Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 118: "Wake up, France."

Published: June 24, 1935 | Le Figaro (Paris Edition)

By: Major Moreau

This month, the British government signed a document with Berlin. It was printed in quiet columns, with ceremonial handshakes behind closed doors.

The official name the Anglo-German Naval Agreement is clean, polite, diplomatic.

But history, as it often does, will rename it later.

I write these words not as a politician or diplomat, but as a soldier and more importantly, as a citizen of a republic that has forgotten too much, too quickly.

Let us not be deceived by elegant phrases or the illusion of prudence. The truth is simpler, colder.

The British government has broken the European front. It has shaken hands with ambition and left the continent in a fog of false security.

And the consequences of that act whether measured in months or years will reach far beyond naval treaties.

The agreement grants Germany the legal right to possess thirty-five percent of Royal Navy tonnage in surface vessels.

But beneath the ink and smiles lies something much darker. Britain has not just acknowledged German rearmament it has endorsed it.

The words "mutual understanding" and "naval stability" will not armor us when German submarines prowl beneath the Atlantic in numbers they dare not declare today.

Nor will the clause about "bilateral relations" protect us when German battleships cast their shadows across neutral waters.

The architects of this pact argue that it brings limits.

I disagree.

It brings legitimacy, which is far more dangerous.

Until now, every new ship laid down in a German yard was a violation. Every cruiser that slipped into the Baltic was an embarrassment to Berlin, a symbol of their flouting of Versailles.

But today, those same vessels can be built under British recognition.

Let that settle in.

What was once clandestine is now endorsed.

What was once condemned is now encouraged.

Let us be clear, this is not a treaty for peace.

It is a license.

Some in London will argue that this agreement is better than no agreement, that diplomacy is the only rope left holding Europe above the abyss.

Perhaps.

But a rope offered to one man is often the leash around another’s neck.

And let us not forget who is holding the rope.

The German Reich has proven, time and again, that its interpretation of treaties is subject to its ambition.

It left the League of Nations.

It rearmed its air force and extended conscription in defiance of international law.

Now, in 1935, it is being rewarded.

Ask yourselves.

Is this the behavior of a nation seeking peace?

No.

It is the calculated march of a state that understands its adversaries better than they understand themselves.

Berlin knows that Europe is tired.

That democracies blink in the face of force.

That Britain will hesitate, and that France unless it remembers its purpose may hesitate too.

And so I write.

Because what was signed in London was not just an agreement.

It was a symptom.

A symptom of the deeper sickness, the idea that war can be postponed indefinitely by refusing to name it.

Appeasement is not peace.

Appeasement is the policy of feeding the tiger in the hope that it will eat you last.

But the tiger does not care for your timetable.

Let us not romanticize what is unfolding.

In every capital of Europe today, leaders stare at maps and wonder where the borders will be five years from now.

And for those of us who serve, who command, who prepare, we do not wonder.

We know.

Because borders move when nations sleep.

And right now, Europe is falling asleep to the lullaby of British civility.

There is something dangerously familiar in the tone of the moment the belief that agreements with aggressive regimes can tame them.

That if we offer a few concessions, they will stop asking.

That if we smile, they will smile back.

We’ve seen this story.

We’ve lived it before.

It begins with percentages, and ends with invasions.

The British, in their wisdom, believe they are slowing Germany’s advance.

In truth, they have done the opposite.

They have calibrated it.

They’ve given Berlin a metric a target to hit.

And when thirty-five becomes insufficient, fifty will follow.

Then sixty.

Then more.

We are not at war today.

But we are already in a state of escalation. Not by declaration, but by erosion.

Each compromise chips away at our strategic foundations, at the moral clarity we once possessed.

And so, I turn to my own republic to France.

If Britain has chosen delay, we must choose decisiveness.

If Britain has chosen silence, we must speak louder.

We cannot match German steel with French paper.

We cannot prepare for the past while Berlin prepares for the future.

Our defense budgets must rise.

Our conscription schedules must be re-examined.

Our alliances Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland must be treated not as signatures on paper, but as living partnerships, with shared planning, shared intelligence, shared command structures.

And beyond that, France must once again become the moral center of European defense.

We cannot wait for German tanks on the Rhine to remember our principles.

We must defend them before they are tested.

Some will say we cannot afford this.

That our economy is fragile.

That the last war cost us too dearly.

But peace, I assure you, will cost more if purchased through cowardice.

There is a reason I chose to write this article, and not a report to my superiors.

I have spending my life in uniform.

I have commanded men. I have trained them.

And watched many die because someone at the top wanted something else.

This letter is not aimed at the soldier.

He already knows what is coming.

It is not aimed at the diplomat.

He already suspects.

It is aimed at the citizen the man in Paris, in Lyon, in Bordeaux, who still believes that treaties will hold simply because paper cannot bleed.

They will not hold.

The world has changed.

It is changing.

And the illusion that we can preserve Versailles through politeness is a fatal one.

The German Reich will not be placated.

It will be fueled.

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement is not the end of the line.

It is the first stone to fall.

What follows remilitarization, revisionism, territorial expansion will be explained as "inevitable" by the same men who today applaud restraint.

Remember this evil never arrives dressed in rags.

It comes in uniform.

In speeches.

In smiles.

It signs agreements, hosts dinners, sends flowers and then it marches.

It is marching already.

You will not read words like these in London.

They are not permitted, even if they are spoken behind closed doors.

But France is still free to name the truth.

And so I say, with no joy, no rage, only clarity:

We are not witnessing peace.

We are witnessing preparation.

The sooner we understand that, the less we will suffer.

The cost of readiness is steep.

The cost of unpreparedness is unimaginable.

We still have time.

But not much.

Wake up, France.