I: LOVE WITHOUT TRUST
Once more we are at the City of Sienna. As we have discussed in our previous post, the nine councilors who ruled that roost between 1280 and 1348 AD did not have any lofty ideas about the capacity of the People to rule themselves. For the Noveschi, the proposition that any person is capable to rule a city is highly questionable and depends on the continuous guidance of the Virtues and the abjuring of the Vices. Such a challenge is difficult enough even when the rulers are the merchant princes and finance magnates of Sienna, reasoned the Noveschi, despite their profession calling for Prudence, Fortitude and Temperance, and a deep interest in Peace. Now imagine that the nobility, whose trade is war (a vice in its own right which calls forth the Vices of Cruelty, Fury and Division) should be in charge! and the People? If the best and greatest of Sienna cannot be trusted with submitting to virtuous government, what hope is there to hoi poloi?
Does this mean that the Noveschi hated the People? not necessarily. A case can be made that they hated the Nobility and saw them as inherently vicious due to the martial nature of their lives. But for the People they had mostly warm feelings, as evident from these excerpts from the Allegory of Good and Bad Government: Namely, "Effects of Good Government in the City" (above) and "Effects of Good Government in the Countryside" (right). In these images we see the People going about their business: opening their shops, repairing their roofs, tilling the land and engaging in all sorts of useful, peaceful arts.
The dangers of Bad Government is also presented in the Effects of Bad Government in the City and Effects of Bad government in the Countryside:
While much of the first excerpt are (appropriately) corrupted by moisture, we can tell the People do not fare well: they appear to be sickly, idle, and despondent. The magnificence of the City is diminished and it seems to be under attack. Soldiers are leading some unhappy character out of it. Whither they are foreign invaders or the Tyrant's muscle gang is equally unclear and unimportant.
The Countryside fairs even worse.
It is completely vacant from life besides armed soldiers, the mountains are blackened by soot, farmhouses are on fire and the land is laid fallow. Hunger must follow.
Clearly the Nine believed that they are pursuing the best interests of the People and bringing about great blessings while defending them from even greater evils. The issue was therefore not Love of the People, but Trust in them. The Noveschi loved their City and its People, but they had no faith in their good judgment.
II: BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND PATRIOTISM
Charles De Gaulle (Seen here circa 1942) once defined Patriotism as the love for One's own country while Nationalism is the hatred of another's.
General De Gaulle would have known something about Patriotism. He could have, like many other French civil and military officials, chosen to stay in France and conveniently serve the idea that the identity and the dignity of his native land is preserved by the Pétain regime. The fact that this outfit was utterly subservient to the German invader, that it uprooted and annihilated the French constitution and that it was on the direct path to sending French citizens and persons which were solemnly promised shelter and hospitality in France by the French government was, after all, immaterial.
It was a comfortable lie, a lie which allowed them to keep their positions, their offices and their incomes. It was easier to do the thing French fonctionnaires had learned to do very well since 1814, namely, to adjust their lapel pins and change the flags and portraits in their offices and continue the work of governing France.
The General chose otherwise. Forcing himself into exile (and declining a position in the Vichy government), he single handedly focused and crystalized French resistance abroad and gave the French the basis of a loyal government in being after the liberation of their beloved Patrie, a government endowed with sufficient légitimité to secure the full restoration of the Republic.
In this novel situation, where Frenchmen claimed to be good sons of France and furthermore, zealots for its spirit and identity, were fighting together alongside the foreign, hated invader to prevent the liberation of their country, One ought to forgive him for trying to define the difference between Patriots such as himself and the supporters in Vichy without attributing it all to boundless venality, which his upright character and analytic mind prevented him from doing - not for overabundance of innocence.
De Gaulle knew venality, in a way only a Frenchman serving in government in the Années folles could. He EXPECTED it from certain people - but not from a Maréchal de France. Darlan would have turned on or for a dime, as most of the other creatures crawling to serve the Nazis, but Pétain was too proud a man to betray Franc for money and power alone, something more sinister was afoot, the rot was deeper (besides, De Gaulle had deep regard for the man who saved his career more than once and for whom he had ghostwritten a few books).
Therefore, concluded De Gaulle, we must come to the conclusion that the old man's attachment to his country was faulty from the start, animated more by hatred for anything NOT French than love of France herself for her own sake.
And Charles would have known a thing or two about love.
III: PUREST LOVE
In 1928, the French Army of Occupation was, as the name may suggest, occupying the German Rhineland.
Although the Great War had ended without one foothold of German soil being occupied by a foreign soldier, the Allies felt that the best guarantee against a revenant German threat would be to deprive the German State (whither a Republic or an Empire) of the means of waging war. That meant the abolition of the German Army, but also the occupation of Germany' best industrial regions - the Rhineland and the Ruhr.
