Charles de Gaulle - Speech on French Thought, 60th Anniversary of l'Alliance Française

Algiers, October 30th, 1943

When one day the historian, far from the tumults in which we are immersed, considers the tragic events that nearly plunged France into the abyss from which one does not return, he will observe that the resistance, that is to say the national hope, clung to two pillars that did not yield on the slope. One was a fragment of a sword, the other, French thought.

Yes, I say French thought. Ah! Certainly, it is all too true that some of those who, in our country, wielded a well-known pen, or who had risen, in science or art, to the degree of notoriety that attracts academies, could scandalize the world with their surrenders, sometimes with their denials. There is in this one of the most painful aspects of that ordeal of common sense and honor that was the war of terror and corruption waged by Hitler's Germany. It is a fact, however, that the dignity of the spirit was safeguarded despite all the trials. And it was, firstly, by the greatest.

It will be understood that I refrain from mentioning, among them, the names of those who remain in France, unless they have found there the certain rest of death, such as Bergson or Louis Gilet, such as Politzer, shot by the enemy, such as Holweck, dead from torture. But, of what weight will have weighed on the scale where the value of nations is measured the fact that others, as soon as they had escaped from tyranny, took part, with all nobility, and I do not need to add with all independence, in the great spiritual and moral battles of this war. Thus of Philippe Barrès, Bernanos, Henry Bernstein, Eve Curie, Father Ducatillon, André Gide, Joseph Kessel, Maritain, Jules Romains, thus of Cassin, Gustave Cohen, Laugier, Focillon, Jean Perrin, thus of Godard, Hackin, Jouguet, William Marçais, Paul Rivet, Seyrig, thus of the thinkers and scholars of the Institute of Advanced Studies of New York, magnificent French creation realized at the moment when the storm of despair was blowing at its strongest, such as the French Institute of London, the French University of Beirut, the Law School of Cairo, and so many French high schools and colleges where the members of the teaching profession, scattered throughout the world, knew how to remain faithful, under the sign of the Cross of Lorraine, to the greatness of France and to the cause of liberty. And do we not know that here, at the forefront of the resistance, there were professors of the University of Algiers, such as Capitant?

But, while the action of the teachers, within and outside the country, placed high French thought in the camp of those who did not accept the disaster, immense work was being accomplished in the depths of a people submerged in sorrows and disgusts, and who turned towards the pure sources of the soul and the spirit, like the prisoner in his cell towards the light of the skylight. We know that poetry, sciences, and arts, at the present hour, notably among the youth, have more fervent lovers than ever. How can one not be struck by the passionate value of clandestine journals such as Les Cahiers du Témoignage Chrétien, Les Cahiers de la Libération, L'Université Libre, Les Lettres Françaises, L'Art Français? How can one not feel the heartrending quality of these poems that today all of France recites in secret? Such as the verses of Aragon:

Qu'importe que je meure avant que se dessine
Le visage sacré, s'il doit renaître un jour ?...
Ma patrie est la faim, la misère et l'amour.

[What does it matter that I die before is drawn
The sacred face, if one day it must be reborn?…
My fatherland is hunger, misery, and love.]

Thus of the lament of Anne, a young woman dreaming in the Tuileries:

Comme ces jardins
Sont abandonnés !
La guerre est au bout de l'allée
Nulle part ne puis m'en aller...
Où donc est-il mon amant ?
Derrière les fils barbelés
Ou bien, dessus la mer, allé
Rejoindre une armée, triomphant ?

[How these gardens
Are abandoned!
The war is at the alley’s end
Nowhere can I go...
Where is my lover?
Behind the barbed wire
Or perhaps, over the sea, gone
To join an army, triumphant?]

Thus of the cry of anger from Jean Amy contemplating the executed patriots:

Ce sang ne séchera jamais sur cette terre
Et ces morts abattus resteront exposés.
Nous grincerons des dents à force de nous taire
Nous ne pleurerons pas sur ces croix renversées
Mais nous nous souviendrons de ces morts sans mémoire
Nous compterons nos morts comme on les a comptés.

[This blood will never dry on this earth
And these fallen dead will remain exposed.
We will grind our teeth from keeping silent
We will not weep over these overturned crosses
But we will remember these forgotten dead
We will count our dead as they were counted.]

