Prime Ministers of France

"Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak."

"It is better to have a bad method than to have none."

"Character is the virtue of hard times."

"The sword is the axis of the world and grandeur cannot be divided."

"Nothing great is done without great men, and they are great because they wanted it."

"France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes."

"The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times."

"France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war."

"At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure."

"Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in."

"I am retiring. I have a mission, and it is coming to an end … France may still one day need an image that is pure. She must be left this image. If Joan of Arc had married, she would no longer have been Joan of Arc."

"It is unnecessary, for the Republic has never ceased to exist. I was the Republic."

"Now she is like the others."

"A foreign military leader whose daring was feared by those who profited by it."

"Politics, when it is an art and a service, not an exploitation, is about acting for an ideal through realities."

"I am a man who belongs to no-one and who belongs to everyone."

"Why do you think that at 67 I would start a career as a dictator?"

"I have understood you!"

"It's very good that there are yellow French people, black French people, brown French people. They show that France is open to all races and that it has a universal vocation. But on the condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise, France would no longer be France. We are above all a European people of white race, Greek and Latin culture and Christian religion. Let's not tell stories! Have you gone to see the Muslims? Did you look at them with their turbans and their djellabas? You see clearly that they are not French. Those who advocate integration have the brains of hummingbirds, even if they are very learned. Try to incorporate oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a while, they will separate again. Arabs are Arabs, French are French. Do you believe that the French body can absorb ten million Muslims, who tomorrow will be twenty million and the day after tomorrow forty? If we integrate, if all the Arabs and Berbers of Algeria were considered French, how would we prevent them from settling in mainland France, when the standard of living is so much higher there? My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosqués!"

"Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world."

"All my life, I have had a certain idea of France."

"Anything can happen someday, even that an act conforming to honour and honesty can end up, at the end of the line, as a good political decision."

"The leader is always alone before bad fates."

"Difficulty attracts a man of character, for it is by embracing it that he fulfills himself."

"The cabinet has no propositions to make, but orders to give."

"France cannot be France without greatness."

"No policy is worth anything outside of reality."

"How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?"

"So, it is true that one’s homeland is entirely human, emotional and that it is the root of action, of authority, of responsibility from which one can build Europe. What elements? Well, [[Nation-state|[nation] States]], because only States are valid, are legitimate, in this respect, in addition they are capable of… As I have already said and I repeat, that at the present time, there cannot be any other Europe than that of the States, apart of course from myths, fictions, parades. From this solidarity depends all hope of uniting Europe in the political field and in the field of defense, as in the economic field. From this solidarity depends, therefore, the destiny of Europe as a whole, from the Atlantic to the Urals."

"[T]his treaty [the Treaty of Rome], which was precise and complete enough concerning industry, was not at all so on the subject of agriculture, and for our country this had to be settled. Indeed, it is obvious that agriculture is an essential element in our national activity as a whole. We cannot conceive of a Common Market in which French agriculture would not find outlets in keeping with its production. And we agree further that, of the Six, we are the country on which this necessity is imposed in the most imperative manner."

"England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions. In short, the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England's differ profoundly from those of the continentals."

"What England has done across the centuries and in the world is recognised as immense. Although there have often been conflicts with France, Britain's glorious participation in the victory which crowned the First World War—we French, we shall always admire it. As for the role England played in the most dramatic and decisive moments of the Second World War, no one has the right to forget it. In truth, the destiny of the free world, and first of all ours and even that of the United States and Russia, depended in a large measure on the resolution, the solidity and the courage of the English people, as Churchill was able to harness them. Even at the present moment no one can contest British capacity and worth."

"Macmillan had crossed the Atlantic to throw himself into the arms of Kennedy to whom he sold his birthright in exchange for a dish of Polaris... Let us always recall this obvious truth. The Common Market cannot remain the Common Market and at the same time absorb Great Britain and her clients. The British would only enter in order to break up the machine."

"Treaties are like maidens and roses. They each have their day."

"I am not ill. But do not worry, one day, I will certainly die."

"Of course one can jump up and down yelling Europe ! Europe ! Europe ! But it amounts to nothing and it means nothing."

"Long live Montreal, Long live Quebec! Long live free Quebec!"

"Some even feared that the Jews, hitherto widely dispersed and who had remained what they had always been, that is to say, an elite people, sure of itself and domineering, once they were together again in the lands of their former grandeur might transform into a burning, conquering ambition the heart-moving wishes voiced since nineteen centuries: next year in Jerusalem."

"The future does not belong to men and I do not predict it."

"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

"I must say that if, on resuming control of our affairs, I embraced the Common Market forthwith, it was as much because of our position as an agricultural country as for the spur it would give to our industry."

"Men may have friends, statesmen cannot."

"When we were children, we often played war. We had a fine collection of lead soldiers. My brothers would take different countries: Xavier had Italy; Pierre, Germany. Or they would swap around. Well, I, gentlemen, always had France."

"Do you know that you have caused us more trouble than all the rest of our European allies?" "I do not doubt it. France is a great power."

"Within ten years, we shall have the means to kill 80 million Russians. I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French, that is if there were 800 million French."

"A state worthy of the name has no friends."

"I am Joan of Arc. I am Clemenceau."

"The evolution toward Communism is inevitable."

"Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life."

"Leahy also watched with dismay as General de Gaulle's militant supporters eclipsed the leaders Leahy believed had the real interests of France at heart. De Gaulle, who had now taken the Cross of Lorraine as his personal symbol, was too ruthless to fail."

"Leahy was by no means ready to accept the tall, vainglorious Frenchman as the natural leader of French interests. In common with most of his staff who had been with him in Vichy, he distrusted de Gaulle and his French Committee of National Liberation (FCNL). As early as the previous September, Leahy had expressed his views to friends in the State Department, and "Doc" Matthews had sent him a collection of letters and reports from Murphy and others naming chapter and verse of how de Gaulle and his followers had consistently undercut Giraud. Leahy had no particular brief for Giraud, but he was the one recognized by the British and Americans as French military leader in the Mediterranean. For the same reason de Gaulle had been kept in the dark before Torch- because his headquarters could not keep a secret- Giraud concealed from the FCNL his invasion of Corsica in September until just before the landings. De Gaulle's response was to use the FCNL, which he now dominated, to deprive "the French Commander-in-Chief of the authority and freedom of action which both he and our own military leaders have felt was essential. Such behavior, Leahy felt, was all of a piece with what was to be expected from Charles de Gaulle and his Free French. There was no living with de Gaulle, but because of decisions made by Churchill and FDR, Leahy had to try."

"De Gaulle has an excellent library, I took a look at it in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. He is a very smart man, is a very far-looking man, and a very experienced man. So I have made the best possible experiences with Mr De Gaulle."

"Mr De Gaulle is very much a realist, even very realistic."

"Did it have to come to this? The paradox is that when Europe was less united, it was in many ways more independent. The leaders who ruled in the early stages of integration had all been formed in a world before the global hegemony of the United States, when the major European states were themselves imperial powers, whose foreign policies were self-determined. These were people who had lived through the disasters of the Second World War, but were not crushed by them. This was true not just of a figure like De Gaulle, but of Adenauer and Mollet, of Eden and Heath, all of whom were quite prepared to ignore or defy America if their ambitions demanded it. Monnet, who did not accept their national assumptions, and never clashed with the US, still shared their sense of a future in which Europeans could settle their own affairs, in another fashion. Down into the 1970s, something of this spirit lived on even in Giscard and Schmidt, as Carter discovered. But with the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s, and the arrival in power in the 1990s of a postwar generation, it faded. The new economic doctrines cast doubt on the state as a political agent, and the new leaders had never known anything except the Pax Americana. The traditional springs of autonomy were gone."

"Looks like a king in exile."

"At this historic moment I deem it a privilege and honor to extend to you greetings and congratulations upon your inauguration as the first President of the Fifth French Republic. France has a special place in the hearts of the American people. Moreover, you yourself have come to symbolize for us not only French valor and resolution in the face of adversity but also a dynamic and youthful France determined to go forward with renewed vigor and faith. For these reasons the American people join me in saluting the beginning of the Fifth Republic with great hope and confidence. We send to you and to the noble people you have the honor to lead a special message of friendship and of good wishes for your own future and that of the French nation."

"When I came to England in the late 60s, Sergeant Pepper was ruling the land, de Gaulle was the Great Satan"

"We have both faced serious problems this year in bearing our respective responsibilities. But standing back from these immediate problems, I trust you share with me the faith that the clouds of war are slowly beginning to lift from Southeast Asia and that by giving our full support to the Jarring Mission we can prevent them from enveloping the Middle East again. In different ways, we each have borne governmental responsibilities for some thirty years. Recalling what our nations have been through in this time and the underlying prosperity and security they now enjoy, I would hope you, too, look with confidence on the future of our nations and the western family of which they are a part."

"In this grave hour for France, I want you to know of my continuing friendship and support as well as that of the American people. Your personal achievements in bringing the resurgence of France as a great champion of freedom have won the esteem of all those who cherish liberty. The course you have chosen to settle the tragic problem of Algeria cannot but meet the approval of those who believe in the principles of democracy and who seek a durable understanding among nations of the world."

"During his stay in London King was presented to King George VI at Buckingham Palace. His Majesty, wearing the uniform of an admiral of the fleet, received King in a sitting room where he was at work on papers. Whiskey or tea was offered, and as King had given up spirits for the duration of the war, he gladly accepted the tea, which was ready. The King reminisced agreeably about his cruises in the Royal Navy, and asked the admiral about his own with such tact that the audience, in retrospect, resembled a chat between a couple of old sailors. None of this comfortable atmosphere prevailed when General de Gaulle called at Claridge's to pay his respects to King and Marshall. Stark, who throughout the war skillfully conducted many negotiations with the Free French, had arranged the meeting. De Gaulle, feeling himself to be the head of a state, seemingly considered that he should be called upon, but as it had been pointed out that he had two stars, while Marshall and King had four, he presented himself at Claridge's, although with rather ill grace. He appeared at the proper time with a single aide, but conducted himself very stiffly, and after delivering himself of a long speech in French, in which he asked for many things that we needed ourselves at that moment, took his departure. It was scarcely a call calculated to make friends!"

"In the course of the Casablanca Conference, General de Gaulle, who was in London, had been invited by the Prime Minister to come to North Africa. De Gaulle was offended that he had not been invited further in advance, and in one way and another proved to be his usual difficult self. Mr. Eden, the Foreign Secretary, had to exert great pressure to induce him to leave London for Casablanca. When he arrived there the firmest treatment by Mr. Churchill was required to persuade him to call upon Giraud. Finally in the interests of at least good public feeling a "shot-gun marriage" was arranged. At a press conference on 24 January, De Gaulle and Giraud were made to sit in a row of chairs, alternating with Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill, and to be photographed shaking hands. As the newsreel cameras finished their work, each French general dropped the other's hand as though it were red hot."

"Prior to the landings De Gaulle had made it clear that he wished to be definitely recognized as the ruler of France, and claimed that he alone had the right to give orders to the people of France. Once the landings had taken place these difficulties did not diminish, and the Joint Chiefs during their stay in England had a taste of these complications when De Gaulle undertook to change the regulations about the use of United States currency in France by American troops. The Joint Chiefs sent General Koenig, who, as the commander of the French forces of the interior, was serving as a direct subordinate of Eisenhower's in the Allied organization, and asked him what the difficulty was. It appeared that Koenig could not see De Gaulle's point either. As Eisenhower was troubled about the correct manner of managing civilian affairs in France until a proper organization could be set up, he asked the Joint Chiefs what to do, and they proposed that he at once send a message to the President, suggesting that if De Gaulle would not cooperate properly, another Frenchman be designated to manage French civilian affairs, and that De Gaulle be ignored, entirely. The Joint Chiefs did not stay to hear the answer from the President, but later that evening they received word that he had concurred."

"Charles de Gaulle (born 1890) spent two and a half years during the First World War as a prisoner of war in Wilhelmine Germany; in the Second, he initially commanded a tank regiment. Then, after the collapse of France, he rebuilt the political structure of France twice – the first time in 1944 to restore France’s essence, and the second time in 1958 to revitalize its soul and prevent civil war. De Gaulle guided France’s historical transition from a defeated, divided and overstretched empire to a stable, prosperous nation-state under a sound constitution. From that basis, he restored France to a significant and sustainable role in international relations."

"His [that is, Roosevelt's] determination to go his own way, his insistence on informing himself through his own idiosyncratic avenues of communication, his deliberate short-circuiting of the proper channels of responsibility- all these had defects of their virtues that now and then led him and the country astray. His two great failures were France and China. These historic civilizations of depth and pungent flavor, to which he was instinctively and without reluctance attracted, defeated his best efforts to incorporate them in an all-embracing view of the postwar world. In each instance he was badly advised, and there is no great artfulness needed to see where the bad advice came from and why he listened to it. But evidence was also available to him that de Gaulle was a far more powerful personage than he had imagined and Chiang Kai-shek was a far weaker one: he chose not to act on it. He wanted a revived but malleable France that would be willing to give up its empire and a united but nationalist China that would be a "great nation," able to fill the vacuum left by Japanese defeat. He got neither."

"When he was appointed to command the North African expedition, Eisenhower was briefed by Robert Murphy, our diplomatic representative there, on the "bewildering complexities" of the quarrels among not only the French factions but Spanish, Arab, Berber, German, and Russian as well. "Eisenhower listened with a kind of horrified fascination," wrote Murphy, "to my description of the possible complications... The General seemed to sense that this first campaign would present him with problems running the entire geopolitical gamut- it certainly did." What he could not have realized was that it would also place him in the crossfire between two towering political personalities, Franklin Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle."

"The importance of the CAP to de Gaulle cannot be overestimated. At a critical cabinet meeting in August 1962, he called the stabilization of agriculture the "most important problem" facing France after the Algerian civil war. If the problems are not resolved, he declared, "we will have another Algeria on our own soil." By 1961...the CAP became the main focus of French EEC policy, dominating bilateral and multilateral meetings among ministers and heads of government."

