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failingly release cataracts of unpopularity one must stick to indignant
denials that the French government could ever dream of being party
to such an atrocious deed as the rearmament of the Boches. At the
same time everybody, and especially the government, knows that as soon
as the United States deems it necessary a German army will exist, period.
But when pro-Stalinist Pierre Cot was shrewd enough to ask the Prime
Minister precisely the question who should die in defense of the Elbe
against bolshevism, the French or the Germans, Monsieur Bidault gal–
lantly retorted: "We exclude both alternatives."
All that French policy makers can do is to "go on record" against
or for all kinds of contradictory courses. In no case can they influence
real decisions. And how could they, thinking and talking as they per–
sist in doing, in the name of a France that has no reality whatsoever?
Their France begins by being the habitual school-teacherish compound
of Louis XIV, the Revolution, Napoleon, and the Third Republic,
ending up with the fiction of a France victorious in 1945, seated with
equal rights at the table of the Big Four. France as a decisive force in
world politics probably ceased to exist at Versailles when she irretriev–
ably chose national isolation (la Securite), a goddess still invoked with
ardor in 1949, thereby rejecting any European or world outlook. In
any case, official France certainly renounced the last shred of true
independence and any possibility of influencing the future of Europe
when, in order not to be deprived of the crumbs of victory she agreed
to become a party to Yalta and Potsdam, those staggering European
defeats.
From that moment on France was paralyzed and could do nothing
but submit to the "imperious necessity" both of playing an empty lead–
ing role (which in a few years a resurrected Germany will make even
emptier) and of sharing the fate of an impotent Europe. Today she
appears to havc excluded herself from the only role that is becoming
to her and also great, that of showing the way. And there is no sadder
sight than that. Even in the atomic age and in this late hour of West–
ern civilization, a France, however small and impoverished, con–
scious of her limits and of the values which are at stake, capable of
taking a principled stand on the very few issues (social justice, peace,
anti-nationalism, individual freedom) that really matter could still in–
fluence the course of events. But official France (Louis XIV plus the
Jacobins plus Napoleon plus Herriot plus DeGaulle) conceives of
world problems in terms of
securite
and is busy reaping the whirlwind
in the rice fields of Indochina, very bitter because America does not
seem to be eager to join the mess. Which, according to a contributor
