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All these qualities are packed into the French word I'audace. "Audacity" does not mean nearly so much. L'audace has in it both insolence and sadness, and connotes excess. Foch conceived it to mean "attack." The pronouncement of the great Danton still holds good: To conquer the enemies of the fatherland, he said, Frenchmen need "de I'audace, encore de I'audace et toujours de I'audace." There was no question of jacking morale last week. France no longer wondered whether she was fighting Britain's battles.
France rushed to the rescue of France.
The big question: to what extremity could the mass of French industrial workers (who are the key to the situation both in the Army and behind the lines) be pressed in defense of the belief that their situation before the war was infinitely superior to anything under Hitler? Is this belief worth dying for? How much defeat can 40,000,000 Frenchmen take? How far will I'audace stretch? Paul Reynaud, no social dreamer, had no bribes to offer the workers of France, firmly offered none.
The will and the decision could be influenced only by the hour.
Paris. Until the end of last week I'audace was drawn to tournament pitch.
Although the French are a peasant race, no country in the world depends so much on its metropolitan spirit. As Paris goes, so goes France. It was generally conceded that if the capital fell, French morale might fall beyond recall.
But within sorely threatened Paris this week there was an almost supernatural calm. Even after the Italian declaration, even after the guns grew loud in the northwest, evacuation proceeded quickly, without panic. Automobiles, trucks, taxis, busses threaded southward, careening under piles of furniture, suitcases, bedding.
Schools were shut, freeing 350,000 children for evacuation or death.
One after another shops and restaurants close-open one day, boarded the next.
At last the Bourse shut down and the Government began moving files south.
Said CBS's Eric Sevareid to the U. S.
early Tuesday morning:"I am going to make my last broadcast from Paris. No American after tonight will be broadcasting directly to America, unless it be under supervision of men other than the French." Cars lined up at the American Legion headquarters gasoline station, some of them with hopeful boughs of leaves on their tops. Then the Cabinet left the city.
And, as the fateful hours lengthened, M.
Reynaud was reported to have "joined the Army." "France Cannot Die."The patriotism of the French differs from that of the German for the Vaterland, the Englishman for "this little England." For the Frenchman, France is almost synonymous with civilization, and all other people are merely bad Frenchmen.
If France were to survive its millennium, most other people thought, last week was the test of it. Not even the Germans denied she was putting up a magnificent fight. But the core of the French attitude toward the struggle lay far deeper than even the profundity of French courage or hope.