"It is with deep regret that I have learned of your resignation as President of France. I have greatly valued the frank and comprehensive exchanges of views it has been my privilege to have with you, both as a private citizen and as Vice President and President of the United States. Nor shall I forget the courtesy of your welcome and the wisdom of your counsel during my recent visit to Paris. Our talks proved the occasion for a new departure in friendly cooperation between our two nations. We in the United States will not forget what you have done for France, both at home and abroad, and for the world, both in war and in peace. Mrs. Nixon joins me in sending you and Madame de Gaulle our warm personal regards and best wishes for the future."

"De Gaulle's greatness consists in the fact that, by two or three gestures of command in foreign affairs, he was suddenly able to transform the confusion of civil life in post-war France into a concerted harmony, to command renewed respect towards the institutions of the state, and to establish stable government where there had previously been chaos."

"It was the crucible of 1940 that transformed the obscure colonel of the battle of France... He emerged from it with his qualities of courage and self-reliance, audacity and daring, but also with his defects of ingratitude, vindictiveness, duplicity and prejudice; all inherent in the metal, but turned into steel by the ordeals of that terrible summer. In 1940 he proclaimed himself Joan of Arc. It was not long after the Dakar fiasco that he told the British Foreign Secretary, "Je suis la France". ... He did not need to learn from Churchill a creed we sometimes seem to have forgotten but would do well to remember: boundless love of country and complete faith in its destiny... de Gaulle, absolutely alone, has rebuilt his shattered country on the ruins of defeat, and has made France stronger, and her influence greater, than it has been for a century."

"Present at Casablanca but excluded from every talk that mattered was Charles de Gaulle. No one seemed to know quite what to do with him. But before the conference was over, his differences with the Allies had been patched up somewhat, and his future role had been much clarified."

"The enemy is at the gates of the city. The day is perhaps not far off when our breasts will be the last defence for our country. We are the children of the Revolution. Let us take inspiration from our fathers of 1792, and, like them, we will conquer."

"Bismarck is a dangerous enemy, but even more dangerous perhaps as a friend: he showed us Tunis, placing us in conflict with England, and is now negotiating with us over the Congo."

"Whether we like it or not, whether it pleases us or shocks us, the French Revolution is a bloc ... a bloc from which nothing can be separated, because historical truth does not permit it. ... the Revolution is not finished, it is still continuing, we are actors in it, the same men are still in conflict with the same enemies. The struggle will go on, until the final day of victory, and until that day we will not allow you to throw mud at the Revolution."

"It was I who gave the title "J'accuse" to Zola's letter."

"No, my friend, Germany will not declare war on us [at this moment]. But in my opinion the European situation is such that a great armed conflict is inevitable at some time which I cannot foresee, and our duty is to prepare for the worst."

"I think war is inevitable. We must do nothing to provoke it, but we must be ready for it; helped by Russia and England, doubtless by Spain also and perhaps by Italy as well, we may be able to win. In any case it will be a life and death affair: if we are beaten we will be crushed."

"In the distance huge trees were still blazing, around us was a waste of ashes and of half-consumed boughs, and the falling rain seemed only to quicken the dying conflagration. In some of the great green boles were fearful gaping wounds through which the sap was oozing, while some tall trees still stretched to heaven their triumphant crown of foliage above a trunk all charred that would never sprout again. The Brazilians contemplate spectacles such as this with a wholly indifferent eye, and, indeed, even with satisfaction, for they see in the ruin only a promise of future harvests. To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house."

"The difficulty between us and Germany is this: that Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom [vassalité]."

"Mistakes have been made; do not think of them except to rectify them. Alas, there have also been crimes, crimes against France which call for a prompt punishment. We promise you, we promise the country, that justice will be done according to the law. ... Weakness would be complicity. We will avoid weakness, as we will avoid violence. All the guilty before courts-martial. The soldier in the court-room, united with the soldier in battle. No more pacifist campaigns, no more German intrigues. Neither treason, nor semi-treason: the war. Nothing but the war. Our armies will not be caught between fire from two sides. Justice will be done. The country will know that it is defended."

"[If the Socialists want peace] so do I, but it is not by bleating of peace that we can silence Prussian militarism. A moment ago M. Constant complained of my silence about foreign policy. My foreign policy and my domestic policy are all one. Internal policy, I wage war; foreign policy, I still wage war; I still wage war. Russia betrays us; I continue the war: unfortunate Rumania is forced to capitulate; I continue the war, and I will continue it down to the last quarter of an hour."

"The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garronne, we will fight even in the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea."

"[Clemenceau] said that the Rhine was a natural boundary of Gaul and Germany and that it ought to be made the German boundary now, the territory between the Rhine and the French frontier being made into an Independent State whose neutrality should be guaranteed by the great powers."

"[France] finds herself at this time in a particularly difficult situation. ... It is the country which is nearest to Germany. America is distant; it has taken her a long time to get here. And during that time we have been put to it, we have suffered...our cities and our towns have been devastated. Everyone says, rightly, that 'it must not happen again'. I think so too. But how? There was an old system, which seems to be condemned today, and to which I do not fear to say that I remain a faithful adherent at this time. ... This system—solid frontiers...and balance of power—today seems to be condemned by certain very high authorities."

"I should lie if I said that I was at once in agreement with him [President Wilson] on all the points. America is far distant from the frontiers of Germany, as I remarked a little while ago. I have, perhaps, preoccupations which I would not say are foreign to him, but which do not touch him so closely as they touch the man who has seen his country devastated during four years by an enemy who was within several days of Paris."

"War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."

"Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only Ten!"

"If it is said that the war is won, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that there is a lull in the storm. At the very least, it is necessary to provide for all eventualities. Recent discoveries have enabled us to pierce the enemy's designs to a greater extent than hitherto. They were not merely a dream of military domination on the part of Prussia, but a definite conspiracy expressly aiming at the extermination of France. Industrially France is extremely difficult to reconstruct, whereas Germany has kept her factories intact and ready to start working efficiently forthwith. Indeed, industrially and commercially, as between France and Prussia, the victory is the latter's. ... the war debt of Germany is almost entirely domestic and can easily be repudiated, while that of France must be paid. In the immediate future we shall have to pay regularly abroad immense sums, by way of interest solely, out of our internal resources."

"Even as regards the military triumph of France over Germany, there are certain disquieting features in the situation. The Allies have taken over the German Navy and in a great measure disarmed the enemy, but Russia, certainly in a state of chaos, but fruitful all the same, remains and from it the Germans can draw a great deal of support. With the British Army demobilized, the American Army returned home, and France isolated, there might be a danger of Germany's reopening the debate of arms. This might embarrass us but for the very heartening assurances of President Wilson in the Chamber of Deputies. The League of Nations must be profoundly sustained by the conviction of the peoples of France and America and by the determination of the latter to abandon its traditional policy of isolation. France will face all these problems without fear and without reproach. All our plans are based on the splendid foundation laid by President Wilson."

"His poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course, this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery."

"There are only two perfectly useless things in this world. One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré."

"After expending the greatest effort, and suffering the greatest sacrifices in blood in all history, we must not compromise the results of our victory...if the League of Nations cannot buttress its orders with military sanctions we must find this sanction elsewhere...I beg you to understand my state of mind, just as I am trying to understand yours. America is far away and protected by the ocean, England could not be reached by Napoleon himself. You are sheltered, both of you; we are not."

"For you a hundred years is a very long time; for us it does not amount to much. I knew men who had seen Napoleon with their own eyes. We have our conception of history and it cannot be the same as yours."

"In fifteen years I will be dead, but if you do me the honour of visiting my tomb, you will be able to say that the Germans have not fulfilled all the clauses of the treaty, and that we are still on the Rhine."

"We need a barrier behind which, in the years to come, our people can work in security to rebuild its ruins. That barrier is the Rhine. I must take national feelings into account. That does not mean that I am afraid of losing office. I am quite indifferent on that point. But I will not, by giving up the occupation, do something which will break the willpower of our people."

"Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix."

"I do not know whether war is an interlude in peace, or whether peace is an interlude in war."

"I have come to the conclusion that force is right. Why is this chicken here? (pointing to his plate). Because it was not strong enough to resist those who wanted to kill it. And a very good thing too!"

"Oh, to be seventy again!"

"La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires."

"My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then."

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

"All that I know I learned after I was thirty."

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."

"Americans have no capacity for abstract thought, and make bad coffee."

"There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function."

"I belonged to the generation that saw the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and never could I be consoled for that loss. And I here recall, with pardonable pride, that in 1908 I stood up against Germany in the Casablanca crisis, and that the Government of William II, after demanding apologies from us, was forced by my calm resistance to be satisfied with mere arbitration, as in any other dispute."

"For the catastrophe of 1914 the Germans are responsible. Only a professional liar would deny this."

"[W]hen at Versailles Brockdorff-Rantzau addressed me in the language of the bearer of a challenge, I was forced to realize that the German revolution was mere window-dressing, and that, with the aggressor of 1914 not a whit cured of his insane folly, we should continue without respite to be subjected, in a new setting, to the same attack from the same enemy."

"What after all is this war, prepared, undertaken, and waged by the German people, who flung aside every scruple of conscience to let it loose, hoping for a peace of enslavement under the yoke of a militarism destructive of all human dignity? It is simply the continuance, the recrudescence, of those never-ending acts of violence by which the first savage tribes carried out their depredations with all the resources of barbarism. The means improve with the ages. The ends remain the same."

"Germany...was unfortunate enough to allow herself (in spite of her skill at dissimulation) to be betrayed into an excess of candour by her characteristic tendency to go to extremes. Deutschland über alles. Germany above everything! That, and nothing less, is what she asks, and when once her demand is satisfied she will let you enjoy a peace under the yoke. Not only does she make no secret of her aim, but the intolerable arrogance of the German aristocracy, the servile good nature of the intellectual and the scholar, the gross vanity of the most competent leaders in industry, and the widespread influence of a violent popular poetry conspire to shatter throughout the world all the time-honoured traditions of individual, as well as international, dignity."

"Peace or war, we are in the midst of a relentless struggle for power. Woe to the weak! Turn your back on the purveyors of soothing syrup!"

"The quantum of a hypothetical German civilization would not take us very far, because she is to-day still too close to barbarism."

"To ensure the execution of the Treaty [of Versailles] all we lacked later on was a statesman of some strength of purpose."

"They talk of effecting a reconciliation between us and Germany: nothing would give me greater pleasure. But the German nation is unscrupulous, and the French like nothing so much as to forget. If one goes forward at every moment, while the other gives himself up to the enervating delights of going back, no two people will ever meet full face. As I have said, I was concerned with other things than the troopers’ tales of a victorious soldier dissatisfied with the share of victory assigned to him. As much as, and more than any other I should desire, if it were possible, never in any shape or guise to fall back into the bloody adventures of military conquests that are still a temptation haunting the feverish imaginations of the German peoples."

"[T]he keynote of the Treaty of Versailles is the liberation of the peoples, the independence of nationalities, whereas the keynote of the policy of Marshal Foch and M. Poincaré was the occupation of a territory by force of arms against the will of its inhabitants."

"Fate has decided. The Conference has spoken. It has been obeyed. Why could it not have kept a strong hand over the execution of the Treaty? But I will not anticipate. Overflowing with German braggadocio, von Brockdorff-Rantzau later on told us that we hated Germany, because we had dared to defend ourselves against her aggression, but our European countries, and those organized on European lines, need only go back to their familiar slipshod management of everyday life for the vanquished foe to dare to rear his head arrogantly as if he were the victor, to look in the face the crimes he had acknowledged, and to venture, owing to the general discouragement, to demand a reckoning from those who had put an end to his wrongdoing."

"What will remain of the greatest effort of the human civilizations for an enlargement of universal civilization I shall not attempt to foresee, after ten years of talk in which victors and vanquished have gone on the same tack to shatter, one by one, every guarantee of success."

"Anyone who retains as much education as the average boy can pick up in a continuation elementary school can understand that General Foch's chief preoccupations were not concerned with the generalizations of universal justice embodied in war or peace. Had he opened the annals of our past at whatsoever page he might choose, he would have found that our life throughout history, bandied about between battles and truces in the unending oscillation of all things, is at any moment but preparing for or stabilizing a new transient form of society for the momentary advantage of the strongest."

"The idea of force is deeply rooted in man, as in the whole universe. Law is controlled and ordered force."

"Bismarck went so far as to boast of a forgery. The Ems telegram was a crime of no less magnitude than the outrage on Belgium. The cynicism of the scrap of paper will be counted against Germany as long as human history lasts. That stain, like Lady Macbeth's, can never be effaced."

"A peace of justice, a Europe founded upon right, the creator of independent states whose military power is augmented by all the moral energies generated by the necessity for asserting themselves in all spheres of international life—will not this create a body of forces superior to anything that could come from a powerfully organized frontier?"

"I will tell how the formula for the military consolidation of the victory of the three Allied and Associated nations was accepted on the proposal of England, only to be rejected without explanation by the American Senate, then quietly dropped by England, and left in oblivion by the French Government itself, without a word of protest. Not a word was uttered to recall that we had given our best blood, and that, after seeking for security in a better frontier, we had given up this strategical guarantee in exchange for the promise of Anglo-American military aid, which had been offered us as an exchange, and which was taken from us without compensation. Defeat substituted for victory, that was what we accepted without finding a single word to assert our right to our Continental life by the establishment of guarantees within the new order created by a most costly victory."

"Breakers of their sworn faith, the Germans seriously offer us their signature on a “scrap of paper” as a guarantee, with the unalterable intention of later taking up again the work of assimilation by force where they have left off. They destroy towns, ravage the fields, and let loose among men evils by the side of which the most cruel exploits of the greatest devastators grow pale and trivial. We take them by the throat, and they promise to make reparation. But, as they do not make reparation, America, who has made a separate peace after growing incredibly rich through the War, claims for her treasury the contributions earmarked for restoring French soil to a productive state."

"Always watching their opportunity to hit back in every sphere, our defeated enemies demand reckonings from their conquerors, who fear nothing so much as not to give them complete satisfaction. I set down this fact in order to clear my own conscience, and especially because it is high time for the French nation to take a firmer grip on itself and to substitute a policy of determination for this confusion born of timidity, through which the threat of a compact mass of barbarism is kept hanging over our heads."

