Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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troubdgrl -- you need to seperate myth and reality
[Read the article: "Hillary equals France"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Ever hear of the French Resistance? Or a people being able to withstand wholesale slaughter and occupation as in, for example, the Nazi invasion? Oh right isn't there similar campaign currently in the news ... are those people without "character"? I'm sure that may be the next spin ..."
In WW II the French lost a very large number of troops, during the 20 days of the 1940 Battle of France they lost about 360,000 dead or wounded, a casualty rate that was in fact very much higher than the rate at which casualties were incurred in WW I. So the conservative line that the French surrendered without a fight is frankly balls. The French army was badly led by Gamelin who manages to fulfil the some of the myths associated with WW I commanders (for example he did actuall direct the war from a Chateau without a phone.)
However, I think you should read some balanced works on the German Occupation, say Marianne in Chains, to seperate myth from reality. There was a French Resistance, but very few people were involved, it was betrayed constantly, and its post war role was massively exaggerated. The reasons for the exaggeration of the role of the resistance are multifarious and one Karl Rove would understand. First, the Gaullists needed to establish a national myth of the Resistants, so as to so to speak bolster the French national psyche. Second and more controversially, all sorts of appartchiks (for want of a better role) such as, for example, Francois Mitterand had what one could describe as a little Vichy problem, or worse, and therefore found it useful to counterbalance this by relatively bogus suggestions that they had been resistants all along -- think of it as like W in a flight-suit and cod-piece.
The "Lafayette we are here" statement was made at the tomb of Lafeyette by Colonel C. E. Stanton, Black Jack Pershing's aide de camp in July 1917. There is also a plaque in Paris, I think on the Champs Eleysee at a house that was either the residence of Pershing for part of the war or Lafeyette's home (my memory fails me.)
I find the sniping (not by troubldgrl) over the Scottish versus French role in the enlightenment very ill-informed; the sort of stuff engaged in by people who have grabbed a tiny bit of history and lached onto it, very much what the Republicans do these days (they cannot finish a book, so dip for the bits they like.) You mighty recollect that the relationship between France and Scotland was very close, so close that it is referred to as the "Auld Alliance." While France cannot lay claim to the entire enlightenment, there is very little question that it was the hub or axis of an enlightenment that took place mostly in France, the Netherlands and curiously Scotland and some parts of Germany, northern Italy and Austria -- but to be fair the latter might be described as branch offices of the enlightenment.
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Freedom Fries
[Read the article: "Hillary equals France"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"They have a much smaller version of this monument in a French city to show their brotherhood with us, and we insult them with Freedom Fries. Shameful."
Oh I don't know, calling them French Fries was pretty insulting too. . .
Frites are in fact a Belgian dish, served with Mayonaise. French fries are no more french than French toast or for that matter the English muffin.
Now Mayonaise is, and is not, French. The sauce was supposedly named for Marechal MacMahon (Mahon-aise), who was as his name implied, of Irish descent, or alternately in commemoration of the battle of Mahon - in Spain, or as a sauce from Spain.
Anyway, the Bob Ney, the jackass who came up with freedom fries is now in jail and gets to eat crap food -- bet he'd love a French meal about now.