De Gaulle Quotes

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

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

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.

The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war

You'll live. Only the best get killed.

Treaties you see are like girls and roses; they last while they last.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

I am a man who belongs to nobody and who belongs to everybody.

Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles ; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n'ont pas cédé. [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.]

In order to be the master, the politician poses as the servant.

Always choose the most difficult way, there you will not meet competitors.

He will soon be claiming that the Resistance has liberated the world.

One must speak little. In action one must say nothing. The chief is the one who does not speak.

The more I get to know men, the more I love dogs.

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.

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

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

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

Never listen to a leftist who does not give away his fortune or does not live the exact lifestyle he wants others to follow. What the French call “the caviar left,” la gauche caviar, or what Anglo-Saxons call champagne socialists, are people who advocate socialism, sometimes even communism, or some political system with sumptuary limitations, while overtly leading a lavish lifestyle, often financed by inheritance—not realizing the contradiction that they want others to avoid just such a lifestyle. It is not too different from the womanizing popes, such as John XII, or the Borgias. The contradiction can exceed the ludicrous as with French president François Mitterrand of France who, coming in on a socialist platform, emulated the pomp of French monarchs. Even more ironic, his traditional archenemy, the conservative General de Gaulle, led a life of old-style austerity and had his wife sew his socks.

For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.

You don't arrest Voltaire

Vive Le Québec Libre.

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

I am too poor to bow.

Character,” de Gaulle reflected at the end of his life, “is above all the ability to disregard insults or abandonment by one’s own people. One must be willing to lose everything. There is no such thing as half a risk.

That’s what de Gaulle realized about Hitler. That his force was entirely dependent on the “cowardice of others.” No one was willing to call the bully a bully. No one in Germany was willing to see that the emperor had no clothes, and was in fact a raving, murderous lunatic. They definitely weren’t willing to say so. Because no one said anything, no one did anything except tell Hitler what he wanted to hear. And so they all became complicit. Still,

Where there is a will, there is a way..

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.

Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech)

The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home.

Men can have friends, statesmen cannot.

Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.

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

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.

She was beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread and eyes like green almonds, and she had straight black hair that reached to her shoulders, and an aura of antiquity that could just as well have been Indonesian as Andean. She was dressed with subtle taste: a lynx jacket, a raw silk blouse with very delicate flowers, natural linen trousers, and shoes with a narrow stripe the color of bougainvillea. ‘This is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,’ I thought, when I saw her pass by with the stealthy stride of a lioness, while I waited in the check-in line at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for the plane to New York.

The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl--not even one made from a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell--and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging him on. "Gentlemen," says Gonzo softly, "holidays are over. I need an oven, and I need one in about twenty minutes, or these fine flapjacks will go to waste, and that is not happening." And something about this statement and the voice in which he says it makes it clear that this is simply true. One way or another, this thing will get done. Under a layer of grime and horror, these two are soldiers, and more, they are productive, can-do sorts of people. Rustily but with a gratitude which is not so far short of worship, they say "Yes, sir" and are about their business.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men

Charles de Gaulle once said, “The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.

General [De Gaulle], you must not hate your friends more than you hate your enemies

At the same time, France’s president Charles de Gaulle was turning in his country’s dollars for gold because he was concerned the U.S. was printing money to finance its spending.

The actor, like the modern man of reason, must have his place determined and his lines memorized before he goes on stage. (...) The public itself has been soothed to such an extent by scripted debates imbued with theoretically "right" answers that it no longer seems to respond positively to arguments which create doubt. Real doubt creates real fear. (...) De Gaulle found a sensible compromise, given the times. He reserved his public thinking for the printed page and on those pages he allowed himself to ask fundamental questions. But when he spoke, it was either with reason or with emotion - that is to say, with answers or with mythology. He divided himself between the man of letters, who knows how to live with doubt, and the man of state, who is the epitome of certainty. the brilliance of this approach could be seen in the frustration and sometimes fury of the opposing elites. The truism today is that mythological figures and men of power should not think in public. They should limit themselves to affirming truths. Stars, after all, are rarely equipped to engage in public debate. They would abhor the idea that the proper way to deal with confusion in society is to increase that confusion by asking uncomfortable questions until the source of the difficulties is exposed.

