as a
special writer and as managing editor of the Petite Republique. His
younger son, aged 22, was killed in the war. His older son has been
wounded but is back at the front.

Another member of the French mission was M. de Hovelacque, the French
Inspector General of Public Instruction. He is well known in the United
States because of his marriage to Miss Josephine Higgins, of New York
State.

The Right Honorable Arthur Balfour, ex-Premier of England, who came to
America to join in the conferences at which the policies for carrying
the war were outlined after America became an Ally, is described as one
of the most intellectual statesmen in England, and one who, although he
won all the honors his country could give him, never realized his own
possibilities. At sixty-nine, at the height of his mental development,
he occupies a place in the English cabinet, a place which was given him
because of his great hold upon the autocracy of England.

BALFOUR'S INTELLECTUAL ABILITY.

As the Premier of England, as Secretary of Ireland and as the leader of
the House of Commons Mr. Balfour displayed great intellectual agility,
but at no time was credited with having displayed the industry which
spurred on such men as Lloyd George to success. He is of the aristocracy
and his position in English politics came to him as the nephew of Lord
Salisbury.

He was born in 1848 and educated at Eton and Cambridge and entered the
House of Commons at the age of 26. Mr. Balfour was known in his early
years as a philosophically and religiously inclined young man, and it
occasioned some surprise when he followed the traditions of his family
by entering politics.

Some years after taking his seat he joined what was known as the Fourth
Party, a conservative rebel faction, consisting of three members, Lord
Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and Sir John Gorst. This
group constituted a sort of mugwump element that voted independently on
every party question and that tried