Quote of the Day (Henry James, on a Beach in Summer)

“As you recline upon the beach, you may observe Mademoiselle X… the actress of the Palais Royal Theater, whom you have seen and applauded behind the footlights. She wears a bathing dress in which, as regards the trousers, even what I have called the minimum has been appreciably scanted; but she trips down, surveying her breezy nether limbs. ‘C'est convemable, j'espere, eh?’ says Mademoiselle, and trots up the springboard which projects over the waves with one end uppermost, like a great seesaw. She balances a moment, and then gives a great aerial dive, executing on the way the most graceful of somersaults. This performance Mademoiselle X repeats during the ensuing hour, at intervals of five minutes, and leaves you, as you lie tossing little stones into the water, to ponder the curious and delicate question why a lady may go so far as to put herself into a single scant, clinging garment and take a straight leap, head downward, before 300 spectators, without violation of propriety, leaving the impropriety to begin with her turning over in the air in such a way that for five seconds her head is upward. The logic of the matter is mysterious; white and black are divided by a hair. But the fact remains that virtue is on one side of the hair and vice on the other. There are some days here so still and radiant, however, that it seems as if vice itself, steeped in such an air and such a sea, might be diluted into innocence.” — American expatriate novelist-essayist Henry James (1843-1916), Parisian Sketches: Letters to the “New York Tribune,”1875-1876, edited by Leon Edel (1957)

Flashback, June 1958: De Gaulle Returns to End 4th French Republic, Begin the 5th

Sixty-five years ago this month, Charles de Gaulle returned to power as Premier of France at the start of June 1958, much in the same manner in which he stepped into the public eye in 1940: to rescue the country he loved with mystical fervor.

The WWII Resistance movement commander had stepped away from the government he was widely expected to lead in 1946 and stayed on the sidelines.  The dozen intervening years confirmed his opinion that the Fourth French Republic created after the war would be fatally flawed by legislative wrangling and executive impotence.

Only two Socialists were included in de Gaulle’s government and no Communists, reflecting the general’s suspicions of the latter party dating back to WWII, when, despite its critical support of his leadership of the Resistance, he came to view it as a dangerous revolutionary force.

Though the National Assembly had voted 329 to 224 to put him in power, nobody knew exactly how the 67-year-old de Gaulle would implement the unlimited powers it gave him for six months. Part of his agenda—or at least what could be ascertained from his sometimes vague public utterances on the subject— was to prepare a reform of the republic to be ratified by referendum.

What was still unclear was how he would resolve the crisis that had convulsed the nation and precipitated his return to leadership: the Algerian war of independence. When the conflict broke out in 1954, 1 million European settlers (the pieds-noirs, “black feet”) lived on Algerian land. With so many Frenchmen there, the government was reluctant to leave its colony.

What resulted was one of the most vicious conflicts in postwar decolonization, with a cycle of insurgency followed by counterinsurgency marked by torture. By the time the conflict ended in 1962, 25,000 French troops had died and hundreds of thousands of Algerians.

In France itself, the unrest exacerbated the instability that de Gaulle foresaw would plague the Fourth Republic. Twenty-four cabinets were formed under 16 prime ministers during the 12-year regime. Just as bad, according to a 2004 analysis in the British Journal of Political Science on the republic’s cabinets by John Huber and Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, they were also staffed by ministers who were relatively inexperienced.

Understandably chafing at this inexperience and instability, reactionary elements in the French military, learning nothing from its recent debacle in French Indochina, resisted this new anti-colonial movement, especially when the latest French government indicated it was prepared to negotiate with the National Liberation Front, or FLN.

The anger of the military brass had climaxed on May 13, 1958 with an uprising of French partisans in Algiers, supported by the 10th paratroop division of General Jacques Massu. It was, in essence, a putsch, with Massu and his movement forming a Committee of Public Safety, calling for de Gaulle to return to power in Paris.

The instincts towards Catholicism, conservatism, and monarchism that de Gaulle inherited from his father may have steered him away from many radical or even liberal currents in 20^th-century thought. But above all, the general was a realist.

His growing realization that the economic, political, and human costs of the Algerian War could no longer be contained moved him towards overtures to the Algerian independence movement that deeply disappointed his most revanchist followers.

De Gaulle’s final acknowledgement of Algerian independence sparked another putsch, this time an August 1962 assassination plot against him—the most serious of more than 30 attempts on his life over two decades. (The latter plot inspired Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling 1971 political thriller, The Day of the Jackal.)

Washington watched the developments around de Gaulle with special interest, remembering well the prickly relations the Free French leader had maintained with the Western Allies during WWII.