In human relationships, those who do not love are rarely loved: those who will not be friends end up by having none. [p. 15 apud Thinking Strategically; on the "Intransigence strategy"]

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

As Charles de Gaulle observed in his meditation on leadership, The Edge of the Sword (1932), the artist ‘does not renounce the use of his intelligence’ – which is, after all, the source of ‘lessons, methods, and knowledge’. Instead, the artist adds to these foundations ‘a certain instinctive faculty which we call inspiration’, which alone can provide the ‘direct contact with nature from which the vital spark must leap’.

Have you ever seen a dictator on a run-off ballot? [Responding to the charges of a dictatorial bent, after being forced into a run-off against the socialist François Mitterrand in the 1965 presidential elections]

In 1945, Yvonne established an Anne de Gaulle Foundation for Down’s syndrome children in a château bought for the purpose outside Paris, and, after his daughter’s death in 1948, de Gaulle kept her framed photograph with him.

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.

So, it wasn’t until I was living in Mexico that I first started enjoying chocolate mousse. See, there was this restaurant called La Lorraine that became a favorite of ours when John and I were living in Mexico City in 1964–65. The restaurant was in a beautiful old colonial period house with a large courtyard, red tile floors, and a big black and white portrait of Charles de Gaulle on the wall. The proprietor was a hefty French woman with grey hair swept up in a bun. She always welcomed us warmly and called us mes enfants, “my children.” Her restaurant was very popular with the folks from the German and French embassies located nearby. She wasn’t too keen on the locals. I think she took to us because I practiced my French on her and you know how the French are about their language! At the end of each evening (yeah, we often closed the joint) madame was usually seated at the table next to the kitchen counting up the evening’s receipts. Across from her at the table sat a large French poodle, wearing a napkin bib and enjoying a bowl of onion soup. Ah, those were the days… Oh, and her mousse au chocolate was to DIE for!

To my own ear, I sound like Charles de Gaulle himself but when I put my new-found phrases into practice, the post office clerk from whom I’ve asked to buy a stamp will look at me like I’ve asked him to administer a rectal thermometer.

No és a franciák! Ha De Gaulle-nak nem volna olyan nagy orra, rég megfeledkeztek volna a franciákról a kultúrájukkal együtt. Meglátja, néhány év múlva csak a "francia" melléknév marad fenn, amellyel a reklámok bizonyos kondomok és illatszerek fajtáit fogják jelölni.

On Sunday, 16 June, when Reynaud presented the French cabinet with the plan drawn up by Monnet, Churchill and de Gaulle, he was laughed at. Pétain called the union with Great Britain ‘a marriage to a corpse’. Other members of the cabinet feared that France would assume the status of a British colony.

The wrangling between Britain and the Free French throughout the war years had a further, far-reaching consequence when de Gaulle returned to power in 1958. As president of France it was he who infamously vetoed Harold Macmillan’s application to join the Common Market. In tracing exactly why de Gaulle said Non, it is, surprisingly, to the hot and noisy cities of Beirut and Damascus that we should look. The general’s experience of British machinations in both places profoundly shaped his reluctance to allow his wartime rivals to join his European club. It is a tale from which neither country emerges with much credit.

Secretary Hull was even more skeptical of de Gaulle than the President. He was equally opposed to the restoration of France’s colonial empire in the postwar world save as trusteeships — for how could American sons be expected to give their lives merely to reestablish a colonial yoke they themselves had thrown off in 1783?

But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.

It seems extraordinary, but even on the eve of D-Day, four years after de Gaulle had set up the Free French in London, the leaders of both Britain and the United States felt such distrust of him. But they detested his French chauvinism and genuinely feared that he might try to turn France into an anti-Western Gaullist dictatorship after the war.

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

France cannot be France without greatness.

Les chercheurs qui cherchent, on en trouve. Les chercheurs qui trouvent, on en cherche.

They assure love from the beginning of life to its conclusion and, in the end, they govern our existence.

I respect only those who stand up to me, but I find such people intolerable.

The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell’s plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris.

Chapter One The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell’s plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris. He generally traveled to Europe

People in all occupied countries were forced to cooperate but their governments were destroyed or fled,’ an historian has written of the French experience in 1940, ‘and in none – not even in tiny Luxembourg – did such a significant part of the political class agree to do the bidding of what they thought would be the winning side.’60 In response to de Gaulle’s call for continued resistance, Weygand said: ‘Nonsense. In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.

