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But Albert and Francois had not dug deep enough. Gravediggers who labored all night preparing the tomb struck solid rock about four feet down. Despite good intentions, the Father of Victory had to be laid horizontally. He was not embalmed. Beside him in his simple pine coffin lay the ironshod walkingstick with which he had tramped through the trenches, some faded flowers from No Man's Land, and a handful of earth from Verdun.
Above the grave of Tiger Clemenceau will stand Greek Goddess Minerva of Wisdom. He sketched her himself, had her done into stone by "E. Sigard." The sculptor's signature on the cold, rough stone is the only inscription, the only epitaph.
¶ "My philosophy? It consists in taking humanity as it is."
¶ At first sight of couples fox-trotting: "I have never seen faces so sad or behinds so gay."
¶ Letter to President Wilson (1977): "It is possible that your mind, inclosed in the austere legal frontiers, which has been the source of so many noble actions, has failed to be impressed by the vital hold which personalities like Roosevelt have on popular imagination. ... I claim for Roosevelt only what he claims for himself—the right to appear on the battlefield surrounded by his comrades."
¶ Of Wilson (1920}: "I never knew a man who could talk so much like Jesus Christ and act so much like Lloyd George."
¶ Of Death: "To dread such a state surely indicates a lack of balanced judg- ment, since we enter it, by no means without satisfaction, at the end of every day. When we have completed our daily task, do we not seek to recuperate in sleep? Death is no more and no less than sleep."
*Many last words were reported. Most plausible: "Stop that! Stop that!" as the heart specialist Dr. Landry sought to jab in a last dose of morphine.