Winston Churchill had been annoyed by the general but ultimately tolerated him as the best alternative to the collaborationist Vichy regime in WWII. Franklin Roosevelt abided him only on sufferance, with the President’s son Elliott quoting him in the 1946 memoir As He Saw It: “de Gaulle is out to achieve one-man government in France. I can’t imagine a man I would distrust more.”

Amory Houghton, U.S. Ambassador to France, sent a June 1, 1958 telegram that functioned as a flashing yellow light about the general to the U.S. State Department. While noting that “the interests of the United States will be served by de Gaulle’s success,” Houghton also warned that “the General’s character suggests that problems will increase and it is doubtful how well the General grasps and will comprehend the complexity of military and political relationships which have grown up since he retired from the political scene.”

Two years later, an intelligence report prepared in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research was equally skeptical about the outcome of de Gaulle’s Algerian maneuvering:

“Even if de Gaulle is able to establish autonomous organs in Algiers, it is unlikely that peace could be restored, at least in the short run, without political negotiations with the FLN, which both he and the army strongly resist. de Gaulle’s policy, unless it is modified on this point, is therefore probably inadequate to bring peace to Algeria in the foreseeable future.”

What the State Department did not foresee was that, within five months, de Gaulle would squelch a "Generals' Putsch" intended to seize control of Algeria and topple his own regime. That strengthened his hand internally, leading to the Evian Accords with the FLN in 1962.

On a broader front, de Gaulle delivered on his promise to deliver a new constitution, in effect ushering in a new Fifth Republic--or, as Lara Marlowe characterized it in a September 2018 Irish Times article, "The Beginning of French Politics As We Know It." The French President effectively ended the chaos that had characterized his nation's postwar era, partly through the executive-oriented measures of the new constitution, partly through his own considerable mystique.

That mystique, erected on the basis of the general’s indomitable defiance of his nation’s Nazi occupiers, was maintained by his height and hauteur. It was a fearsome thing for another politician to look up at the high forehead and Cyrano nose of the six-foot, five-inch head of government. He didn’t leaven his interactions with charm, as FDR and Churchill could do.

Washington and London, as they anticipated, had to get used to this prickliest of allies—one so intent to preserve France’s ability to act unilaterally on the world stage that he pushed his country to become a nuclear power, withdrew from NATO, and kick-started the Canadian separatist movement with the cry, “Vive le Québec libre!"

According to biographer Jean Lacouture, de Gaulle was a "grand nomad" who sometimes had to "take to the wilderness for his true stature and the sheer gap left by his absence to be perceived." 

If confirmation were needed of this contention, it came through the events of late spring 1958--and, indeed, since 1969, when his resignation as President after a decade in power left a vacuum in moral authority that his successors, for all the constitutional authority he bequeathed them, have struggled to fill.

Fortunately, he did not turn into a Bonaparte but something like a French George Washington--a military leader who withstood the siren call of absolutism, a President who left those who followed him in office with enormous executive power to be used for good or ill, and a leader with a grand vision for his country--or, as de Gaulle described it on the first page of his war memoirs, "France is like a princess in a fairy story, Madonna in a fresco.”

Quote of the Day (Francois Mauriac, on Winter in the French Countryside)

“Winter in the country among the fields does not have any of the cloistered or even shrouded feeling I had imagined. The countryside in no way reminds one of animals that hibernate until the spring. Everything stays awake. The smell of the buds betrays a snap in gestation. The comradeship of hunger unites the birds who give no thought to love. Every morning, a pipit flies against my bedroom window and pecks at it furiously. I see her soft yellow breast from close at hand. She is not trying to get in, because the open window does not attract her. Is she, like the lark, tempted by the mirror, obsessed by the mystery of the transparent?”—French novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Francois Mauriac (1885-1970), “On Nature,” in Second Thoughts: Reflections on Literature and on Life (1961)

Quote of the Day (Olivia de Havilland, on What She Learned From Parisian Women)

“The importance of tact, restraint, subtlety, and the avoidance of banality.”— Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland, when asked about important lessons she has learned from Parisian women, quoted in her Every Frenchman Has One (updated edition, 2016)

It’s impossible for me to imagine that the classy lady who played Melanie Wilkes of Gone With the Wind—and Errol Flynn’s leading lady at Warner Brothers nine times!—would ever need to learn anything from any woman. But if she is right, Vive la France!

Flashback, February 1916: Epic Battle of Verdun Begins

When the German High Command committed to assaulting the French northeastern town of Verdun, it fully expected that those fortifications—including a ring of underground forts—would be no match for the far superior artillery assault launched against it on February 21, 1916.  It never anticipated that the initial nine-hour bombardment would be only a small part of the nearly 40 million artillery shells exchanged in the battle; that a combined 976,000 casualties would occur before Germany halted the campaign in December; and that Verdun would be perhaps the most draining—and certainly the longest—military encounter of the First World War.