"And if our recent victory had merely been one of territorial conquests that were fated to call us out to the battlefield again to meet attempts to take revenge for our revenge, our success of the moment would have been as fruitless as every success before it. What was more to be desired in the interests of Europe striving for civilization was a victor capable of controlling himself so as to replace armed might by right in the fluid equilibrium of a peace capable of enduring."

"The real task—and an absolutely new one—was the attempt to make definitely a Europe founded on right. In spite of some people's lack of understanding, to have attempted this will be the glory of the Treaty of Versailles. It is for future Governments to work at this task by some method other than that of eternally giving in. The realization of a Europe founded upon right was the greatest victory of all, the victory that neither Napoleon nor Foch wished to gain, and which required something more than successful strokes of strategy."

"As for myself, what more can I say? I am bitterly censured for having refused to give my country a strategic frontier. How can I take seriously those who, both great and small, reproach me with this, since they know that I could not—apart from any question of the rights of peoples—annex the Rhineland without breaking off our alliance, WHICH NO ONE DARED TO SUGGEST TO ME?"

"The [Anglo-American] Guarantee Pact thus assumed the position of the keystone of European peace, far above all theories. Its rejection, for that very reason, amounted to an indirect invitation for the thwarted aggressor to try again."

"And what is this “Germanic civilization,” this monstrous explosion of the will to power, which threatens openly to do away entirely with the diversities established by many evolutions, to set in their place the implacable mastery of a race whose lordly part would be to substitute itself, by force of arms, for all national developments? We need only read Bernhardi's famous pamphlet Unsere Zukunft, in which it is alleged that Germany sums up within herself, as the historian Treitschke asserts, the greatest manifestation of human supremacy, and finds herself condemned, by her very greatness, either to absorb all nations in herself or to return to nothingness."

"From the German point of view the monstrous problem thus set must inevitably be solved by the apotheosis of the German peoples. In the meantime, far from ‘German culture’ seeming disposed to reform itself, we hear it proclaiming louder than ever a universal right to supreme domination, which confers on it the right of life and death over the nations, to be asserted and enforced by all possible means. Ought we not all to feel menaced in our very vitals by this mad doctrine of universal Germanic supremacy over England, France, America, and every other country?"

"Whether we wish it or not, it is not the International Parliament of Geneva, subtle epitome of all the Parliaments of this world, with no executive powers, that will determine the peace of the future."

"Can we then be excused for not accepting, without other guarantees than “faith sworn and forsworn,” these relations of good neighbourhood with the nation that proclaims itself the masterpiece of humanity? For has anyone in any authority ever tried to deny or tone down these bold and cynical words? Ask the mobs, whose first cry on every occasion is “Deutschland über Alles”. This is what our public men rely upon in recommending to us a peace of trust with a Germany animated by the sentiments her spokesmen have just disclosed."

"Über Alles—there we have Germany, who professes to improve mankind by her ‘Kultur’ of iniquity; Russia writhes in the throes of internal decomposition, and Austria, who once fought to be free of the German monster, would to-day like to resume the old Bismarckian chain. The danger lies in the crowds who offer themselves for servitude in order that they may be permitted, in their turn, to tyrannize over the conquered nations. In this respect Germany's watchword is only the puerile hallucination of a return to primitive dominations, and allows no one to feign a misapprehension over which neither the aggressor nor the victim could be deceived. We have only to submit to the implacable law of the strongest, and join the ranks of the conquered territories, to enjoy the servitude with which our masters are only too ready to favour us. To be victims or tyrants, that is the only thing left to us."

"It took defeat to bring Germany to words of quasi-peace, soon belied by a renewal of implacable activity. It is the same policy of cunning and pretence that she used, with so much success, against Napoleon. Without troubling overmuch to make any secret of it, the vanquished are devoting their best efforts to concentrating and ordering their energies, whereas the victors, divided, are drowning themselves in a deluge of verbose invocations to a metaphysics of peace, adapted to all kinds of immediate self-interest. Who then can shut his eyes to the impending menace of a return to the policy of domination by arms, the revenge for the Treaty of Versailles by a stiffening of the will-power on the part of the beaten aggressor?"

"Above all, do not be so ingenuous as to believe that you will disarm, by methods of persuasion, the Powers who see you strengthening against every eventuality your means of defence, which might turn into means of aggression."

"Who need wonder in these circumstances that the Germans tried, without loss of time, to evade the most important of their obligations? The history of the last ten years is a series of surrenders on the part of the Allies, of successes for Germany."

"Now that one of its principal clauses had lapsed along with the Guarantee Pact, what was to happen to the Treaty as a whole, so closely correlated in all its parts? The country that had made the greatest sacrifices for the least return found herself, without even the ghost of an explanation, grievously wronged by the withdrawal of the clause that had been our military guarantee of security. Could we let this pass without protest, when it was a matter of life and death for France? ... The Treaty had fallen to the ground, since its mainstay, which had been provided by America in conjunction with England, had been taken away. We had given up the Rhineland because an offer had been made us to replace the German sentry on the Rhine by an English and an American soldier, side by side with the French soldier."

"The Locarno pacts offer only the insubstantial semblance of a guarantee; they are an illusion calculated to mislead easily satisfied consciences and to lull more vigilant minds to sleep. In their inadequacy lies their danger. The spirit of Locarno itself is positively injurious to the interests of our country."

"Unquestionably and naturally, in Germany, as everywhere else, the workmen, peasants, and lower middle class are true pacifists, and view the possibilities of new butcheries with horror. But, on the other hand, we must remember that all the sons of the governing classes, all the young men who attend the high schools, the colleges, and universities of Germany, find there Nationalist or Populist professors who continually din into their ears the Deutschland über Alles. In this lies the great danger to peace, a danger of which the genuine pacifists are well aware. Later on, in a few years, it will be these same young men who will direct the destinies of Germany. Are we not justified in fearing that the mass of the German people, workmen, peasants, lower middle class, faithful to the impulses of its gregarious nature, might allow itself, as in 1914, to be rushed into the whirl of a “fresh and frolicsome war”?"

"In truth, the bulk of the German nation, the Reich Government (so well personified in the circumstances by the late Herr Stresemann) is not at all eager to begin a new struggle with France. It is perfectly well aware—and the perpetual mutilations of the Treaty of Versailles have shown that it is right—that with patience, a great deal of boldness, and some cleverness, it will easily manage to obtain, from the weak and irresponsible Governments that have been succeeding one another in France since 1920, the almost complete annulment of the Treaty. During this time—that is to say, while Germany is preparing, that is, arming—what is the French Army doing? It is quite simple: it is disarming."

"The great mistake made by the Governments that have succeeded one another in France since 1920 is to have dandled our people from concession to concession without making them understand, first of all, that a nation with a past like ours could not accept peace at any price—that is to say, at the cost of compromising their honour; secondly, that with neighbours like the Germans this peace could only be ensured by making the necessary sacrifices. Those means are the same since the world began and can be summed up in the words, Be strong. Germany remains faithful to this truth. Perhaps Germany does want peace, but this kind of peace will wipe out the last traces of her defeat. That is why she is preparing. The following figures are more eloquent than any possible dissertation. In 1928 France spent six milliards of francs on her military forces: Germany spent eight. Germany goes on arming: France goes on disarming. For what results?"

"My education was built up upon ruthlessly hard-and-fast ideas crowned by a patriotism that nothing could shake. In the insurrection of Vendée, allied with the foreigner against Revolutionary France, the two qualities of patriot and republican were so merged in one another that the Chouans called us patauds, an insult that my forbears were proud of. The fatherland was, and could only be, everybody's home, where energies were developed in common. To renounce one's country had neither sense nor meaning. You might as well have expected the child to want to leave the shelter of its mother's wing. The home, the country, this was no theory; it was a natural phenomenon that had been realized from the very earliest ages of mankind. Animals had a temporary home in their lairs, man a permanent one in his country."

"Is it not fairly clear that the very idea of a fatherland, which is still so potent among us, has lost some of its native strength in the hearts of those who have deliberately allowed themselves to be despoiled of that French pride so essential if the fatherland is to live and not die?"

"I ask myself whether there is to be found a single Frenchman who could admit that we should refrain from exacting from the Germans their obligations, the burden of which is about to be transferred to a victor ruined by the systematic plunderings of the conquered invader. When I ask for an explanation I am generally met with a shrug of the shoulders, accusations against the Press, Parliament, the politicians, and an assurance that after a few more concessions every one will be satisfied. As a result of which we give way to-day, after having given way yesterday, to the demands of Germany, who is only awaiting the additional last concessions to render an account that will never be the final one until we are completely despoiled."

"It is Germany, guilty of the greatest crime in the history of Europe, a crime premeditated, prepared, and carried out in broad daylight, who presents herself vanquished at the tribunal of Europe and the civilized world, no longer to give an account but to demand one. A lie sets her free. A lie puts us in the dock. And our policy of incoherency run wild is about to lay itself open to processes of dismemberment that will reduce the Treaty of Versailles to a state of nullity. Every day will see Germany requesting, demanding, to have her burdens lightened in order to heap them on France, already drained to the last drop of her blood, and every day something of the burden of defeat will be transferred from Germany's shoulders to what still exists of France by the good graces of the Treaty's executors."

"What are we doing, then, if not proceeding, article by article, to restore Germany's power, which, by a truly miraculous exercise of will, after its complete collapse during the War, is about to be built up again in the retrograde peace, which is surrendering, stage by stage, everything that human justice had gained by our victory? After the restoration of Germany's moral prestige by a lie we have the upsetting of the financial reparations by the progressive series of mutilations of the Treaty down to the payment of the so-called debts to America!"

"I scan the horizon in vain for any sign of a recovery. Day by day the position grows more serious through our inertia, while the designs of German violence shrink from no ways or means or instrument."

"If Germany, still obsessed by her traditional militarism, persists in her Deutschland über Alles, well—let the die be cast. We shall take up the atrocious War again at the point where we left it off. We must have the courage to prepare for it, instead of frittering away our strength in lies that no one believes, from conference to conference."

"When I am told that a policy of concessions, more or less happily graduated, is going to regain for us the goodwill of our former enemies I can only be glad to hear it, for I desire nothing so much as a state of stable equilibrium in Europe. But I must be able to perceive some sign of a favourable response to the goodwill that I am asked to manifest. Judge then of my surprise when I discover that Germany goes on arming and France disarming. The position is that the most scientific preparations for war are being carried out on the other side of the frontier. With us frontiers lie open, armaments are insufficient, effectives are well below the numbers recognized as necessary, while on the other side a feverish life of reconstruction is developing and reorganizing, by the adaptation of fresh material, every department of their war equipment as well as their means of transport."

"“Germany is arming and France disarming”: that is the decisive feature of this moment of history when the two states of mind confront one another in such stark brutality that I defy any sane man to cast doubt on the evidence. Our people have come to this, that they seem to like enduring provocations. The history of the plebiscite violently rejecting the financial measures accepted by us in order to help Germany to discharge what may remain of her financial obligations seems a sufficient indication of the most furious hostility. Thus we see, in the relentless light of the facts, the German, in fighting mood and trim, and the heedless Frenchman, both applauding the orators who proclaim the violations of the Peace Treaty."

"To-day Germany is once more trying to construct, by methods of peace, a Germanic Empire that she failed to bring into being by means of war. That she could never do without eventualities that may change the destinies of a France exposed to every hostile enterprise. What will become of us in this welter of countries the development of whose strength in the future no man can foresee? There are nations that are beginning. There are nations that are coming to an end. Our consciousness of our own acts entails the fixing of responsibilities. France will be what the men of France deserve."

"A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe."

"When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking."

"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself."

"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

"Almost every day of my life in Paris I saw Clemenceau’s statue in the Champs-Elysées. I paid little attention to it. But this evening, as I stood close to that of Foch, it haunted my vision, the dauntless fighter, standing upright on the stone base, his scarf flying in the wind, his features harsh and tragic. I imagined him, too merciless to himself to shed tears over the destruction of his victory, condemning the pygmies of 1940, with all the contempt of which he was so richly capable, to be tormented by the Furies in spirit and soul and even more in their blood. He had foreseen the coming of these wretches. At the close of his astonishing life the man who waged war, and who in waging it, won it, found pleasure in giving a last lesson to his only love, France: from his rock in the Vendée looking out over his ocean, he wrote a life of Demosthenes, to which he added this comment: "Demosthenes would have saved his country, if it had consented to be saved." He predicted that our country having been saved by him would be lost. He wished that another such as he might rise in his turn to lead and save her."

"Before he was thirty he was the witness of the complete defeat and invasion of his country brought about by the infamy and ineptitude of the Imperial Government. These experiences governed his whole career. The object for which he lived was the restoration of his country and the reversal of the wrongs she had suffered. Patriotism became to him a passion. It took the place of religion and provided that idealism without which great characters cannot live. And so for more than forty years he strove by voice and pen to fortify his country for a renewal of the struggle with Germany, to cleanse it of corruption, to give it greater strength and a higher courage. Perhaps his outlook was too material. Perhaps he cared too much for his country's glory and too little for her real happiness. But it is not for us, with our sheltered history, to judge him."

"He almost ceased to believe in human virtue. That was the foundation of his attitude to such things as the League of Nations. They seemed to him too good to be true; what Napoleon called ideology. Often when I visited him he has begun the conversation by saying: "I like the League of Nations," and then, with an ironic challenge: "but I don't believe in it." But that did not prevent him from being very kind to me personally. He was called fierce and pitiless and he may have been so. When I saw him he was courtesy and consideration personified. He never made phrases. He said what he wanted to say in the plainest and most pointed language he could command—and sometimes it was very plain and pointed. He never talked for the sake of talking—only because he had got something to say. His oratory was not emotional. It was destructive, especially of falsity and pretence. His critical power was great. He used it to destroy mercilessly whatever he despised and he despised a good many things and people... What he saw, he saw clearly, without ambiguity or self-delusion."