He accused republicans in his own party of conducting a “proxy war” against Howard. He threw into the mix Churchill, Pétain, Charles de Gaulle, the failings of the Weimar republic and the rise of Hitler. In the Sydney Morning Herald at that time I set him some homework:   Clearly explain how an Australian head of state with powers as proposed in the referendum could bring to office in Canberra a local equivalent of the most vicious dictator of the century?   He never justified the Hitler slur to anyone.

We saw the British as an outdated Imperial force, organised by freemasons, who sought to turn the clock back one hundred years to the days when their word was the law around the world. Why should they be entitled to install their freemason puppet, De Gaulle, in France, to rule as a proxy? The Vichy government had three consistent points in its propaganda regarding the threats to the French people: these were De Gaulle, freemasonry and communism. As for the American state, we perceived that as controlled by the forces of international finance and banking, who wished to abolish national governments and have the world run by banks and corporations.

Roosevelt fought hard for the United States to host the opening session [of the United Nations]; it seemed a magnanimous gesture to most of the delegates. But the real reason was to better enable the United States to eavesdrop on its guests. Coded messages between the foreign delegations and their distant capitals passed through U.S. telegraph lines in San Francisco. With wartime censorship laws still in effect, Western Union and the other commercial telegraph companies were required to pass on both coded and uncoded telegrams to U.S. Army codebreakers. Once the signals were captured, a specially designed time-delay device activated to allow recorders to be switched on. Devices were also developed to divert a single signal to several receivers. The intercepts were then forwarded to Arlington Hall, headquarters of the Army codebreakers, over forty-six special secure teletype lines. By the summer of 1945 the average number of daily messages had grown to 289,802, from only 46,865 in February 1943. The same soldiers who only a few weeks earlier had been deciphering German battle plans were now unraveling the codes and ciphers wound tightly around Argentine negotiating points. During the San Francisco Conference, for example, American codebreakers were reading messages sent to and from the French delegation, which was using the Hagelin M-209, a complex six-wheel cipher machine broken by the Army Security Agency during the war. The decrypts revealed how desperate France had become to maintain its image as a major world power after the war. On April 29, for example, Fouques Duparc, the secretary general of the French delegation, complained in an encrypted note to General Charles de Gaulle in Paris that France was not chosen to be one of the "inviting powers" to the conference. "Our inclusion among the sponsoring powers," he wrote, "would have signified, in the eyes of all, our return to our traditional place in the world." In charge of the San Francisco eavesdropping and codebreaking operation was Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Rowlett, the protégé of William F. Friedman. Rowlett was relieved when the conference finally ended, and he considered it a great success. "Pressure of work due to the San Francisco Conference has at last abated," he wrote, "and the 24-hour day has been shortened. The feeling in the Branch is that the success of the Conference may owe a great deal to its contribution." The San Francisco Conference served as an important demonstration of the usefulness of peacetime signals intelligence. Impressive was not just the volume of messages intercepted but also the wide range of countries whose secrets could be read. Messages from Colombia provided details on quiet disagreements between Russia and its satellite nations as well as on "Russia's prejudice toward the Latin American countries." Spanish decrypts indicated that their diplomats in San Francisco were warned to oppose a number of Russian moves: "Red maneuver . . . must be stopped at once," said one. A Czechoslovakian message indicated that nation's opposition to the admission of Argentina to the UN. From the very moment of its birth, the United Nations was a microcosm of East-West spying. Just as with the founding conference, the United States pushed hard to locate the organization on American soil, largely to accommodate the eavesdroppers and codebreakers of NSA and its predecessors.

The conscience of the civilised world--what is that? What does it mean? Is there irony in the words? Perhaps not, or, if there is, we are all accountable. Perhaps we should not always lay the blame elsewhere, on others--General de Gaulle, Anthony Eden, the Allied Armies, President Roosevelt. It's too easy. The conscience of the civilised world belongs to everyone, it's your conscience and mine. We are all responsible. Human beings are responsible for one another and they must be answerable not only for the things they have done but also for the things they have not done, not only for the things they have thought about but also for those they have failed to think about. History is made up of an infinite series of links, a whole network of responsibilities.

