XXVII
FOR THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY, 1945
T HERE are some events so heart-warming in themselves,that there
is a real temptation to abandon oneself to a merely emotional
enjoyment of them. And the good European would be very tough-
minded, indeed, who was not touched by the fact that tins year,
1945, will see the i4th of July celebrated in Paris, freely in a
liberated city. How often since 1940 have those of us who have
known Paris thought with bitterness of the pollution of its soil by
the Germans, of the betrayal of its spirit by Vichy 1 For, under
Vichy, memories were as dangerous as thoughts are in Japan,
above all memories of those days when:
"Death was on thy drums democracy
And with one rush of slaves, the world was free/*
In vain, Vichy tried to root out this nostalgia. In vain it cele-
brated on the Plateau of Gergovia the triumph of Vercingetorix;
the spirit of the great Gaul worked against Vichy, and the commune
of which I have the honour to be a citizen will remember that
General dc Lattre de Tassigny lived there in the dark hours, not
that a feeble imitation of the pagan rites of the Third Reich
revealed the senile impotence of a sterile r6ghne*
So when I saw, in Paris, last week, the stands being got ready
for the great parade of the first free I4th since 1939, I was not
censorious as were some strict moralists and economists. France,
Paris, the world needed this celebration.
But there is another aspect of the celebration of the *4th on
which we must lay stress. It is not a mere celebration of the
liberation of the territory such as was held after 1870 and 1918,
This July i4th could be, and should be, a celebration much more
in the spirit of 1789 and 1790. For France has known and suffered
in her inmost fibres in the past four years from a tyranny much
more odious, inhuman, soul-destroying than any known in 1789.
It is a matter of historical controversy how much the fall of the
224.