"I saw him last at the end of May of 1929. He had aged a good deal but his mind was as clear as ever. He spoke sadly and with disillusionment. He professed that he no longer much cared to live, though he was very glad to have been alive. He spoke with uneasiness of the general situation in the world and especially in France. He seemed to think there was a decay of authority and—though he did not use the word—of ideals. He said: "The truth is that I am in one respect a very unfortunate man. I have seen my wishes fulfilled. I believed very much in democracy and representative Government and now that I see it in operation I am a little disappointed." One other striking phrase he employed. He said: "I have come to think that it is more difficult to make Peace than to make War—and requires more patience!""

"He was not a popular man. He had made too many enemies and his tongue was too sharp. But his fellow-countrymen deeply respected and admired him... For France owed much to Clemenceau. His love for her was the ruling principle of his life. To her he sacrificed ease and friendship and perhaps even happiness. He hated those whom he regarded as her enemies, whether at home or abroad, and he was merciless to them—a Tiger indeed. He grieved with her in defeat, he sought to discipline her in peace, he strengthened her in war and he led her to Victory."

"The truth is that Clemenceau embodied and expressed France. As much as any single human being, miraculously magnified, can ever be a nation, he was France."

"France had been bled white by the war. The generation that had dreamed since 1870 of a war of revenge had triumphed, but at a deadly cost in national life-strength. It was a haggard France that greeted the dawn of victory. Deep fear of Germany pervaded the French nation on the morrow of their dazzling success. It was this fear that had prompted Marshal Foch to demand the Rhine frontier for the safety of France against her far larger neighbour. But the British and American statesmen held that the absorption of German-populated districts in French territory was contrary to the Fourteen Points and to the principles of nationalism and self-determination upon which the Peace Treaty was to be based. They therefore withstood Foch and France. They gained Clemenceau by promising: first, a joint Anglo-American guarantee for the defence of France; secondly, a demilitarised zone; and thirdly, the total, lasting disarmament of Germany. Clemenceau accepted this in spite of Foch’s protests and his own instincts. The Treaty of Guarantee was signed accordingly by Wilson and Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. They repudiated President Wilson’s signature. And we, who had deferred so much to his opinions and wishes in all this business of peacemaking, were told without much ceremony that we ought to be better informed about the American Constitution."

"In the fear, anger, and disarray of the French people the rugged, dominating figure of Clemenceau, with his world-famed authority, and his special British and American contacts, was incontinently discarded. "Ingratitude towards their great men," writes Plutarch, "is the mark of strong peoples." It was imprudent of France to indulge this trait when she was so grievously weakened. There was little compensating strength to be found in the revival of the group intrigues and ceaseless changes of Governments and Ministers which were the characteristic of the Third Republic, however profitable they were to those engaged in them."

"He had one illusion — France; and one disillusion — mankind, including Frenchmen."

"I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon."

"He was...much the most arresting and powerful personality in the arena of French politics during the Third Republic... Clemenceau was a master of words. No orator of his day had a more perfect command and choice of word and phrase. But he was pre-eminently a man of action... That he should have succeeded as War Minister is not a matter of surprise. He possessed restless energy, indomitable courage and a gift of infecting others with his own combativeness and confidence... A combination of energy, courage and common sense was needed at that hour, and he possessed these three attributes in an exceptional degree... Clemenceau was the greatest French statesman—if not the greatest Frenchman—of his day. He was in every fibre of his being a Frenchman. He had no real interest in humanity as a whole. His sole concern was for France. As long as France was humbled he cared not what other people were exalted. As long as France was victorious he did not worry in the least about the tribulations of any other country. To him France was all in all."

"His hatred of Germany had a concentrated ferocity which I had never seen before... I remember driving with him back to Paris...after he had handed...the German delegates the draft of the Peace Treaty. As we passed the ruins of the palace of St. Cloud, which had been burned by the Germans in 1871, he told me how he remembered seeing the blaze... That event seemed to have burned itself into his memory ... There is only one incident of 1871 of which he spoke to me with emotion, and that was of the poignant scene in the French Assembly when Jules Favre came straight from an interview with Bismarck to report to the deputies the nature of the terms demanded, and the ruthlessness with which the triumphant Chancellor had treated the supplication of the French delegates for some amelioration in the demands. Tears came into M. Clemenceau's eyes—for the first and only time in my intercourse with him—as he described how "the old man" (Favre), in attempting to describe the harshness of the conqueror, broke down in the tribune and wept. I then understood something of M. Clemenceau's hatred of the Germans. They had not only invaded France, defeated her armies, occupied her capital, humbled her pride, but in the hour of victory had treated her with an insolence which for fifty years had rankled in the heart of this fierce old patriot. When I met him at Carlsbad the sore was still stinging him into anger."

"[Woodrow] Wilson then diverged into his usual rhapsody about the superiority of right to might: he referred to those great French idealists—Lafayette and Rochambeau...and he ended an eloquent appeal to Clemenceau by quoting Napoleon's saying on his deathbed that “in the end right always triumphed over might.” Clemenceau ... said: “President Wilson has quoted Napoleon as having said that in the end might was beaten by right. He says that he uttered this sentiment on his deathbed. Had it been true it was rather late for him to have discovered it. But it was not true. President Wilson alluded in glowing language to those idealistic young Frenchmen who helped to liberate America. However exalted the ideals of Lafayette and Rochambeau, they would never have achieved them without force. Force brought the United States into being and force again prevented it from falling to pieces.” The President acknowledged the cogency of the reply."

"Clemenceau said to me, “I used to be an idealist, but the older I grow the more I am convinced that it is Force that counts.” I replied, “Then you have come to agree with Machiavelli?” But Clemenceau doesn't like having his conclusions sharpened, and he said nothing."

"Much talk about Clemenceau and Wilson. L[loyd] G[eorge] said, ‘Each lacks and fails to understand the other's best qualities. When Wilson talks idealism, Clemenceau wonders what he means, and, metaphorically speaking, touches his forehead, as much as to say, “A good man, but not quite all there!”’"

"Had a little talk with President Wilson... The President said that he had been reading an account of Clemenceau's philosophy of life, in which he remarked: “Life consists of the play of unrestrained natural forces” – in other words, the evolutionist's view of sociological development. President: If you take that view, I don't see how you can have any hope or incentive to action."

"Signing of Protocol and procés-verbal ratifying the Treaty [of Versailles]. It was interesting to see old Clemenceau going through the ceremony – the quick way in which he walked round the tables. L[loyd] G[eorge] said that after the signing of Protocol, which took place in a private room, Clemenceau had to shake hands with the German delegate. He said to [L]loyd G[eorge], “I spat on the place in order to commemorate it!”"

"Few men in France had made a more realistic appraisal of their country’s position in the post-war world, or were more anxious to secure its future, than its premier, Georges Clemenceau, known as ‘the Tiger’. The 78-year-old Clemenceau may have seemed a man of the past, and his square-tailed coats, shapeless hats, thick, buckled boots, and suede gloves (worn because of his eczema) accentuated this impression. To Clemenceau, the problem of the peace settlement was the problem of French security: how to protect France against another German aggression, something which all of France believed was possible. In his relentless search for the means to enhance French security, Clemenceau operated on the assumption that neither military defeat nor the fall of the Kaiser would permanently weaken Germany nor curb her continental ambitions. Germany would have to be disarmed, but this would hardly be sufficient for future safety. Even as he savoured the victory that was won at such high cost to France, Clemenceau understood how easily the peace could be lost. Stripped to its essentials, French security required the support of allies and military, territorial, and economic changes that would restrict Germany’s capacity to again invade France. Neither the Rhineland nor Belgium was to become a platform for future German attacks. Clemenceau intended, too, that the peace settlements would provide opportunities to redress the unequal balance of economic strength between the two neighbouring nations that the war had not altered. While Clemenceau did not rule out the future possibility of Franco-German economic co-operation, already canvassed in the summer of 1919, it was only a possibility and had to be on terms that would promote French industrial interests."

"Vous êtes mon ami personnel. Vous êtes assuré de mon estime, de ma considération et de mon affection."

"La France est l'amie et l'alliée de l'Irak."

"Notre maison brûle et nous regardons ailleurs. La nature, mutilée, surexploitée, ne parvient plus à se reconstituer et nous refusons de l'admettre. L'humanité souffre. Elle souffre de mal-développement, au nord comme au sud, et nous sommes indifférents. La terre et l'humanité sont en péril et nous en sommes tous responsables."

"As far as France is concerned, we are ready to envisage everything that can be done under UNSCR 1441. [...] But I repeat that every possibility offered by the present resolution must be explored, that there are a lot of them and they still leave us with a lot of leeway when it comes to ways of achieving the objective of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction which may exist in Iraq. I'd like nevertheless to note that, as things stand at the moment, I have, to my knowledge, no indisputable proof in this sphere."

"On n'exporte pas la démocratie dans un fourgon blindé."

"Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a spirit of responsibility. I condemn all manifest provocation that might dangerously fan passions."

"Ne composez jamais avec l'extrémisme, le racisme, l'antisémitisme ou le rejet de l'autre."

"J'ai été militant de l'ANC de Mandela depuis la fin des années soixante, le début des années soixante-dix. J'ai été approché par Hassan II, le roi du Maroc, pour aider au financement de l'ANC. [...] Je me souviens qu'à l'époque, le président sud-africain, que devait être Vorster, exerçait d'énormes pressions auprès de nos ministres pour qu'ils viennent en Afrique du sud. Un certain nombre de ministres français ont accepté ces invitations. Moi aussi, j'ai été très sollicité... Les dirigeants de l'Afrique du Sud voulaient nous faire croire que l'apartheid était normal, ou n'existait pas. J'ai déclaré officiellement, et de la manière la plus claire, urbi et orbi que je n'y mettrais pas les pieds tant que l'apartheid existerait."

"I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb. Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that's not very dangerous. Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed. ...It is obvious that this bomb, at the moment it was launched, obviously would be destroyed immediately. We have the means -- several countries have the means to destroy a bomb."

"There have been women I have loved ... A lot, as discreetly as possible."

"France has been at the receiving end of bucket loads of commentary in recent days. It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac. The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner – not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council."

"Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand."

"To govern is to choose."

""It is more than a crime; it is a political fault," —words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others."

"Death is an eternal sleep."

"Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!"

"Celui qui n'a pas vécu au dix-huitième siècle avant la Révolution ne connaît pas la douceur de vivre et ne peut imaginer ce qu'il peut y avoir de bonheur dans la vie. C'est le siècle qui a forgé toutes les armes victorieuses contre cet insaisissable adversaire qu'on appelle l'ennui. L'Amour, la Poésie, la Musique, le Théâtre, la Peinture, l'Architecture, la Cour, les Salons, les Parcs et les Jardins, la Gastronomie, les Lettres, les Arts, les Sciences, tout concourait à la satisfaction des appétits physiques, intellectuels et même moraux, au raffinement de toutes les voluptés, de toutes les élégances et de tous les plaisirs. L'existence était si bien remplie qui si le dix-septième siècle a été le Grand Siècle des gloires, le dix-huitième a été celui des indigestions."

"Ce n'est pas un événement, c'est une nouvelle."

"Je connais quelqu'un qui a plus d'esprit que Napoléon, que Voltaire, que tous les ministres présents et futurs: c'est l'opinion."

"Vous ne jouez donc pas le whist, monsieur? Hélas! quelle triste vieilesse vous vous préparez!"

"C'est le commencement de la fin."

"Qui n'a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est le plaisir de vivre."

"To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool than to discover who is a clever man."

"The tricolour flag, symbol of revolution, was raised on the cathedral's towers and the bells rang to the frantic acclamation of the crowd. 'Listen to the tocsin! We are triumphing' remarked the Prince de Talleyrand gleefully: 'Who are we?' he was asked: 'Quiet! Not a word. I will tell you tomorrow' was the reply."

"There is no sentiment less aristocratic than that of nonbelief."

"Financiers flourish only when nations decline."

"Accessibility on the part of rulers ends by inspiring love rather than respect, and love evaporates at first sign of trouble."

"A diplomat who says "yes" means "maybe", a diplomat who says "maybe" means "no", and a diplomat who says "no" is no diplomat."

"To betray at the right time means to foresee."

"Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love (of coffee)."

"It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake."

"They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing (and variations)."

"Napoleon was essentially a man of visions and impulses, every conjecture, every trick of circumstance only prompting him to more grand designs, only luring his eye to more untrodden hills. But Talleyrand could not go with him all the way, and, aristocrat at heart, would not consent to be a mute unreasoning tool. Talleyrand's thought was of that withering kind that was so fashionable and attractive in the gilded world of his youth. He talked with a wink and a smile, his sarcasm would charm a salon, and, in repartee, he would cover a sword-thrust with velvet; but always his was the talk of the sceptic rather than the enthusiast, the critic rather than the dreamer; he could be delightfully oblique, he was never daringly grand. He thought best when on the defensive. This is where he differed from his master. This is why he was able to play a sort of second critical self to Napoleon, checking his flights of ambition, softening his intemperate expressions, and moderating his indiscreet outbursts—and, on the positive side, furnishing him expedients rather than grand designs. Hence he was perhaps the man to know Napoleon, and realise the true situation of affairs, better than Napoleon himself."

"His age was venerable, his society was delightful, and there was an exhibition of conservative wisdom, ‘of moderate and healing counsels,’ in all his thoughts, words, and actions very becoming to his age and station, vastly influential from his sagacity and experience, and which presented him to the eyes of men as a statesman like Burleigh or Clarendon for prudence, temperance, and discretion."

"M. de Talleyrand, the most celebrated wit, courtier, and negotiator of his time. The public life of that celebrated man had not been free from the stains which, in times of frequent and violent change, are almost necessarily contracted by politicians. But it is just to say, that, if he was unfaithful to particular parties and particular families, he was in the main faithful to the interests of his country and to the great principles of government; that, though a revolutionist, he was never a jacobin; and that, though a minister of Napoleon, he had no share in the worst parts of the imperial tyranny."

"You are a thief, a coward, a man without faith. You don't believe in God; you have all your life failed in all your duties, you have deceived, betrayed everyone […] Look, sir, you are nothing but shit in silk stockings. (Vous êtes un voleur, un lâche, un homme sans foi. Vous ne croyez pas à Dieu ; vous avez toute votre vie manqué à tous vos devoirs, vous avez trompé, trahi tout le monde […] Tenez, Monsieur, vous n’êtes que de la merde en bas de soie.[This refers to the fact that Talleyrand always dressed in the old aristocratic fashion with breeches and stocking, while the Revolution and the Empire had led to the generalised use of full-length trousers previously used by the lower classes]"

"Un homme né pour les grands vices et les petites actions."