ministers were at Waterloo Station, already in the train for Southampton, the news came through that Reynaud had resigned. The French government had rejected the proposed union, and the war was decided. Pétain had been appointed premier. ‘It’s all over,’ de Gaulle told Monnet on the phone. ‘There is no sense in pressing further. I am coming back.’ Churchill got off the train and went home. On that same night, 120 German bombers attacked England for the first time. Nine British civilians were killed, the first. Paul Reynaud could have been the same kind of leader as Churchill. He regarded Hitler as the Genghis Khan of the modern age, he demanded total dedication and promised that his government would ‘summon together and lead all the forces of France’ in continuing the

appeal or a merely formal text: it was an act which, with good luck, could have changed the course of events for the good of Europe. This is still my opinion today.’ Monnet had an excellent relationship with both Churchill and Reynaud, and his idea, unusual though it may have been, was given serious consideration. ‘My first reaction was unfavourable,’ Churchill wrote in his war diaries. But when he introduced the proposal to the cabinet, he saw to his amazement how ‘staid, solid, experienced politicians of all parties engaged themselves so passionately in an immense design whose implications and consequences were not in any way thought out.’ Finally, Churchill agreed that the plan should be explored, as did de Gaulle – who had come to England on his own authority – and

It is overlooked, perhaps forgotten, by almost everyone today that we were there to defend Europe against the multiple threats represented by the Allies. We saw the British as an outdated Imperial force, organised by freemasons, who sought to turn the clock back one hundred years to the days when their word was the law around the world. Why should they be entitled to install their freemason puppet, De Gaulle, in France, to rule as a proxy? The Vichy government had three consistent points in its propaganda regarding the threats to the French people: these were De Gaulle, freemasonry and communism. As for the American state, we perceived that as controlled by the forces of international finance and banking, who wished to abolish national governments and have the world run by banks and corporations.

Clementine liked de Gaulle, but, keenly aware of how deeply her husband grieved having to sink the French ships, she now rounded on the general and, in her perfect French, took him to task “for uttering words and sentiments that ill became either an ally or a guest in this country,” as Pamela put it. Churchill, at the far side of the table, sought to dispel the tension. He leaned forward and, in an apologetic tone, in French, said, “You must excuse my wife, my General; she speaks French too well.” Clementine glared at Churchill. “No, Winston,” she snapped. She turned back to de Gaulle and, again in French, said, “That is not the reason. There are certain things that a woman can say to a man that a man cannot say. And I am saying them to you, General de Gaulle.” The next day, by way of apology, de Gaulle sent her a large basket of flowers.

W odpowiedzi de Gaulle poparł drugą stronę. W kwietniu 1956 roku zaczął przekazywać duże ilości nowoczesnej broni do Izraela. Malutkie państwo w końcu zyskało rzetelnego i pierwszorzędnego dostawcę broni. Po upaństwowieniu przez Egipt Kanału Sueskiego w 1956 roku kontakty się pogłębiły. Transport morski z tego regionu do Europy był w przypadku Francji uzależniony od Suezu. IDF pomógł zagwarantować Francji dostęp do Suezu, a w zamian za to Francja wysyłała do Izraela jeszcze więcej broni. Im bliżej i częściej Francuzi i Izraelczycy współpracowali, tym bardziej te dostawy się zwiększały. Agencja szpiegowska de Gaulle’a pozyskała pomoc Izraela przy osłabianiu antyfrancuskiego oporu w Algierii, jednego z bastionów kolonialnych Francji. W 1960 roku Francja obiecała dostarczyć Izraelowi w ciągu następnych dziesięciu lat dwieście czołgów AMX-13 i siedemdziesiąt dwa myśliwce odrzutowe Mystère.3 Ale 2 czerwca 1967 roku, na trzy dni przed zaplanowanym przez Izrael wyprzedzającym atakiem na Egipt i Syrię, de Gaulle całkowicie odciął się od Izraela. – Francja nie wyrazi zgody – a co dopiero mówić o udzieleniu wsparcia – krajowi, który pierwszy użyje broni – powiedział swojemu gabinetowi.4 Jednak w decyzji de Gaulle’a chodziło o coś więcej niż próbę zażegnania wojny na Bliskim Wschodzie. Nowe okoliczności wymagały nowych francuskich sojuszy. Do 1967 roku Francja wycofała się z Algierii. Mając za sobą długą i zaciekłą wojnę w północnej Afryce, de Gaulle za priorytet uznał zbliżenie ze światem arabskim. W interesie Francji nie leżało już stawanie po stronie Izraela. – Gaullistowska Francja nie ma przyjaciół, tylko interesy – zauważył wtedy francuski tygodnik Le Nouvel Observateur.5

