There will be no lack of coal. The army has accumulated enormous quantities, and the Gas Company has enough coal for five months. M. Mithouard also says he recently made a personal investigation of the water supply, and found that, even if the aqueducts were cut, the city would have two hundred and sixty thousand cubic meters of filtered water available every day from the Ivry and Saint-Maur waterworks; and even without these, Paris could still have two hundred and sixty thousand cubic meters a day chemically purified.
The Municipal Council has also approved a proposal to buy up certain provisions to be added to the necessaries of life for the civilian population.
M. Georges Clemençeau, the "parliamentary tiger," who, although remaining outside the Cabinet, is one of the greatest personal forces of France, has made a stirring statement to Mr. Somerville Story, editor of the Daily Mail. M. Clemençeau said:
"Yes, their guns are almost within sound of Paris. And what if they are? What if we were yet to be defeated again and again? We should still go on. Let them burn Paris if they can. Let them wipe it out, raze it to the level of the ground. We shall still fight on.
"This is not my personal resolve alone. The Government, too, is just as grimly determined. Do you know, it is strange that one should have been able to come to feel like this, but the Germans could destroy all these beautiful places that I love so much; they may blow up the museums, overthrow monuments—it would only leave me still determined to fight on.
"France may disappear, if you like. It may be called Frankreich, if you like. We may be driven back to the very Pyrenees. It will not abate one fraction our vigor and our decision.
"And in this terrible war we must all realize how unutterably great are the stakes. It is we in France and our friends in Belgium who are doomed to suffer the most bitterly. England will be spared much that we must endure. But we must all make sacrifices almost beyond reckoning. We are fighting for the dignity of humanity. We are fighting for the right of civilization to continue to exist. We are fighting so that nations may continue to live in Europe without being under the heel of another nation. It is a great cause; it is worthy of great sacrifices.
"I say this to convince you of the unbreakable spirit of the French nation.
"But the situation is not yet so grave. We knew our frontier would be invaded somewhere. We have many troops in reserve for the big battle that will follow this one.
"The Germans cannot besiege or invest Paris. Its size is too vast. Its defence will be assisted by the armies now fighting on the Oise, seventy miles away.