Besides, as the pose of the Guardian on this Belgian medal suggests, the Allies believed a dose of humility would do the German character a world of good.
The officers of this army found the service comfortable - they were often staying in the same modern, undamaged beautiful German city for a prolonged period of time in comfortable, civilian houses. They often brought their families over, or started new ones.
One of these officers was Commandant Charles de Gaulle, of the 19th Chasseurs à pied stationed in Trier. A hard disciplinarian who insisted his men train in all weathers and conditions (he once imprisoned a soldier for writing his MP to try and transfer him to a less harsh regiment), he was also a devoted, faithful husband to his wife Yvonne and a dedicated father and on the first day of the year 1928, the De Gaulle family welcomed Anne.
Little Anne had not her father's prominent nose. She had not developed like other children, mentally or physically. Anne was suffering from Down's Syndrome, then a newly defined and ill-understood malady. This was the age of Eugenics and Sterilization, when conditions such as "nervous disposition" or "effeminacy" were enough to deem someone shameful family secret that would be shipped off to be cared for the rest or their lives amongst doctors who would administer to their physical needs in the best case, or experimental "treatments" (often just pointless torment) in others.
Charles and Yvonne raised Anne themselves. They showed her love and kindness that many did not suspect the haughty, stoic and exacting commandant was capable of. The Hero of France was known to entertain his little child with songs, dances and even pantomimes.
Anne died in 1945, aged 20 years old. Her last word, and the only one she managed to speak clearly her entire life, was "Papa". Her parents dedicated the Fondation Anne de Gaulle for disabled girls in her memory.
IV: ANNE AND MARIANNE
There are parallels to be made between the love De Gaulle have shown his ailing daughter and his suffering country - unconditional, zealot, fiery and sustaining at the same time. While everyone advised him to give up on both, he refused ease, comfort and the regard of the World in the name of his dedication to them.
But De Gaulle had loved little Anne and Grand Marianne (the personification of the French Republic) in very different ways.
Anne was made helpless by nature, therefore, Charles' love remained undemanding and entirely paternal.
But De Gaulle did not see France or the French People as helpless victims of circumstances. What force and tyranny combined to rob off of them, he believed, dedication and sacrifice can restore. There was no greater believer in the inner strength and potential of the French. Therefore, his love remained took the form not of a father doting over a sick infant but of the old Commandant of the 19th Chasseurs - demanding that his charges would exert themselves, employ all the powers which were heretofore hidden even from themselves, not in HIS cause but in theirs - so they may have again a free homeland and a great republic.
That the French people had rewarded his faith in their brave resistance to the tyrants and traitors which have dominated their fair land is undeniable. But how did the General knew that would be the outcome?
V: PATRIOTISM AS FAITH
As we already pointed out, De Gaulle had no rational reason to predict that the French People would rise to the occasion. We mentioned the Années folles, "the Mad Years" as the French called the years between the Armistice and the Great Depression. This was a time of moral turpitude, public corruption and financial irresponsibility which the equivalent "Roaring Twenties" in the United States have been a mere shadow of (after all, the economic basis of the United States was rock solid while France had to resettle and rebuild a vast region in its Northeast which have been occupied and destroyed during the war!). The Great Depression just added despair to the list of French public's ailments.
The disgraceful behavior of both French high command and the French government during the early stages of the Second World War was not encouraging either. Venality, cowardice or just sheer simple stupidity and incompetence - all the characteristics De Gaulle hated the most exhibited themselves all around him.
True, French soldiers fought bravely - but of those precious few were left! from a grand army of 5,900,000 men (out of which, 5,000,000 were reservists) which was fielded in 1939, 290,000 were killed or wounded and 1,900,000 taken captive by 1940. 100,000 were drafted into the collaborationist L'Armee de l'armistice, many were evacuated to Britain, others remained stationed in their colonies (whose loyalties were yet to be determined) and others simply changed their clothes and melted into the French population.
Clearly, De Gaulle had no particular REASON to believe a nation that failed - a failure so colossal and preventable it can almost be described as a choice!- to resist an invasion while it still had a single government, an independent economy, an army, a navy and an officer corps would have the mettle and élan to resist an occupation when it lacked all these things.
But the General knew his Frenchmen. He knew their recalcitrant, dear heart. He knew that they have the capacity in it to resist - and since they did, they had a duty to. We should think of De Gaulle not merely as a statesmen, a general and an orator but as a great moral teacher, reminding his countrymen of their duty, demanding that they perform it and they did.
It was an uncompromising faith - and like all great faiths, all great loves its basic, unutterable premise was that if its object proves unworthy, the faithful lover would remain loyal and would sustain his faith, since abandoning Love is tantamount to spiritual death - eternally dark, without hope for forgiveness or resurrection -
And Death is the enemy of Man and God.
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