"A man born for great vices and small actions."

"It may seem odd to confess, but I never could discover on what grounds Talleyrand's great reputation as a Minister was built. I never found him a man of business, nor, I must say, able in affairs."

"He countered insult with a smile, and, when charged with lack of principle, was content to observe that the only sound principle was to have none. His unpopularity, then, is easily intelligible. Nothing alienates people more thoroughly than indifference, unless it be a rasping wit; and when Talleyrand spoke at all, he would always rather lose a friend than a jest."

"He was, in truth, a finished specimen of the homme politique. He aspired to govern not empires, but rulers; and such being his profession, it is not strange that vices and even crimes were imputed to him by those who lacked his knowledge and humour. But if he disdained to answer his accusers, he never ceased to believe in the loftiness of his patriotism and the grandeur of his policy. ‘Animated by the most devoted love of France,’ thus he wrote at the end of his career, ‘I have always served her conscientiously, and sought for her honestly that which I honestly believed to be most advantageous for her.’"

"The reduction of the executive power is the wish of neither the chambers nor the country...During all my magistracy, I will see, in accord with the responsible ministers, that the government of the republic maintains intact, under the control of parliament, the authority which it must have...It is possible for a people to be effectively pacific only on condition that they are always ready for war. A diminished France, a France exposed through her own fault to challenges or humiliations, would no longer be France."

"Jaurès had over the last 8 days expiated many faults. He had helped the government in its diplomacy and, if war breaks out, he would have been amongst those who would have known how to do their duty...Quel crime abominable et sot!"

"Excellent attitude of the socialists, even of the revolutionaries and of the CGT...We have not had arrested any of the individuals registered in the Carnet B, apart from a few rare exceptions, when the Préfets believed themselves confronted with dangerous anarchists."

"Yesterday Paris gave a sad spectacle which contrasts with the sang-froid of these last days and with the sang-froid of the whole of France. There were many incidents of pillaging of shops. The dairies of the Maggi company were widely plundered; it is true that the cause of this violence is competition between this company and small milk suppliers. But, on top of this, German and Austrian shops were looted; and the police stood passively by these scenes of disorder: officers even watched them with a certain complicity. I instructed Malvy [Minister of the Interior] to ask Hennion [Prefect of Police] to be merciless and to maintain public order at all costs. The fomenters will appear before a war tribunal."

"We are expecting, of course, a German attack through Belgium, as our High Command has always predicted. We have constantly recommended to General Joffre not to permit any crossing of the Belgian frontier nor over-flying of Belgium until further notice. On that depends the support of England and the attitude of Belgium. When King Albert came to Paris, he promised that Belgium would defend herself against Germany. Let us do nothing which could discourage that good will."

"It was for all the members of the Cabinet a relief. Never before had a declaration of war been welcomed with such satisfaction. France having done all that was incumbent upon her to maintain peace and war having nevertheless become inevitable, it was a hundred times better that we should not have been led, even by repeated violation of our frontiers, to declare it ourselves. It was indispensable that Germany, who was entirely responsible for the aggression, should be led into publicly confessing her intentions. If we had had to declare war ourselves, the Russian alliance would have been contested, national unanimity would have been smashed, it would probably have meant Italy would have been forced by the clauses of the Triple Alliance to side against us."

"I had spoken of the [illegible] of things and added that at last we could release the cry, until now smothered in our breasts: Vive l'Alsace Lorraine. Thomson and Angagneur rightly pointed out to me that that it would be better, vis-à-vis foreign countries and even vis-à-vis part of French public opinion, to say nothing which could detract from the strictly defensive nature of the war. I bowed to their observations."

"From the very beginning of hostilities, came into conflict the two ideas which for fifty months were to struggle for the dominion of the world - the idea of sovereign force, which accepts neither control nor check, and the idea of justice, which depends on the sword only to prevent or repress the abuse of strength...the war gradually attained the fullness of its first significance, and became, in the fullest sense of the term, a crusade of humanity for Right; and if anything can console us in part at least, for the losses we have suffered, it is assuredly the thought that our victory is also the victory of Right. This victory is complete, for the enemy only asked for the armistice to escape from an irretrievable military disaster...And in the light of those truths you intend to accomplish your mission. You will, therefore, seek nothing but justice, "justice that has no favourites," justice in territorial problems, justice in financial problems, justice in economic problems. But justice is not inert, it does not submit to injustice. What it demands first, when it has been violated, are restitution and reparation for the peoples and individuals who have been despoiled or maltreated. In formulating this lawful claim, it obeys neither hatred nor an instinctive or thoughtless desire for reprisals. It pursues a twofold object - to render to each his due, and not to encourage crime through leaving it unpunished."

"What justice also demands, inspired by the same feeling, is the punishment of the guilty and effective guaranties against an active return of the spirit by which they were tempted; and it is logical to demand that these guaranties should be given, above all, to the nations that have been, and might again be most exposed to aggressions or threats, to those who have many times stood in danger of being submerged by the periodic tide of the same invasions. What justice banishes is the dream of conquest and imperialism, contempt for national will, the arbitrary exchange of provinces between states as though peoples were but articles of furniture or pawns in a game. The time is no more when diplomatists could meet to redraw with authority the map of the empires on the corner of a table. If you are to remake the map of the world it is in the name of the peoples, and on condition that you shall faithfully interpret their thoughts, and respect the right of nations, small and great, to dispose of themselves, and to reconcile it with the right, equally sacred, of ethnical and religious minorities - a formidable task, which science and history, your two advisers, will contribute to illumine and facilitate."

"The annual payment [of German reparations] will very likely spread over some thirty years at least. It would therefore be fair and logical for the military occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads to last for the same length of time...There is, moreover, something quite unusual in the idea of renouncing a security before the amount secured has been completely paid...After the war of 1870, the Germans occupied various French provinces until they received the last centime of the indemnity imposed on France...It is argued that even when the occupation ceased, it could be resumed in the event of non-payment. This option to renew occupation may look tempting to-day on paper. But its bristling with drawbacks and risk. Let us imagine ourselves sixteen or seventeen years ahead. Germany has paid regularly for fifteen years. We have evacuated the whole left bank of the Rhine. We have returned to our side of the political frontiers which afford no military security. Imagine Germany again prey to Imperialism or imagine that she simply breaks faith. She suspends payment and we are obliged to reoccupy. We give the necessary orders, but who will vouch for our being able to carry them out without difficulty?"

"And, further, shall we be sure of finding the left bank free from German troops? Germany is supposedly going to undertake to have neither troops nor fortresses on the left bank and within a zone extending 50 km. east of the Rhine. But the Treaty does not provide for any permanent supervision of troops and armaments, on the left bank any more than elsewhere in Germany. In the absence of this permanent supervision, the clause stipulating that the League of Nations may order enquiries to be undertaken is in danger of being purely illusory. We can thus have no guarantee that after the expiry of the fifteen years and the evacuation of the left bank, the Germans will not filter troops by degrees into this district. Even supposing they have not previously done so, how can we prevent them doing it at the moment when we intend to re-occupy on account of their default? It will be simple for them to leap to the Rhine in a night and to seize this natural military frontier well ahead of us. The option to renew the occupation should not therefore from any point of view be substituted for occupation. It will then be simple for them to leap to the Rhine in a night and to seize this natural military frontier well ahead of us."

"You who witnessed these horrors, you who saw your parents, wives, children fall under German bullets, how could you be expected to understand and stand idly by if today, after our victory, there were people sufficiently blind to advise you to leave unpunished the actions of such outrages, and to allow Germany to keep the indemnities she owes...That kind of behaviour...was encouraged or tolerated by all Germans; all Germans abetted the sacking and firing of the unfortunate provinces in the North and East...We shall see to it that they repair the damage"

"Judging others by themselves, the English, who are blinded by their loyalty, have always thought that the Germans did not abide by their pledges inscribed in the Versailles Treaty because they had not frankly agreed to them... We, on the contrary, believe that if Germany, far from making the slightest effort to carry out the treaty of peace, has always tried to escape her obligations, it is because until now she has not been convinced of her defeat... We are also certain that Germany, as a nation, resigns herself to keep her pledged word only under the impact of necessity."

"Germany's population was increasing, her industries were intact, she had no factories to reconstruct, she had no flooded mines. Her resources were intact, above and below ground... In fifteen or twenty years Germany would be mistress of Europe. In front of her would be France with a population scarcely increased."

"Those of your fellow countrymen who believe that France dreams or has dreams of the political or economic annihilation of Germany are mistaken...no reasonable Frenchman has ever dreamt of annexing a parcel of German territory."

"If I do not yet see the light of day it is because the scaffolding of London still blocks my view of the rising sun. And what worries me the most is that this scaffolding rests upon quicksand: the good faith of Germany, the good faith, not only of the present government in Berlin, but of all those governments that will follow it."

"What remains of the emotion, of the underhanded but incontestable hostility with which certain republican circles greeted his election to the supreme magistracy on January 17, 1913? Nothing, except perhaps the conviction, shared by all republican patriots from the most moderate to the most extreme, that the decision of the congress was the happiest and most judicious choice."

"I recall the nomination of M. Poincaré seven years ago. It was almost a revolution...A man of great talent, sprung from a family of high morality and worthy in every respect...The coming of M. Poincaré was greeted as announcing the dawn of a new era. A patriotic policy was about to succeed a regime of diminution and debasement. It was expected that this Lorrainer, an orator, an upright man, a patriot...would revive the country...I do not hesitate to say that the total good in his activity is greater than the total of bad...he never weakened...his influence and his action were judicious, useful, and even very effective...Finally, if the country has maintained an honorable and worthy appearance, it is because he who represented it knew how to be worthy and honest himself."

"M. Poincaré has been a great, a very great president...Posterity...will ratify this judgment, and its admiration will increase with the revelation of documents in which the clear-sighted patriotism, the tenacity, the patience, the courageous confidence of the outgoing president are affirmed. It is known what he said...and he was an incomparable orator. It is hardly suspected how much good he did and how much evil he prevented, without ever departing from constitutional correctness."

"Only now do I understand the harm done our nation's best interests by the rebuff administered to Poincaré's policy in 1924."

"Poincaré, the strongest figure who succeeded Clemenceau, attempted to make an independent Rhineland under the patronage and control of France. This had no chance of success. He did not hesitate to try to enforce reparations on Germany by the invasion of the Ruhr. This certainly imposed compliance with the Treaties on Germany; but it was severely condemned by British and American opinion. As a result of the general financial and political disorganisation of Germany, together with reparation payments during the years 1919 to 1923, the mark rapidly collapsed. The rage aroused in Germany by the French occupation of the Ruhr led to a vast, reckless printing of paper notes with the deliberate object of destroying the whole basis of the currency. In the final stages of the inflation the mark stood at forty-three million millions to the pound sterling. The social and economic consequences of this inflation were deadly and far-reaching. The savings of the middle classes were wiped out, and a natural following was thus provided for the banners of National Socialism. The whole structure of German industry was distorted by the growth of mushroom trusts. The entire working capital of the country disappeared. The internal national debt and the debt of industry in the form of fixed capital charges and mortgages were, of course, simultaneously liquidated or repudiated. But this was no compensation for the loss of working capital. All led directly to the large-scale borrowings of a bankrupt nation abroad which were the feature of ensuing years. German sufferings and bitterness marched forward together – as they do today... ...A rift opened between Lloyd George and Poincaré, whose bristling personality hampered his firm and far-sighted policies."

"Had Lloyd George supported whole-heartedly the maximum demands of the French in 1919 could we have escaped 1939? No confident answer to this question is possible, and popular opinion today cannot avoid importing into its verdict on his policy knowledge not available to him at the time. It is plain today that Poincaré had a clearer understanding of the dangers of a resurgent Germany than had Lloyd George."

"Poincaré was unquestionably the ablest and most strong-willed statesman to occupy the Elysée Palace since Thiers. But what endeared him to Bainville above all was his attitude in matters of foreign policy and national defense. His Lorraine origins rendered him implacably antagonistic to Germany, his bourgeois good sense inoculated him against the disease of idealistic pacifism, and his public declarations in favor of strengthening the power of the executive suggested a desire to rescue France from the evils of legislative omnipotence (and incompetence) that Maurras and his associates had been denouncing. It appeared that France had, by some miracle, acquired a president who possessed "all the powers of a king" and was prepared to use them."

"Of Clemenceau he [Woodrow Wilson] spoke in kindly terms. But when the name of Poincaré was mentioned, all the bitterness of his nature burst into a sentence of concentrated hatred. "He is a cheat and a liar," he exclaimed. He repeated the phrase with fierce emphasis. Poincaré disliked and distrusted him and the detestation was mutual."

"The fact that he was a Lorrainer, born and brought up in sight of the German eagle waving over the ravished provinces of France, bred in him an implacable enmity for Germany and all Germans. Anti-clericalism was with him a conviction; anti-Germanism was a passion. That gave him a special hold on France that had been ravaged by the German legions in the Great War. It was a disaster to France and to Europe. Where a statesman was needed who realised that if it is to be wisely exploited victory must be utilised with clemency and restraint, Poincaré made it impossible for any French Prime Minister to exert these qualities. He would not tolerate any compromise, concession or conciliation. He was bent on keeping Germany down. He was more responsible than any other man for the refusal of France to implement the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. He stimulated and subsidised the armaments of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia which created such a ferment of uneasiness in disarmed Germany. He encouraged insurrection in the Rhineland against the authority of the Reich. He intrigued with the anti-German elements in Britain to thwart every effort in the direction of restoring goodwill in Europe and he completely baffled Briand's endeavour in that direction. He is the true creator of modern Germany with its great and growing armaments, and should this end in another conflict the catastrophe will have been engineered by Poincaré. His dead hand lies heavy on Europe to-day."