On the French side, the campaign gave rise to one of the great battle cries of all time: “They shall not pass!” It also brought to prominence General Henri Philippe Petain—acclaimed as the victor of a fight thought to be unwinnable, beloved by his men for his concern for their welfare—a reputation battered beyond all recognition a generation later by his surrender to--and collaboration with--the same German nation he had once fought so stoutly.

Erich von Falkenhayn,  Chief of the German General Staff, saw the battle as a chance to strike a knockout blow against France before Great Britain could re-join it in the spring for an offensive. “The string in France has reached breaking point,” he wrote Kaiser William II in support of his plan. “A mass break-through – which in any case is beyond our means – is unnecessary. Within our reach there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death.”

The German Fifth Army lost an early opportunity to seal the fate of Verdun when it was forced to postpone an attack on February 12 because of heavy snowfall. The French high command, which had not anticipated an assault on that point, rushed arms and troops with the bought time.

Even so, the French Second Army was dangerously exposed. While its foes were served by a dozen rail lines, 10 of which were broad gauge, the French only had one narrow gauge line and one road in which to transport men and supplies.

In many ways, the situation quickly worsened for the French. By the 25^th, the Germans had reached Douaumont, the most formidable fort protecting Verdun, and could not believe their good fortune: Not only had most of its guns and 500 of its infantrymen been transferred the prior year, but the few gunners remaining in the fort were now inside listening to a lecture. The fort fell without a shot.

Complicating matters in short order was the constant German bombardment, which left only fragments of trenches. Soldiers were isolated, by themselves or in small groups. That meant they were often without food or stretcher-bearers.

If there was one good consequence of the horrifying loss of Douaumont, it was the appointment of Petain. Not only did he reorganize the front lines and transport systems, but he made a special point of meeting with his troops, carefully explaining what he was doing and what he needed them to do. Above all, to a situation that had borne all the signs of careening inexorably out of control, he brought a stability that, in time, transformed into one of the great defensive stands of history. 

All of this was helped immensely by La Voie Sacree (“The Sacred Way”), the route along which 3,000 trucks a day braved a constant barrage to bring troops and supplies to the defense of Verdun.

With all of that, it was still a near-run thing, particularly after Falkenhayn widened the battle zone in the spring. Soldiers on both sides grasped for words to convey the horror of what they were experiencing. The German Expressionist painter Franz Marc wrote on March 3, 1916: “For days I have seen nothing but the most terrible things that can be painted from a human mind.” (He fell in battle the very next day.) A French veteran, Albert Joubaire, wrote simply: “Hell cannot be this dreadful.”

By early summer, Russian advances on the Eastern Front and the combined Anglo-French offensive at the Somme diverted resources from Falkenhayn. His failure to bring the battle to a successful conclusion led to his dismissal in August. The French spent the last months of the year retaking territory previously lost, and both sides—now onto deadlier ground elsewhere—had stopped fighting at Verdun by year-end.

Even so, the artillery bombardment left lasting scars on the land. Before the battle, Verdun had been a primarily agricultural community. But, as Stuart Thornton writes in this article for National Geographic, trees were smashed and the small villages in the vicinity of the fighting were destroyed by the munitions.  After the war, the French government, despairing at the price of restoring the farmland, simply declared this the Zone Rouge, or Red Zone. A century after the battle, unexploded shells remain a danger in this area.

Quote of the Day (Albert Camus, on the Guillotine as ‘Primitive Rite’)

“France shares with England and Spain the honor of being one of the last countries this side of the iron curtain to keep capital punishment in its arsenal of repression. The survival of such a primitive rite has been made possible among us only by the thoughtlessness or ignorance of the public, which reacts only with the ceremonial phrases that have been drilled into it. When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. But if people are shown the machine, made to touch the wood and steel and to hear the sound of a head falling, then public imagination, suddenly awakened, will repudiate both the vocabulary and the penalty.” — Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” in Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays, translated from the French by Justin O’Brien (1961)

Today marks the 225^th anniversary of the day that the proposed machinery of death that Albert Camus assailed with his typical moral astringency achieved irresistible momentum. The Nobel laureate wrote this extended essay in 1957, when the urge to have the French state punish opponents with the ultimate penalty remained strong (and would receive additional impetus with the terror launched the following year in the Algerian War of Independence). It would take nearly another quarter-century after the essay’s publication, though, before France banned the guillotine and, with it, capital punishment.

