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452 and the Aisne, which initiated the final Allied offensives. Later, he was sent on a mission to the Balkans. In Oct. 1919 he was made governor of Metz.

BERTHELOT, PHILIPPE JOSEPH LOUIS (1866- ), French diplomat, was born Oct. 9 1866, a son of Marcellin Berthelot, the famous chemist and politician (see 3.811). After having passed through the regular stages of a diplomatic career, he was sent on a mission to the Far East in 1902, and returned to the Foreign Office to mount the hierarchical steps of pro- motion, many of which, by reason of his appointment as chcfde cabinet, he was able to take at a single bound. He acted as Briand's righthand man throughout his term of office as Min- ister of Foreign Affairs and prime minister; became Clemenceau's trusted adviser during the World War and the Peace Confer- ence, and succeeded Jules Cambon, with the rank of an ambas- sador, as general secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

BERTIE, FRANCIS LEVESON BERTIE, 1ST VISCOUNT (1844-1919), English diplomatist, was born at Wytham Abbey, Oxon., Aug. 17 1844, the second son of the 6th Earl of Abingdon. He was educated at Eton, and in 1863 entered the Foreign Office. In 1874 he married the daughter of the 1st Earl Cowley. He was attached to the special embassy to Berlin in 1878, and in 1881 was secretary to the Duke of Fife's mission to invest the King of Saxony with the Garter. In 1894 he became assistant Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a post which he retained till 1903. He was then appointed British ambassador to Italy, but remained in Rome for only a year, being appointed in 1905 ambassador to France. The Anglo-French agreement had been signed in 1904, and the new ambassador's personal popularity was most successful in strengthening the ties thus formed between England and France. On the outbreak of war in 1914 Sir Francis Bertie's position became one of great importance and responsibility, and he was untiring in his efforts towards establishing the most complete understanding between England and France. He retired in 1918. Bertie had been made K.C.B. in 1902, G.C.V.O. and privy councillor in 1903, G.C.M.G. in 1904, and G.C.B. in 1908. He was raised to the peerage on his retirement with the title of Viscount Bertie of Thame. He died in London Sept. 27 1919 and was succeeded by his son, Vere Frederick Bertie (b. 1878).

BERTILLON, ALPHONSE (1853-1914), French anthropometrist (see 3.812), died in Paris Feb. 13 1914.

BERTOLINI, PIETRO (1853-1920), Italian statesman, was born at Montebelluna in 1853. He began his career as a barrister and student of economic and administrative questions, and entered parliament in 1891 as member for his native town. Two years later he became Under-Secretary for Finance in the Crispi Cabinet. He was afterwards Under-Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior in the Pelloux Cabinet (1898-1900), in which he was, so to speak, the representative of Baron Sonnino's party. On the fall of Gen. Pelloux he hoped to return to office in a future Sonnino ministry; but as the latter seemed ever less likely to become a reality, Bertolini lost patience and joined Sig. Gio- litti. His conduct in abandoning his old chief was much criti- cised at the time, but his new patron chose him as Minister of Public Works in the Cabinet of 1907. He proved a capable administrator, but his qualities were taxed to the utmost by the terrible earthquake at Messina and Reggio in 1908. When Giolitti returned to power in 1911 he did not at first offer an appointment to Bertolini, but in the autumn of 1912 he entrusted him with the newly constituted Ministry of the Colonies. He failed, however, to show any exceptional qualifications for that position, and did little more than introduce some of the less desirable features of the Italian bureaucratic system into the new African possessions; the continued resistance of the Arabs in Libya was generally regarded as largely due to Bertolini's administrative errors. He was rapporteur for the extended suffrage bill, which first came into force with the general elections of 1913; the measure had been introduced to please the demagogic spirit which Giolitti wished to conciliate, but Bertolini must be given credit for the ingeniousness of the machinery which he devised for enabling illiterates to vote and for avoiding electoral corruption as far as possible. On the outbreak of the World War Bertolini, as a faithful Giolittian, was an uncompromising neutralist, and came in for much obloquy in consequence. Throughout the war he remained in retirement, and failed to be reflected in 1919. Sig. Nitti appointed him senator and president of the Italian delegation on the Repara- tions Commission. He was the author of several valuable works on political and eonomic questions, notably a volume on local government in England. He died at Turin, Nov. 28 1920.

BESANT, ANNIE (1847- ), English theosophist, was born in London Oct. 1 1847, the daughter of William Page Wood. She married in 1867 the Rev. Frank Besant (d. 1917), afterwards vicar of Sibsey, Lincs., but obtained a separation from her husband in 1873. She had become an ardent free-thinker, and shortly afterwards she was prosecuted and convicted, together with (see 4.372), for publishing "blasphemous" literature. From 1874 to 1888 she worked in close association with Bradlaugh both in politics and in free-thought propaganda, as a lecturer and a writer of pamphlets over the signature of "Ajax." Her increasing tendency towards socialism of the more revolutionary type occasioned a divergence between them after 1885, which was completed in 1889 by her adhesion to the Theosophical Society. She became a devoted pupil of (see 4.48), founded schools at Benares, and was elected president of the Theosophical Society in 1907. In later years her activities again assumed a political cast. She founded the Indian Home Rule League and became its president in 1916, and in 1917 she was president of the Indian National Congress. In addition to her numerous free-thought pamphlets and a large number of later works on theosophy, she published her Autobiography in 1893, The Religious Problem in India (1902) and other books.

 BESELER, HANS VON (1850- ), Prussian general and governor of Poland during the German occupation, was born April 27 1850 at Greifswald. He was one of those generals who, after having been placed upon the retired list, were recalled in 1914 to assume important commands. He conducted the siege of Antwerp, which he occupied on Oct. 9 1914. In 1915 he was employed on the eastern front, and on Aug. 19 of that year took Novogeorgievsk. From Aug. 27 1915 to Nov. 1918 he was German governor-general of Poland at Warsaw, in which capacity he endeavoured with diminishing success to organize a form of Polish national government and representation under German auspices, as also to form a Polish army under German control. The Armistice and the German Revolution put an end to the complicated attempts of Beseler and the Austrians to arrive at a modus vivcndi with regard to Poland's political and territorial destiny. The revolutionary Soldiers' Councils asserted them- selves, and the German governor-general with the German troops of occupation left the country. BESNARD, PAUL ALBERT (1849- ), French painter, was born in Paris in 1849 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, winning the Prix de Rome in 1874. Until about 1880 he followed the academic tradition, but then broke away completely, and devoted himself to the study of colour and light as conceived by the impressionists. The naturalism of this group never appealed to his imagination, but he applied their technical method adapted to meet more complicated problems of light, such as a union of twilight and artificial light to ideological and decorative works on a darge scale towards which his residence in Rome had strongly inclined him. Such are his decorations at the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Pharmacie, the Salle des Sciences at the Hotel de Ville, the mairie of the first arrondissement, the Theatre Francais, the Petit Palais, and the chapel of Berck hospital, for which he painted twelve " Stations of the Cross." A large panel, " Peace by Arbitration," was completed seven days before the outbreak of war in 1914. A great virtuoso, he has handled with equal facility water-colour, pastel, oil-painting and etching. Partly under the influence of Gainsborough and Reynolds, whom he studied during a three-years stay in England, he has applied his methods to a brilliant series of portraits, especially of women. Notable among these are the " Portrait