"The most powerful figure in French politics after the retirement of Clemenceau was ex-President Poincaré. He disliked the Treaty [of Versailles] intensely. For several years after the withdrawal of Clemenceau, the policy of France was dominated by this rather sinister little man. He represented the vindictive and arrogant mood of the governing classes in France immediately after her terrible sacrifices and her astounding victory. He directly and indirectly governed France for years. All the Premiers who followed after Clemenceau feared Poincaré. Millerand was his creature. Briand, who was all for the League and a policy of appeasement, was thwarted at every turn by the intrigues of Poincaré. Under his influence, which continued for years after his death, the League became not an instrument of peace and goodwill amongst all men, including Germans; it was converted into an organisation for establishing on a permanent footing the military and thereby the diplomatic supremacy of France. That policy completely discredited the League as a body whose decisions on disputes between nations might be trusted to be as impartial as those of any ordinary tribunal in any civilised country. The obligations entered into by the Allies as to disarmament were not fulfilled. British Ministers put up no fight against the betrayal of the League and the pledges as to disarmament. Hence the Nazi Revolution, which has for the time—maybe for a long time—destroyed the hopes of a new era of peaceful co-operation amongst free nations."

"He was the only man I have ever known who at any moment, on any subject within his wide range, could make a speech, logically developed, exact in phrasing, fortified with every fact and figure, which could be taken down and printed without revisions."

"Our Socialists chuckled when Poincaré fell finally, beaten only by health. He specialized, they said, in upsetting apple-carts. Seemingly they were happier with Laval. I should have felt mean in joining the chorus of relief from the doughty little fellow. At least he was Someone—not to be called blind because he was resolute. In my boyhood the French seemed to cry vive everything but a government; Poincaré at moments looked durable. "The eternal and to me most repugnant Poincaré", Curzon called him; "when firmly handled he is amenable", Curzon added, forgetting his own tears. Poincaré was three or four things—not more—and amenable was the fourth. He died in 1934 respected by over half of his compatriots—an unusual proportion—because he always knew his own mind—an unusual attribute. He just was not our idea of a Frog. We supposed that Germans shout less than the French, so we entered the thirties unable to measure Sieg Heils as Frenchmen could."

"Neither Germany nor Italy have doubts. Our crisis is not a material crisis. We have lost faith in our destiny...We are like mariners without a pilot."

"My country has been beaten and they are calling me back to make peace and sign an armistice...This is the work of 30 years of Marxism. They're calling me back to take charge of the nation."

"La terre, elle, ne ment pas [The land, it does not lie]."

"The only wealth you possess is your labour... France will become again what she should never have ceased to be—an essentially agricultural nation. Like the giant of mythology, she will recover all her strength by contact with the soil."

"Le Maréchal-paysan [The Marshal-peasant]."

"[Pétain is France's] noblest and most humane soldier."

"At seven o'clock [on 11 June 1940] we entered into conference. ... I urged the French Government to defend Paris. I emphasised the enormous absorbing power of the house-to-house defence of a great city upon an invading army. I recalled to Marshal Pétain the nights we had spent together in his train at Beauvais after the British Fifth Army disaster in 1918, and how he, as I put it, not mentioning Marshal Foch, had restored the situation. I also reminded him how Clemenceau had said: "I will fight in front of Paris, in Paris, and behind Paris." The Marshal replied very quietly and with dignity that in those days he had a mass of manoeuvre of upwards of sixty divisions; now there was none. He mentioned that there were then sixty British divisions in the line. Making Paris into a ruin would not affect the final event."

"[On 16 June 1940] Paul Reynaud was quite unable to overcome the unfavourable impression which the proposal of Anglo-French Union created. The defeatist section, led by Marshal Pétain, refused even to examine it. ... Weygand had convinced Pétain without much difficulty that England was lost. High French military authorities had advised: "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." To make a union with Great Britain was, according to Pétain, "fusion with a corpse"."

"Pétain has always been an anti-British defeatist, and is now a dotard."

"I am entirely with the Marshall [Pétain], I see him as the Father of the patrie, blessed with a good sense verging on genius, and as a truly providential man."

"Remember that France has always had two strings in its bow. In June 1940 it needed the Pétain "string" as much as the de Gaulle "string"."

"When Marshal Pétain offered to lay down French arms, he did not lay down arms that he still held, but ended a situation that every soldier could recognize as untenable. Only the blood-drenched dilettantism of a Mr. Churchill could fail to understand this or try to deny this in spite of better knowledge."

"Pétain never gave me the idea of a General whose personality or genius could lead huge armies to victory in a war where, at the right moment, a crashing attack was essential to defeat your formidable enemy. He was an able man and a good soldier. But he was essentially a Fabius Cunctator. He was careful and cautious even to the confines of timidity. His métier after the 1917 mutinies was that of a head nurse in a home for cases of shell-shock. ... Pétain did it well and successfully. There is no other French General who could have done it as well. ... Nevertheless, Foch's summing-up of him to Poincaré will be acknowledged by those who knew him as accurate and fair: “As second in command, carrying out orders, Pétain is perfect, but he shrinks from responsibility, and is not fitted for a Commander-in-Chief.” Both Poincaré and Clemenceau constantly complained of his pessimism. He was inclined to dwell on the gloomiest possibilities of a situation. Poincaré, in his Diary, said that in the German offensive Pétain was “defeatist.” He would have made an ineffective Commander-in-Chief for Allied Armies confronted with the problems of 1918."

"Marshal, here we are! Before you, France's saviour, We swear, we your people, To serve and follow your feats."

"Marshal, here we are! You regave us hope The Fatherland will be reborn, Marshal, Marshal, Here we are!"

"Some already in power allied themselves with Hitler, including his chief ally, Benito Mussolini; Marshal Pétain (1856-1951; died in prison), the French premier who surrendered much of France to the Nazis; Pierre Laval (1883-1945; executed), former French prime minister who became leader of the Vichy government he helped the Germans establish; Marshal Ion Antonescu (1882-1946; executed), the vehemently anti-Semitic and anti-Russian conducator of Romania, who forced King Carol II to abdicate, supported the Germans on the Eastern Front, and oversaw the murder of 380,000 Jews and 10,000 Gypsies; Boris III, tsar of Bulgaria (1894-1943; possibly poisoned), who agreed to deport 13,000 Jews from recently reannexed territories though protected those in Bulgaria; Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868-1957), Regent of Hungary who collaborated with the Nazis through fear of communism, but eventually broke with Hitler; and generals Georgios Tsolakoglou (1886-1948), Konstantinos Logothetopoulos (1878-1961) and Ioannis Rallis (4878-1946), Nazi puppets in Greece."

"For some, Pétain was simply "le drapeau," a personification of abiding Old France: an erect old soldier of austere tastes, of Catholic peasant stock, marshal of France, member of the French Academy, returning from his modest country estate once more to rescue his country from the rabble. On the other side, Pétain seemed less threatening to republicans than many another senior officer. ... Only the irreverent young right had mocked Pétain without compunction in the 1930's. In the summer of 1940, therefore, Pétain fitted the national mood to perfection: internally, a substitute for politics and a barrier to revolution; externally, a victorious general who would make no more war. Honor plus safety. ... Poincaré's memoirs suggest that Pétain expected French defeat in February and March 1918. Paul Valéry...in 1934, recalled...his reputation for pessimism. By 1940 these qualities had hardened into "morose skepticism." ... The 1917 alarms left their mark on Pétain's lifelong concern for patriotic morale. When Pétain claimed in the 1930's that education had become his main interest, he meant morale, not knowledge. In 1940 he was convinced...that unpatriotic schoolteachers had been responsible for French defeat."

"I had the impression of a marble statue; a Roman senator in a museum. Big, vigorous, an impressive figure, face impassive, of a pallor of a really marble hue... Pétain did not appear to me only as a soldier; his greatness does not only derive from his skill at directing a battle, but emanates from his entire personality. No one evokes better than he what the Romans called "great men.""

"I saw General Pétain first in his working room. A fair Pas-de-Calais man of medium height, with a firm and reserved aspect and a masterful regard; a soldier before all, and one with strong will and decided opinions. I was much attracted by him."

"Went round this morning to the H.Q. of the Armies of the Centre and saw Pétain. I sat in his room while he received all the morning reports, which were read out to him by his Chief of Staff, Colonel Serrigny. I was struck by the quick and businesslike methods of both, and by the acute, pungent, and penetrating remarks of the General."

"Cold, glacial even, this good-looking blond fellow, already going bald, attracted women and men alike by the intensity of the gaze of his blue eyes."

"Pétain's achievement [in resolving the 1917 mutinies] was in fact a greater, far greater miracle than the Marne. ... Immediately after the second war ended, I simply could not praise for his achievements the man who had so often, under the pretext of helping France, placed weapons in Hitler's hands to use against my country. But the years passed, and it seemed to me to be not only a great injustice to Marshal Pétain but a cruel distortion of history to allow the dust of years to settle on what is, I am convinced, a heroic achievement which in the First World War brought victory out of defeat."

"Nous avons changé d’époque, la France doit vivre avec le terrorisme, mais nous ne céderons pas à la menace terroriste, nous devons faire bloc, être solidaires. La France a été une nouvelle fois frappée dans sa chair"

"Salafism, which has destroyed and perverted a part of the Muslim world, is a threat for Muslims, and also a danger for France."

"There is no definition of cults in law. on the other hand, these organizations know perfectly evade justice by hiding their true nature, since you are aware that freedom of conscience in France is a fundamental freedom enshrined in all our principles and our texts."

"I say also: watch (…) to any signs that would suggest that there a disempowerment. That those who plunge into Salafism are somehow victims of a great handling as regards sects. No, there is also that part of personal will that you should never rule out."

"Although I am not a legalist when it comes to the conquest of power, I am one when it comes to the exercise of power. If parliamentary processes result in our being called upon to exercise power within the framework of existing institutions, we should do so legally and fairly without taking advantage of our presence in government to fraudulently transform the exercise of power into the conquest of power."

"What the Nationalists are once again trying to revive is the state of mind, or rather, the passions of 1912–13... Hitler to-day is miles away from power. He may be a little nearer it than, say, Franklin-Bouillon, but he is infinitely farther away from it than General Boulanger on the night of 27th January, 1889, or than Paul Déroulède on the day of Félix Faure's funeral."

"Only now do I understand the harm done our nation's best interests by the rebuff administered to Poincaré's policy in 1924."

"In all this rallying of the forces which stand for peaceful and tolerant solutions of world problems, M. Blum has rendered a high personal service. Indeed, it was not in the power of any other Frenchman at this particularly juncture in the life of France or of Europe to do so much for the common good."

"By 1937 France's Prime Minister Léon Blum had embraced the notion that concessions to Germany in both Eastern Europe and overseas were necessary if peace were to be preserved. But Chamberlain had little confidence in the French and did practically nothing to make joint Anglo-French action effective. The Soviet Union was viewed with revulsion by most Conservatives, Chamberlain among them, on ideological grounds. Even Churchill found it hard to contemplate having Moscow in his grand alliance, though that was clearly a logical inference to be drawn from his own analysis of the situation. Much hope was pinned on Mussolini, who in 1934 had appeared to take a firm line against an abortive Nazi putsch in Vienna; this was to exaggerate Italy's strength and to underestimate Mussolini's desire to overturn the status quo, which he revealed when he invaded Abyssinia and ignored all inducements to negotiate a settlement. The 1935 'Stresa Front' of Britain, France and Italy proved to be just that: a front. When Italy defected, Britain and France could not agree what to do first: get Mussolini out of Abyssinia or keep Hitler out of the Rhineland. They did neither. This pattern of Anglo-French mal-coordination, not helped by the divergence of domestic politics in the two countries when France briefly had a Popular Front government, was to continue until the outbreak of war."

"What interested me in Blum as a Jew was precisely that: the hatred he aroused. We find it hard today even to imagine the degree of overt, unapologetic prejudice and dislike that someone like Blum could inspire in those years, primarily and simply on account of his Jewish origin. On the other hand Blum himself was often deaf to the scale and implications of public anti-Semitism and its invocation against him. There was, of course, a certain ambivalence in Blum’s own identity: unashamedly and totally French, he was no less overtly and proudly Jewish. In later years he combined great sympathy for the newborn Jewish state in the Middle East with near indifference to the Zionist message itself. These ostensibly incompatible identifications and enthusiasms were perhaps not so far from my own at various times, which may explain my long-standing interest in the man."

"On a personal level, it turns out that Blum was, in an unusual sort of way, charismatic. He was so obviously honest, so manifestly meant what he said, so clearly wasn’t trying to be anything other than he was, that he was actually quite appealing and accepted on his own terms. His style—which to us would seem rather romantic and a bit elegantly over-polished for political use, especially on the left—was actually regarded as evidence that the Left had a leader of class. And of course one deeply hated by communists, on the one hand, and the French right on the other. Blum was also the only person who understood what his party, the Socialist Party, had to do to remain a political force in France. If socialists abandoned Marxism and tried to become a sort of social democratic party on the northern European model, they would simply blend into the existing Radical party, with whose social base they had much in common. On the other hand, socialists could not compete with the communists as a revolutionary, anti-system party. And so Blum walked a narrow path between pretending to lead a revolutionary party committed to the overthrow of capitalism, while functioning in practice as the nearest thing France had to a social democratic party."

"[H]e was converted by Jaurès to Socialism, became his most faithful disciple and succeeded him as leader. Along with his intellectual distinction, his idealism and his personal probity, Blum took over some of Jaurès' worst illusions. If anything, Blum was even more of a pacifist, more bent on disarmament; he placed an equal trust in German Social Democracy—with less reason, for there was the experience of the war and post-war Germany to learn from. He exemplified and encouraged by his leadership and his undoubted intellectual distinction all the illusions endemic in social democracy. There was no danger, he said, from the Fascists: he was badly beaten up in the streets of Paris to prove the worthlessness of his illusions. Hitler was miles away from power, he said, in 1930: Hitler was in complete possession of power in 1933. Blum and the Socialists had opposed the raising of Army service from one to two years, an indispensable measure of defence: he and they lived to regret the gap in French defences in 1940. And yet Blum was a noble man, as Jaurès had been before him."

"Being a member of EU comes with rights and benefits. Third countries (non members as the UK will be after Brexit) can never have the same rights and benefits since they are not subject to the same obligations. The single market and its four freedoms (which includes freedom of movement) are indivisible. Cherry picking is not an option."