The guillotine has come to symbolize not just the Reign of Terror, but also the French Revolution as a whole. But it might be better seen as a product of the Enlightenment—and specifically, the very influential 1764 meditation by the Italian Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments.

In pre-revolutionary France,  aristocrats enjoyed privileges even in the face of death. While the rest of the population (the poor especially) were subject to cruel, unorganized, and arbitrary death sentences (torture on the wheel, death at the stake, and, especially, hanging), the nobility could have the less prolonged and/or ignominious method of beheading.

In contrast, Beccaria held that a sentence must be "proportionate to the offense and determined by the law," and it should not be unnecessary or cruel. The most prominent leaders of the French Revolution seized on his belief in rational punishment meted out equally, but forgot another rather crucial element in his thinking: rejection of the death penalty.

Enter doctor and politician Joseph Ignace Guillotin. Now, he didn’t design or even construct the deadly instrument named for him (those honors went to, respectively, another surgeon, Antoine Louis, and piano maker Tobias Schmidt). But he was the one who, after the revolution’s outbreak in the second half of 1789, proposed the notion of doing away with unequal methods of death: Why not behead all criminals judged by the state to deserve death? At the same time, why not make the administration of death reliable for a change, through a machine with a blade that could unerringly split the neck? "With this machine," he explained, not without a little sly humor, "I'll take off your head in the blink of an eye and you don't suffer."

Many delegates in the National Assembly on that December 1789 day chuckled, unaware that within a very short time, either they or someone they knew would be subject to this awful apparatus that would at various times be nicknamed La Veuve (The Widow), Le Glaive de la Liberte (The Sword of Freedom), Le Rasoir National (The National Razor), or Sainte Guillotine.

A month later, on January 21, 1790, Dr. Guillotin was able to promulgate his proposal more aggressively because of a national controversy. The brothers Agasse, convicted of falsifying bills of exchange in London, had been sentenced to hang. Protests erupted over a form of punishment that not only left the “criminal” dead but stigmatized his surviving family members.

Guillotin persuaded the rest of the assembly on the day of the Agasses’ deaths that their offenses were personal, without application to the rest of the family. In the process, delegates looked with renewed interest on his idea for a machine that would spare survivors collateral cruelty.

By 1792, France’s revolutionary government voted to institute this new method of capital punishment, and its first use came in April of that year.

Over the next two years, as the death toll from the new instrument reached the tens of thousands, Dr. Guillotin became squeamish about this machine named after him. In the 19^th century, his descendants petitioned the French government unsuccessfully to have it renamed.

In 1981, France eliminated capital punishment at the same time that it banned its longstanding particular form of it. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right party National Front, has called for its reinstatement following the massacre of editors of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, but that prospect still appears a long way off.

In contrast, over the past 125 years, the United States has continued to labor under the same delusion that spawned the guillotine: that swifter, more certain forms of capital punishment will make application of the ultimate penalty itself more humane. First, the electric chair was invented for that purpose, then lethal injection.

U.S. death penalty advocates—and the judges who continue to uphold the practices--have still not figured out what Camus did, with his typically acute insight: “No government is innocent enough or wise enough or just enough to lay down to so absolute a power as death.”

This Day in Economic History (Euro Debuts, to Premature Hoopla)

January 4, 1999—The euro, backed by 11 European countries, debuted, fueling the dream not merely of a common continental currency but even of a common continental economy that could compete against the United States.

There hadn’t been a common currency in Europe since the days of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, back at the start of the ninth century. We all know how that ended. Now, even with 17 nations using the currency, the euro has had its own struggles, as can be seen by turning to almost any newspaper with any kind of international coverage. (If you really want the major milestones for the euro crisis, this dandy timeline will do nicely.)

“Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency,” wrote Amity Shlaes in a Bloomberg News article from 2010.

What Ms. Schlaes is talking about can be seen even in the deliberations that brought about the pact. Germany, still fearful of the hyperinflation that doomed the Weimar Republic and helped bring on Nazism, wanted to call the treaty a “Stability Pact.” The leaders of France, balefully eyeing the prospects of putting that before their voters, pushed to have it called a “Growth Pact.” In one of those compromises that make political economy what it is (i.e., essentially meaningless), the agreement hammered out at a quarrelsome summit meeting in 1996 ended up calling it “the Stability and Growth Pact.”

(That meeting, by the way, took place in Dublin Castle. Ireland has had reason to question its relationship to the International Monetary Fund following the extreme austerity imposed as part of a bailout program designed to remedy their pell-mell struggle for—take a bow, France!—“growth.”)

It just goes to show that reality—or, at least, reality in the form of the traditional nation-state—is bound to rear its head against any economic theory.