Lyautey Quotes

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn't reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!

Sais-tu pourquoi tu es ici, un samedi après-midi, au lieu d’être chez toi ?-Non, je ne le sais pas. Je ne me suis même pas posé la question. (…) –Parce que tu es un pro-lé-tai-re !, lui assena-t-il d’une voix forte.

My espionage travels took me once around the world, to all of the continents except Australia, over most of the great mountain ranges and across most of the great rivers. At various times I followed the routes of Captain Cook, Sinbad the Sailor, T.E. Lawrence, Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Marshal Lyautey, and Admiral Livy. In telling some of the stories of those years, I plead the precedent of the Author of the Old Testament in being security minded, and I hope to be excused for leaving a number of things untold and a number unexplained. Rome, March 1953.

En réalité, dès que Lyautey est arrivé au Maroc, connaissant l’appétit des colons de l’Oranie, il a tout fait pour cloisonner le pays. Tous ceux qui l’ont suivi se sont aussi efforcés qu’il n’y ait pas de contact direct entre l’Algérie et le Maroc. Plus encore, quand on entre dans le détail, on se rend compte que les colons français au Maroc étaient les concurrents directs de ceux de l’Oranie. Tout ceci pour une raison simple : le Maroc et l’Algérie ne dépendaient pas de la même administration. Nous dépendions du ministère des Affaires étrangères alors que les Algériens étaient rattachés au ministère de l’Intérieur.

As we think about the next 50 years, I remember a story President Kennedy told a week before he was killed. The story was about French Marshal Louis-Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey, who walked one morning through his garden with his gardener. He stopped at a certain point and asked the gardener to plant a tree there the next morning. The gardener said, “But the tree will not bloom for 100 years.” The marshal replied, “In that case, you had better plant it this afternoon.

9 juin 1992, à Rabat, Alexandre de Marenches, ancien patron des Services secrets français [ et proche d’Hassan II ] me dit : Sa Majesté chérifienne vous attend … Pressez-vous ! Le roi m’attend, debout dans la salle du trône et après quelques propos sur la formation de techniciens marocains pour la gestion des ressources en eau, il attaque un tout autre sujet : - Pourquoi n’aimez-vous pas Lyautey ? - Sire, j’aime Lyautey ! - Pas vous, mais les élites françaises … - C’est à cause du colonialisme … - Mais Lyautey, ce n’est pas le colonialisme ! C’est la colonisation ! Le maréchal fut un colonisateur tombé amoureux du colonisé. Nous, les Marocains, nous aimons Lyautey. Quand il mourut en 1934, mon père pleura et tint à aller à Thorey**, en Lorraine, s’incliner devant sa dépouille. Lyautey était l’ami de la dynastie alaouite. Il avait de la grandeur. Ce fut un seigneur. »

At the age of twenty-one, as a second lieutenant just out of St. Cyr, Gallieni had fought at Sedan and been held prisoner for some time in Germany, where he learned the language. He chose to make his further military career in the colonies where France was "growing soldiers." Although the Staff College clique professed to regard colonial service as "le tourisme," Gallieni's fame as the conqueror of Madagascar brought him, like Lyautey of Morocco, to the top rank of the French Army. He kept a notebook in German, English, and Italian called Erinnerungen of my life di ragazzo, and never ceased studying, whether it was Russian or the development of heavy artillery or the comparative administrations of the colonial powers. He wore a pince-nez and a heavy gray mustache that was rather at odds with his elegant, autocratic figure. He carried himself like an officer on parade. Tall and spare, with a distant, untouchable, faintly stern air, he resembled no other French officer of his time. Poincare described the impression he made: "straight, slender and upright with head erect and piercing eyes behind his glasses, he appeared to us as an imposing example of powerful humanity.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.