C’est très bien qu’il y ait des Français jaunes, des Français noirs, des Français bruns. Ils montrent que la France est ouverte à toutes les races et qu’elle a une vocation universelle. Mais à condition qu’ils restent une petite minorité. Sinon, la France ne serait plus la France. Nous sommes quand même avant tout un peuple européen de race blanche, de culture grecque et latine et de religion chrétienne. Qu'on ne se raconte pas d'histoires ! Les musulmans, vous êtes allés les voir ? Vous les avez regardés avec leurs turbans et leur djellabas ? Vous voyez bien que ce ne sont pas des Français ! Ceux qui prônent l'intégration ont une cervelle de colibri, même s'ils sont très savants. Essayez d'intégrer de l'huile et du vinaigre. Agitez la bouteille. Au bout d'un moment, ils se sépareront de nouveau. Les Arabes sont des Arabes, les Français sont des Français. Vous croyez que le corps français peut absorber dix millions de musulmans, qui demain seront vingt millions et après-demain quarante ? Si nous faisions l'intégration, si tous les Arabes et Berbères d'Algérie étaient considérés comme Français, comment les empêcherait-on de venir s'installer en métropole, alors que le niveau de vie y est tellement plus élevé ? Mon village ne s'appellerait plus Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, mais Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées ! tome 1, Alain Peyrefitte, éd. éditions de Fallois/Fayard, 1994 (ISBN 978‐2‐213‐02832‐3), p. 52

Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.

Fransa’nın 1966 yılı cumhurbaşkanlığı seçimlerinde General De Gaulle, Fransız televizyonlarında şöyle bir konuşma yapar: “Dünyanın dört bir yanında kültür merkezleri açıyoruz, büyük paralar döküyoruz bu işe. Boşa gitmiyor bu paralar. Kültürümüzün etkisiyle harcadıklarımızın daha fazlası dönüp bize geri geliyor. Kültürümüzle yetişen insanlar otomobil alacak olurlarsa Fransız otomobillerini seçiyorlar. Edebiyatımızı, öbür sanat etkinliklerimizi, giyim kuşamımızı izliyorlar. Daha da önemlisi, kültürümüze duydukları yakınlıkla her konuda bize destek oluyor, bizim yanımızda yer alıyorlar...” Harun

Charles de Gaulle said? ‘The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Led by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, previous attempts by the British to join the European Community from 1957 to 19636 were rejected under pressure from French President Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle considered the British too adversarial to the interests of the European Community to accept Britain being admitted.

Neither Gerow nor de Gaulle had to tell Leclerc to hurry into Paris. He was ridden by the fear his troops would reach the capital after its German garrison had fired the explosives seeded through its streets. Angry and disappointed, Leclerc had had to accept the face he would not reach the city for another twelve hours. The red-haired captain jeeping toward Leclerc...was furious too...twice he had been curtly ordered by his immediate superior to rejoin the main line of attack..."What the hell are you doing here?" Leclerc asked. Dronne told him. "Dronne," Leclerc said, "don't you know enough not to obey stupid orders?...I want you to get into Paris. Take whatever you've got and go.

There are no more statesmen. Countries are being run by politicians. There was a time not too long ago when this earth was peopled with giants. Some were good, and some were evil – but, by God, they were giants. Roosevelt and Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini. Charles de Gaulle and Joseph Stalin. Why did they all live at that one particular time? Why aren’t there any statesmen today?

NOTHING GREAT WILL EVER BE ACHIEVED WITHOUT GREAT MEN, AND MEN ARE GREAT ONLY IF THEY ARE DETERMINED TO BE SO. FOR GLORY GIVES HERSELF ONLY TO THOSE WHO HAVE ALWAYS DREAMED OF HER.” —Charles De Gaulle, from The Army of the Future (Vers l’armée de métier), 1941