"The UK's departure from the EU would have consequences"

"Nothing should put peace at risk"

"This negotiation will not only be financial, legal or technical - in my view, it will first [be] human and social and economic,"

"It's not about punishment, it is not about revenge. Basically, we are implementing the decision taken by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, and unravel 43 years of patiently-built relations. I will do all I can to put emotion to one side and stick to the facts, the figures, and the legal basis, and work with the United Kingdom to find an agreement in that frame of mind."

"We must lift the uncertainty caused by Brexit"

"We want EU citizens in Britain to have the same rights as British citizens who live in the EU"

"I'm not hearing any whistling, just the clock ticking."

"There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn't been explained to the British people."

"I have a state of mind - not aggressive... but I'm not naïve."

"We intend to teach people what leaving the single market means"

"[A deal on the common travel area between the UK and Republic of Ireland must] respect both the integrity of the single market... and the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts"

"No deal will be a very bad deal."

"To be clear: without a [border] backstop, there can be no withdrawal agreement"

"The UK's decision to opt out of free movement rules and largely end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice means that the UK cannot take part in the European Arrest Warrant"

"The single market is our main economic public good. There will be no damaging it, no unravelling what we have achieved together with the UK."

"The EU is prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country"

"Theresay May's plans] would be the end of the single market and the European project"

"[The Chequers plan] is useful because it clearly defines what the wishes are for the UK for future relations."

"It is not possible to get freedom for goods without freedom for services, in particular for the movement of people"

"Brexit was not our choice, it is the choice of the UK. Our proposal tries to help the UK in managing the negative fallout of Brexit in Northern Ireland in a way that respects the territorial integrity of the UK."

"We are still not there. There are still several issues which remain unresolved, including that of Ireland, and therefore what I understand is that more time is required to find this comprehensive deal and to reach this decisive progress which we need in order to finalise these negotiations on the orderly exit of the United Kingdom."

"[There are currently only two Brexit options - the PM's deal or no deal. Even if MPs decided to take no deal off the table, it would not stop it from happening unless there was] a positive majority for another solution."

"We are open to work on a permanent customs union should the UK decide to take this path"

"No deal was never our desire or intended scenario but the EU 27 is now prepared. It becomes day after day more likely."

"Everybody will have to pay a price - EU and UK - because there is no added value to Brexit. Brexit is a negative negotiation. It is a lose-lose game for everybody."

"On the EU side, we had intense discussions with EU member states on the need to guarantee the integrity of the EU's single market, while keeping that border fully open. In this sense, the [Irish border] backstop is the maximum amount of flexibility that the EU can offer to a non-member state."

"If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism."

"Two hundred families are masters of the French economy and, in fact, of French politics. They constitute a force which a democratic state should not tolerate, which Richelieu would not have tolerated in the kingdom of France. The influence of the two hundred families weighs heavily on the fiscal system, on transportation, on credit. The two hundred families place their delegates in the seats of power. They operate on public opinion, for they control the press."

"This pattern of Anglo-French mal-coordination, not helped by the divergence of domestic politics in the two countries when France briefly had a Popular Front government, was to continue until the outbreak of war. Even after the Anschluss, Chamberlain could not bring himself to utter more than the most ambiguous hint of support for France in the event of a continental war. Unfortunately, there was just as much ambiguity in the French position after Edouard Daladier became Prime Minister in April 1938, not least because of the habitual cowardice of Georges Bonnet, his Foreign Minister. In Asia, meanwhile, Britain simply could not choose between her interests in China and the need to avoid war with Japan. The British nightmare was a German-Italian-Japanese combination. Yet the more they sought to avert it by diplomatic expedients rather than military countermeasures, the more likely it became."

"Unlike the French government, Britain had no formal obligations to Czechoslovakia. A cardinal axiom of British foreign policy was not to get entangled in France’s alliance system in Eastern Europe, designed to threaten a resurgent Germany with war on two fronts. However, the French coalition government led by Édouard Daladier was itself bitterly split over Czechoslovakia, with one group willing to honor France’s obligations, another favoring peace at almost any price, and Daladier shifting uneasily between them. At root, a weakened and divided France would not go to war without Britain: for much of the Czech crisis, Paris therefore followed London—its “English governess,” in the words of one historian. And London, in essence, meant Neville Chamberlain, aged sixty-eight, who had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister in May 1937."

"You should never hand over a country to one man, whoever the man, whatever the circumstances."

"It [a republic] is the form of government which divides us the least."

"Thiers was the savage, limited type of bourgeois who steeps himself in blood without flinching."

"What do you expect me to think of Thiers? There's no one who detested me more... Thiers was a man who firmly abstained from having an idea, who literally had no perception of anything. During the Commune he did the same as he had done in the Rue Transonain, and with the same ferocity. And not only did he do it, but he boasted and crowed about it. Did I tell you about the abominable act he committed? After having promised to leave the Parisians their guns, he took them away—which was the cause of everything that happened... He was one of those hide-bound fools who fancy that you can achieve something with an order written on a piece of paper."

"It fell to the liberal statesman, academician, and historian Adolphe Thiers to forge this broader synthesis in his Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire (1845–1862). Begun under the July Monarchy, continued under the Republic, and concluded under the Second Empire, this 20-volume work sold more than a million copies, and established Thiers' reputation as France's "national historian" (as well as his fortune). The author was supremely well placed to produce such a work. From his early years at school in Marseilles he had been fascinated by Napoleon, and like many men of his generation his obsession with the Emperor continued well into his adult life. Bringing back Napoleon's remains for burial in Paris had been his idea, although he was out of office by the time the cendres were returned to Paris."

"He was...an intellectual lightweight. This is apparent in his voluminous histories of the Revolution, Consulate and Empire. He boasted that his books were the sensation of his century. Perhaps, but they are no longer read in our own. Thiers offered a well written, sometimes dramatic, narrative undistinguished by its depth of analysis. Intellectual or socio-economic influences upon history are absent from his work. His originality lay with the fact that he was the first to write of France's recent past in relatively dispassionate terms, not an easy task in his day, although he was unable to stifle his great admiration for Napoleon."

"We will always be neighbours of Germany. We face the alternative of reaching an agreement with her or of clashing every twenty years on the battlefield."

"Just as war was originally waged between towns, then between countries and recently between empires, so, in future, it would be waged between continents. He did not believe in a Franco-German conflict...but sooner or later the Russians and the Chinese would launch an attack upon Europe. We had to make ourselves safe against this."

"War means the end of us all. Mankind is morally incapable of enduring another war, the horrors of which will surpass everything that has occurred hitherto. War would mean the end of Christian civilization."

"I consider agreement between Italy and France, that is to say between the Latin countries, including Nationalist Spain as well, as my life's mission."

"Mr Chamberlain is right to refuse to intervene in Spain, just as he is right to re-establish good relations with Italy. I hope that my country will not delay too long in following England's example."

"What is going on is abominable. A cry of indignation goes up at such a situation. Today, Germany, who lost the war, has more territory than she had before 1914... I demand that the government should find the solution. But there's one which is impossible and that is to let Germany go on with what she's doing."

"Because French-Italian cooperation had been destroyed Germany was in Vienna and in Prague. By turning their backs on his policy the French Governments had, since 1936, compromised the security of France and given to Germany the means, or at least part of the means, to capture the hegemony of Europe. In 1935, without a formal treaty, she had, in fact, become the ally of France. Although the Berlin-Rome Axis might be solid, and relations bad between Paris and Rome, M. Laval, nevertheless, could not finally acquiesce in a situation that was manifestly contrary to the interests of both countries."

"Well, it was unfortunate for us all that he [Ramsay MacDonald] refused to face the unpalatable fact of Abyssinia at Stresa, because Mussolini mistook his silence for agreement instead of imbecility; and his subsequent disillusion threw him into the arms of Germany, with the result that we lost Austria, and with it the whole of central Europe. Now, Mr. Boothby, I want to tell you that I think this war is a great mistake. If we had come to terms with Mussolini, as I wanted to do, we might have held Germany. That is no longer possible. We have given most of Europe to Hitler. Let us try to hold on to what we have got left. I am a peasant from the Auvergne. I want to keep my farm, and I want to keep France. Nothing else matters now... Make peace at once. Those people, have no idea of what they are up against."

"Gamelin is absolutely useless. The troops are all underground in that wretched Maginot Line, and completely demoralized. They should be in armour, but we haven't got any... Their [the French people] heart is not in this war... Quite soon the Germans are going to attack us. They will defeat us in three weeks, and we shall have to surrender. I would like to avoid that. We have already given them central and eastern Europe, and that we cannot undo. If we accept that, they might leave us alone, at least for a time; and ultimately turn east. Meanwhile, if we are to avoid immediate disaster, we have no alternative but to come to terms with them."

"Whether, in the last resort, Germany wins the war or not, we now have less choice than ever. We must reach an agreement with her... I don't believe in the permanence or even the long life of Nazism. In fifteen or twenty years' time – and that's nothing in history – Europe will have a new thirst for freedom. If the French flame has been kept alight, albeit dimly, it is to her that they will come to rekindle the extinguished torches...for there will be no one else."

"There are two alternatives, either you agree to what we ask and model yourselves on the German and Italian constitutions, or Hitler will force you to do so... France has never had and never will have a more inveterate enemy than Great Britain. Our whole history bears witness to that. We have been nothing but toys in the hands of England, who has exploited us to ensure her own safety. Today we are at the bottom of the abyss where she led us... I see only one way to restore France...to the position which she is entitled: namely, to ally ourselves resolutely with Germany and to confront England together."

"Since parliamentary democracy wished to enter into a struggle with Nazism and fascism and since it lost that struggle, it must disappear. A new régime – one that is bold, authoritarian, social and national – must take its place."

"I desire the victory of Germany, for without it, bolshevism would tomorrow install itself everywhere."

"I tried to organize peace in Europe and I thought that the first thing to do was to bring France and Italy together. I thought that this was the first link in a chain which would one day lead us to an agreement with Germany."

"We must organize our continent and Europe will be weak or it will be strong. For it to survive, it must be constructed according to certain principles... The organization of all the countries which comprise our continent must be such that neither the conquerors nor the conquered are ever again tempted to rise up against one another. On the material plane, the countries must help one another and harmonize their economic interests so that the needs of each can be satisfied without recourse to the competition and violence which have too often been the rule of the past. The new Europe will last if the germs of revenge are forever eradicated from it."

"I have always had simple ideas in politics. People take me for a shyster, but they don't know me. What I do is so simple that it looks to those who don't understand like something very complicated."

"It has been said that I lacked idealism, doubtless because I believed and still do believe that, while politics must not neglect the imponderables, it must be based upon realities, especially in the foreign field. Régimes follow one another and revolutions take place, but geography remains unchanged. We will be neighbours of Germany forever."

"You have tried to give and to keep. You wanted to have your cake and eat it. You cancelled your words by your deeds and your deeds by your words. You have debased everything by fixing, intrigue and slickness... Not sensitive enough to the importance of great moral issues, you have reduced everything to the level of your petty methods."

"M. Laval believed that world-wide peace hinged on keeping peace in Europe; that European peace hinged on cordial relations between France and Germany; and that France and Germany could work out their differences only if the British would refrain from interfering in European affairs in execution of their traditional balance-of-power policy... He envisioned a future where Europe would be more or less united, Russia would be thrust back into Asia, and the Anglo-Saxon world would lead an autonomous existence with the United States and France serving as the point of contact between the European and Anglo-Saxon world."

"He impressed me strongly as a man of directness and solidity of mind with whom it was possible to pursue a subject consecutively in a way which Englishmen understand."

"My impression of Laval has steadily risen during this series of conferences from the first time I met him in Paris. He has shown himself to be able, forceful man and I think also a sincere man... His speeches in the conference were always to the point, clear and forceful. In his talks with me he was extremely frank and towards the end of our acquaintance manifested the utmost friendliness."

"Laval stands in a class by himself for frankness and directness and simplicity and he is different from all other Frenchmen with whom I have negotiated in these respects."

"France is bound under the pain of humiliation and perhaps of social death to complete the French Revolution. It is the task of the nineteenth century; it is particularly the task of our generation. The centenary of 1789 must not dawn upon us without the reconquest by the people for itself and for the rest of the world of the political heritage of which it has been dispossessed since the 18th Brumaire."

"I am sorry to see that our Republican traditions are being weakened and effaced by the influence of humanitarian doctrines. We who are Republicans should no more than other Frenchmen be patient in tolerating the claim of a military and reactionary power to impose its will and preponderance upon our country and upon the rest of Europe. Danton did not refuse his aid."

"On this day, seventy-eight years ago, our fathers founded the Republic, and—while the foreign invader was profaning the sacred soil of their country—vowed to live free or to die fighting. They kept their vow; they defeated the foreigner; and the Republic of 1792 lives in the memory of men as the symbol of heroism and national greatness... May the spirit of power that inspired our forefathers breathe into our own souls, and we, too, shall conquer!"

"At this moment I have only one preoccupation: after our fruitless efforts to drive out the foreigner to try to save at least our Republican institutions."

"I have never been a subscriber to this vague and deceptive theory of a Republican United States of Europe...after the hard and severe lessons given us by recent events I absolutely reject this theory as fatal for the regeneration of France, false as a matter of general history, and dangerous for democracy and the freedom of the world."

"There will be no peace and no order until all classes of society shall have been given a share in the benefits of civilisation and science, and can regard their Government as the legitimate offspring of their own sovereign power, rather than as an exacting and greedy master. Until that day, if we pursue our present fatal path, you will drive the ignorant to support coups d'état at one moment, and swell the forces of street rioters at the next, and we shall be left exposed to the pitiless fury of irresponsible mobs...trying to avenge themselves by looting among the ruins."

"I would have him able, not only to think, read and reason, but also to act and fight. Everywhere we must have, side by side with the schoolmaster, the athlete and the military instructor. [These two forms of education] must be carried on side by side. Otherwise your schools will turn out literary men, but never patriots. The whole world should be made to understand that when a French citizen is born, he is born a soldier."

