In a second-floor bedroom of Washington's Blair House, Léon Blum put on his blue & white striped pajamas, settled down to read François René de Chateaubriand's Atala, American Indian romance told of the days when "France possessed . . . a vast empire stretching from Labrador to Florida, from the shores of the Atlantic to the remotest lakes of upper Canada." Now France's imperial glory was gone, and her aging but active special emissary, only ten months out of a Nazi prison, had come to the shores of the former colony to plead for aid. "Man," Blum read, "always...
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