This wider history notwithstanding, I believe India still constitutes a special case. Its distinctiveness is threefold. First, the tradition of the thinker-activist persisted far longer in India than elsewhere. While the men who founded the United States in the late eighteenth century had fascinating ideas about democracy and nationhood, thereafter American politicians have merely governed and ruled, or sometimes misgoverned and misruled.1 Their ideas, such as these are, have come from professional ideologues or intellectuals. On the other hand, from the first decades of the nineteenth century until the last decades of the twentieth century, the most influential political thinkers in India were, as often as not, its most influential political actors. Long before India was conceived of as a nation, in the extended run-up to Indian independence, and in the first few decades of freedom, the most interesting reflections on society and politics were offered by men (and women) who were in the thick of political action. Second, the relevance of individual thinkers too has lasted longer in India. For instance, Lenin’s ideas were influential for about seventy years, that is to say, from the time the Soviet state was founded to the time it disappeared. Mao’s heyday was even shorter—roughly three decades, from the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 to the repudiation by Deng Xiaoping of his mentor’s ideas in the late 1970s. Turning to politicians in Western Europe, Churchill’s impassioned defence of the British Empire would find no takers after the 1950s. De Gaulle was famous for his invocation of the ‘grandeur de la France’, but those sentiments have now been (fortunately?) diluted and domesticated by the consolidation of the European Union. On the other hand, as this book will demonstrate, Indian thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still speak in many ways to the concerns of the present. A third difference has to do with the greater diversity of thinkers within the Indian political tradition. Even Gandhi and Nehru never held the kind of canonical status within their country as Mao or Lenin did in theirs. At any given moment, there were as many Indians who were opposed to their ideas as were guided by them. Moreover, the range of issues debated and acted upon by politicians and social reformers appears to have been far greater in India than in other countries. This depth and diversity of thought was, as I argue below, in good part a product of the depth and diversity of the society itself.

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so."- Charles De Gaulle

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Once upon a time our politicians did not tend to apologize for our country’s prior actions! Here’s a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our great country. These are quite good JFK’S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60’s when De Gaulle decided to pull out of NATO. De Gaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible. Rusk’s response: “Does that include those who are buried here?” De Gaulle did not respond. You could have heard a pin drop. When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush. He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.” You could have heard a pin drop. There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?” A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?” You could have heard a pin drop. A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Germany and France. At morning tea the Frenchman complained that the conference should be conducted in French since it was being held in Paris. The German replied that, so far as he could see, the reason that it was being held in English was as a mark of respect to the other attendees, since their troops had shed so much blood so that the Frenchman wouldn’t be speaking German.

[...] AP. : Peut-on proclamer que nous restons neutres ? De Gaule : Il ne faut rien proclamer du tout. Et d'abord c'est faux ! Nous aidons les Marocains en leur fournissant des armes. Nous aidons les Algériens en mettant à leur disposition notre aérodrome de Colomb-Béchar. Nous les aidons à s'entre-tuer. Pourtant, il faut bien faire comme si nous étions neutres. [Le 23 octobre 1963]

Everything leads me to believe it,” he replied. “They got their hands on this communist who wasn’t one, while still being one. He had a sub par intellect and was an exalted fanatic—just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused. . . . The guy ran away, because he probably became suspicious. They wanted to kill him on the spot before he could be grabbed by the judicial system. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen exactly the way they had probably planned it would. . . . But a trial, you realize, is just terrible. People would have talked. They would have dug up so much! They would have unearthed everything. Then the security forces went looking for [a clean-up man] they totally controlled, and who couldn’t refuse their offer, and that guy sacrificed himself to kill the fake assassin—supposedly in defense of Kennedy’s memory! “Baloney! Security forces all over the world are the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare that the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder. “America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.” These astonishing observations about Dallas were captured in Peyrefitte’s memoir, C’était de Gaulle (It Was de Gaulle), which was published in France in 2002, three years after the author’s death. Snippets of the conversation appeared in the U.S. press, but the book was not translated and published in America, and de Gaulle’s remarks about the Kennedy assassination were never fully reported outside of France. A

Introduced by de Gaulle to protect France’s ‘vital interests’, when there was a possibility that Britain would use it, the French wanted it abolished.

Nothing lasts until it is incessantly renewed

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’ Charles de Gaulle.

fue de epopeya; como el caso de los que, enrolados algunos en la Legión Extranjera francesa y fugitivos otros del norte de África, acabaron integrados en las fuerzas francesas libres del general De Gaulle, y desde África central viajaron a Inglaterra, y de allí a Normandía; y luego, con la División Leclerc, liberaron París y combatieron y murieron en suelo alemán, llegando los supervivientes hasta el cuartel general del Führer (tuve el honor de estar cinco años sentado en la Real Academia Española junto a uno de ellos, Claudio Guillén Cahen, hijo del poeta Jorge Guillén).

De Gaulle can greet Mendès-France with mingled amusement and affection—"Ah, Mendès, you have come to tell me you are torn"—but in America it is two strikes and you're out, Adlai, particularly when otherwise alienated intellectuals are so eager to embrace the cult of experience and to worship men of action.