"I have never been a very keen supporter of the ideas and principles of cosmopolitanism. There is about them something that is too vague, too idealistic, despite the appearance of a certain brilliance and speciousness. I believe that their most assured result is to efface, or reduce too greatly, the love of one's country and one's sense of civic responsibility. In the present situation of our country, what matters, on the contrary, is that our hearts attach themselves more than ever to the principles dictated by a devotion to the national cause, and that they find their inspiration in the French idea. I love my country too much to sacrifice any part whatever of its prosperity or strength to a system, however generous it may be, or appear to be."

"What we have lacked is what people who have allowed themselves to be enslaved for too long always lack: faith in themselves and a proper hatred of the foreigner. Let us never speak of the foreigner, but let it be clear that we always think of him. Thus you will be on the road to revenge."

"I want to make it a platform from which we shall demand each day before Europe our rights and our ravished provinces. France is at the mercy of Germany. We are in a state of latent war; neither peace nor freedom nor progress is any longer possible in Europe."

"If, amid our misfortunes, the Republican form of government has appeared the only one possible, it is because no other was in a position to confront the danger. At the time of the catastrophe there was no thought of any other Government. Where were the claimants to the throne?"

"Never let us deny the poverty and suffering of a section of the democracy. But let us also beware of the Utopias of those who believe that a panacea or a formula can make the world happy. There is no social remedy, because there is not one social question, but a whole series of problems to be solved and difficulties are to be overcome. These problems must be solved one by one and not by means of any single formula. There is no panacea."

"Paris, the cradle of our civilisation, the buckler of our public liberties, the teacher and guide of the national genius, Paris that may be made a mark for the imbecile hatred of a few rustic boors, but can never be downtrodden nor dishonoured."

"Tenacity is one of the characteristics of your race. It is for that reason that our dear Alsace was especially necessary to French unity; it represented that unquenchable energy which exists among us, side by side with a fickleness and levity which at times, unfortunately, mar our national character. Until Alsace comes back into the family circle there will be no France and no Europe. Let us not speak of revenge, let us utter no rash word, let us think over the matter calmly and soberly. For my part, I have no other ambition than faithfully to observe the mandate you have given me, a mandate that I look upon as my greatest honour, the ruling principle of my life."

"A man's first duty is to fight for his country."

"The unity that was attained on July 14, 1789, must be restored. Every effort has been made to sow divisions between peasant and artisan, between artisan and bourgeois; these elements must once more be welded together. Let your fields, your religious festivals, your meetings, your markets, your fairs, serve as opportunities for political discussion and education."

"Wherever there is a French mother, she should bring up her children to show a religious love for France. If there is anything to console us amid the sorrow and shame of our bereaved country, it is the thought that the mothers and the patriots of France will supply her future champions and avengers. But before we think of the future we must make sure of the present, and establish once and for all a Government founded on justice and equality, not an envious and grudging equality, but that equality of rights and duties which recognises no other distinctions between man and man than those arising from character, intelligence and energy in the battle of life."

"The Republic should not mean the privileged rule of a few; it should be a tool that all may handle... Let us shelve the discussion of theories and keep for the time being to questions of conduct, let us tend the Republic with all possible care while it is still in the bud, let us watch over the young tree with loving devotion."

"France has seen a portion of her inheritance wrested from her; she must recover her loss. That is the work we have to do: let us think of it always, but speak of it—never!"

"Go into your places of worship, believe, affirm, pray. What I demand is liberty, an equal liberty for you and for me, for my philosophy and for your religious beliefs. We are not the foes of religion; we want to see it set on a firm basis, free and inviolable."

"Yes, I foresee...I announce the arrival and the presence on the political scene of a new social class which has been active in the affairs of the country for nearly eighteen months, and which is certainly far from inferior to its predecessors... What do you expect? There are in France some social classes which have found it difficult for forty-five years to face up not only to the French revolution, but also to its consequences... And it is in this lack of decision and courage of a notable part of the French bourgeoisie that I find the origin and explanation of all our misfortunes, our shortcomings, of all that is still uncertain, vague and unhealthy in today's politics. One asks oneself, in all conscience, how these men can close their eyes to a spectacle that ought to be obvious to them. Have they not since the fall of the Empire witnessed the arrival of a new generation, intelligent, fit to take part in government, anxious for all its right? ... Is this not a typical warning that the country, after having tried many forms of government, wants at last to call on another social class, to try the republican way?"

"Ah, they never trafficked in their blood, those two beloved provinces: it was their children whose breasts were the first to be pierced! Noble provinces, always heart and soul for France, always looking towards her flag.—"Yes, we suffer," they said, "but it is for our country's sake that we suffer, the very life-blood of the nation courses through our veins! ..." Gentlemen, I cannot go on, I cannot... It is... those provinces..."

"It is well to weigh our words carefully when we speak of France's heritage. France, as you say with justice, will be all the more attractive when her destinies are controlled by all her citizens, and not swayed by the caprice of one. Yes, France in all her glory, France, under the auspices of the Republic, once more at the head of civilisation, offering to the world her legions of artists and workmen, of peasants, traders and professional men—yes, it is worth while to belong to such a France as that, and there is no man who would not then be proud to say, in his turn, "I am a French citizen!" But there is another France that I cherish no less, another France just as dear to me—the France that has been vanquished, overwhelmed, humbled in the dust. Yes, I adore that France as a mother; it is to that France that we must sacrifice our lives, our love of self, our personal enjoyment; it is of that France that we must say, "Where France is, there is our country!""

"What, what, I ask you, would be the value in these formidable elections of an exclusively republican policy, excessively ardent, incisive in its programme, alarming in its doctrines, compromising in its representatives? It would be swept away like straw before the wind, and all we should have left to console us for the blindness of the multitudes would be sterile oratory."

"Yes, everything for the country, we must love it absolutely and be ready to sacrifice everything for it, down to our most private preferences. And this is a little more difficult than offering one's carcass or fortune. I prize nothing more than that beautiful title: Patriot before all else."

"I must confess I am driven to distraction by our everlasting squabbles over personal matters, the perpetual clash of private interests. How can I do anything for my country's good when my hands are tied like this? What a time for petty wrangling! We are in a state of utter chaos; everything is at sixes and sevens. All this time, Germany is growing stronger and Bismarck has the whip-hand. You will notice, too, that every time he cracks his whip it is just after some piece of diplomatic bungling on our part. We are always at the mercy of some "incident." What would become of us if we had not learnt to dodge these blows, if we were as innocent as when we fell into the trap of the forged telegram from Ems?"

"Those who imagine that it is the duty, or that it lies within the power, of the Government to secure the happiness of all, are pursuing a mirage. Strictly speaking, there is only one thing that a Government owes to all, and that is, justice. Every man being his own master, it rests with him to make himself happy or unhappy by using his freedom to good or bad purpose. The State does no more than guarantee an equality of rights to everyone, be he rich or poor, high or low. What we want is not an aristocratic or a middle-class or a proletarian Republic, but a national Republic."

"I am only saddened by the help foreigners obtain from my electoral opponents at home. It is very sad to see the extreme (radical) republican party losing even the notion of patriotism."

"I found myself unable to tolerate such a lowering of republican France before Europe and I intervened. In a few minutes I made them ratify a firm policy, one of national pride."

"As time goes on, the Republic, with its tendency to decentralisation, and its democratic prejudices pushed to extremes, will see its strength and its resources in soldiers melt away. Equality, for the army, means indiscipline and lack of cohesion; liberty means criticism pushed to the point of denigration and calumny against leaders...; fraternity is cosmopolitanism, humanitarianism, international stupidity; all these will doom us and, after a few years, they will throw us, an easy prey, under the feet of the Teutons, united with the Latins from across the Alps... We are slipping on to the slope of the South American republics... And what becomes of France in all this? That is the least concern of this degenerate race."

"Gambetta, like Danton, was first and foremost the man of energy, the eloquent tribune who kindled the spirit of national resistance, and supplied an indispensable moral driving force... [T]here was no one else at the time who could have done it as well, no one who had the confidence, the energy, and the prestige necessary to carry the country with him as did Gambetta. Badly, indeed, he did conduct the war in many ways... But, despite all this, and despite its apparent fruitlessness, Gambetta's work had a real significance; for, in so far as it was conducted well, it revealed new possibilities, and it had a genuine moral value."

"If, as Renan said, he destroyed the legend of 1792, nevertheless, despite the defects of his administration, he showed the immense possibilities of a well-organised national defence, and of the systematic resistance of a whole people to a foreign invader. And Europe, and, most important of all, in Europe Germany, was impressed by that demonstration. There was no more eloquent tribute to its effectiveness than the wish expressed by von der Goltz that should Germany ever suffer such defeat as France in 1870, she should find a man like Gambetta to kindle resistance to the uttermost."

"He had helped to restore the self-respect of the French people, to save its honour, and by identifying every citizen with the national defence to revive the idea of the "Patrie" in all its full significance. Even after his programme of war to the knife had proved impracticable, the idea had value. By it and by his protest against the treaty of Frankfurt, Gambetta personified the conception of the essential unity and indivisibility of France."

"He was a foreigner, who relied greatly on the sonorousness of his voice, from which, however, he obtained striking effects. Not many ideas. He had conducted the war—both well and badly, but more badly than well—but he certainly did conduct it, and as well as he could. And he had profoundly generous impulses—his philosophy was beautiful and noble. I liked Gambetta, and respected him. He didn't know very well where he was going, but he went with ardour."

"[Gambetta is] one of the few orators of our time, perhaps the only one, who could make an audience experience that divine shudder which tightens the throat and makes one's hair stand on end."

"Gambetta was dearly loved in his lifetime, and is still loved no less dearly. His name is a part of France's religion: what more glorious dream could a great soul cherish? In the blaze of that sunlight, his faults, his mistakes, his inconsistencies disappear from view. France no longer sees aught but this—that when everything had crashed into ruin, when all seemed lost, there arose one man who bore up the flag, with indomitable faith, to the end. She loves him vanquished no less than if he had been victorious. Vanquished, do I say? Nay, he is victorious. Yes, he is victorious to-day by our side. It is because he held out in 1870 that France did not lose the world's esteem or her own self-respect, that she kept her rank in the human family, that she raised herself and fulfilled the destiny that he had planned."

"There can be no great nation or great man without a great idea. A nation like France does not own itself finally beaten because of three defeats: that is what he felt, that is what he proclaimed with irresistible force, with deathless eloquence. From 1914 to 1918 his soul fought in company with our heroes. His ideal, the union of all Frenchmen in a victorious Republic, has proved a reality. In the hour when France signed the peace of Right he was present in our midst and took part in the ceremony."

"On December 9, 1918, when we entered Strasburg, we read, on a house in the Grand-Rue, the following scrawl, an artless and touching effusion of popular feeling: "Sleep in peace, Gambetta! At last the glorious dawn of the day you dreamed of has arisen for us!" France, Alsace and Lorraine have always given themselves freely to those who loved them well and never doubted that they were sound."

"I cannot but remember that we are all saddened to-night by the death of a great man—the greatest of all Frenchmen of his time... All, I think, of whatever party, have admired the magnitude of his courage, his tremendous energy, his splendid oratory, and, those who knew him in private, his unmatched gaiety and sparkling wit. These have made him, I repeat, the first Frenchman of his day."

"It seems difficult to speak of "moral" power about Gambetta. His kind of power was almost purely physical; it was a power of courage, energy, and oratory."

"Much as I loved his society, I did not think him a loss to the Republic, for he was too dictatorial and too little inclined to let other men do important work to suit that form of government, except, indeed, in time of war. It is quite true that his was the only strong personality of which France could boast, and it was possible that, so long as he was there, the people would not be likely in a panic to hunt in other camps for a saviour; but great as was his power—physical power, power of courage and of oratory—and terrible as was the hole in France made by his death, nevertheless the smaller men were perhaps more able to conduct the Republic to prosperity and to general acceptance by the people."

"Gambetta (puisque vous me demandez mon opinion sur le dit sieur) m'a paru, au premier abord, grotesque, puis raisonnable, puis agréable el finalement charmant (le mot n'est pas trop fort); nous avons causé seul à seul pendant vingt minutes et nous nous connaissons comme si nous nous étions vus cent fois. Ce qui me plaît en lui c'est qu'il ne donne dans aucun poncif et je le crois humain."

"Gambetta (since you ask my opinion of the aforementioned gentleman) struck me, at first glance, as grotesque, then reasonable, then agreeable, and finally charming (the word is not too strong); we spoke alone for twenty minutes and we know each other as if we had met a hundred times. What I like about him is that he doesn't resort to any clichés, and I believe him to be humane."

"W. E. G. speaking of Gambetta said he belonged to that class of Liberals whose creed had nothing whatever to do with liberty, but only consisted of a war ag. everything that existed: the older and better established, the greater reason for its being uprooted."

"Gambetta was autoritaire; I do not feel as if he were a true liberal in the old and best sense. I cannot forget how hostile he was to the movement for freedom in the Balkans."

"All Bismarck's anxieties so far as Gambetta was concerned came suddenly to an end with the unexpected death of the French politician at the end of the year 1883. Lord Ampthill reported that the tone of the Berlin Press, “official and officious” was “kind, tactful and appreciative, and calculated to give no offence to France.” In contrast to this attitude of the Press, public feeling was relieved at the death of one whose name had become identified with the “war of revenge.” This contrast was shown in the reactions of the Emperor and Bismarck. On receiving the army deputation on New Year’s Day the Emperor said, “Gentlemen, I have good news to give you on the commencement of the New Year. Gambetta is dead, and with him the threatened war of revenge. You can unsaddle your horses, and look forward to long peace.” But this speech displeased Bismarck. Officers were ordered not to repeat it, and the Press instructed to ignore it, friendly articles being sent to them instead. Bismarck realized, now that Gambetta was dead, that he stood for the stability of the republic, and who could tell whether his death might not mean a struggle for power of pretenders of every hue?"

"M. Gambetta, to whom I am giving this letter for you, is what we call in France a Republican. But he has more intellect and sound sense and true wisdom than many of the most enlightened Conservatives, and I only wish that most of the party leaders had as much. No one knows the inside of Paris better than he, or could give you fresher and more accurate news of it."