The same generous gestation is also revealed among our fighters. When one day some of their letters will be published, they will see if the beating heart of France has slowed down! Let one read the reviews and newspapers that the ideal of Fighting France has inspired. Through the waves of ideas and ardor spread by the radio, which have so powerfully exalted convictions and animated resistance, what a role the talent of the French teams has played! How much will the voice of Schumann, the chronicles of “Les Français parlent aux Français,” La Voix Libre of Brazzaville, that of Beirut, and now that of Radio-France have counted? In truth, in our people, turned inside out by pain and struggle, the splendid harvests of the spirit are germinating at this moment.

If French thought, far from being affected in its sources, must, on the contrary, reappear renewed, rejuvenated, will that not be all the better for the world where the society of peoples lives and develops through exchange, in the domain of the spirit as well as in that of matter? In this regard, I do not believe that in contemplating what Ilya Ehrenburg calls "the treasures she has scattered over the whole earth," France has to defend a justified pride. Even if one wanted to consider as outdated the incomparable services she has rendered, in such a domain, to the past of Humanity, it is enough to have eyes that see and ears that hear, to know to what depth her spiritual and moral influence still penetrates and how much the free world suffers from being, currently, cut off from the great centers of inspiration burning in our country.

Nothing has given us a greater awareness of the eminent role it plays among the peoples than this kind of stunned anguish that was felt everywhere when it was learned that the barbaric onslaught had succeeded in locking it in a dungeon. When France seemed to succumb and it could be feared that the torch she makes shine on the universe would be extinguished, it seemed, according to the words of Charles Morgan, that “Humanity was exiling itself in burning and icy terror.”

But how could the clear flame of French thought have taken and kept its brilliance if, conversely, so many elements had not been brought to it by the spirit of other peoples? France has been able, from century to century and up to the present drama, to maintain the radiance of its genius externally. This would have been impossible if it had not had the taste and made the effort to be penetrated by currents from the outside. In such matters, autarky would quickly lead to decline. Undoubtedly, in the artistic, scientific, and philosophical orders, international emulation is a driving force that humanity should not be deprived of, but high values would not subsist in an exaggerated psychology of intellectual nationalism. We have, once and for all, drawn this conclusion that it is through free spiritual and moral relations, established between ourselves and others, that our cultural influence can extend to the advantage of all and that, conversely, what we are worth can increase.

Organizing these relations was the reason for the birth, is the reason for the existence, and will be the reason for the continuation of the Alliance Française. After sixty years of existence, the fact that it has endured locally, despite the turmoil, in so many points of the universe, and that the initiative of its London Committee, animated by good and clear-sighted Frenchmen such as Mr. Thémoin and Miss Salmon, and closely linked to Fighting France, has succeeded in keeping its branches cut off from the Métropole united, proves both the profound vitality of this noble association, and the ardent sympathy it has won and keeps in all the regions of the globe. The fact that it finds here, in the provisional capital of France, the confidence testified by this gathering and so eloquently expressed by President Brunel, demonstrates that the Alliance continues and develops its work. Is it necessary to add, after Mr. the Commissioner for National Education, that the Committee of Liberation is resolved to help it, not only in the future, but as of today?

I say: as of today. Certainly, what France will be capable of when the vanquished enemy has cleared the way for its destiny is beyond all proportion to the poor means at its disposal in its present distress. But, whatever our certainty regarding the imminent reappearance of its power and genius, nothing would be more absurd than to wait passively for the future. From the point of view of the intellectual and moral cooperation of peoples, wait-and-see is as condemnable as it is in other respects. To let live and develop the institutions that, in the Empire or abroad, are dedicated to spreading, with the French language, the knowledge and taste of our works, to favor and diffuse the productions of the spirit wherever they appear, notably in this North Africa which is awakening from a long-imposed sleep and where the native French find themselves in close contact with indigenous circles called to a vast future, to also make known, to the extent that circumstances permit, what is thought abroad, such is the present task in which the Alliance Française must take a prominent part.

In a recent and admirable page, François Mauriac depicts the Place de la Concorde, empty and silent, as it is in the evening, by virtue of the enemy's orders: “One would think,” he says, “that Paris, squatting by the side of its river, hides its face in its folded arms.” Yes, France, like the Paris of which Mauriac speaks, may be forced today to hide its features from the outrages and spittle of darkness. But here, on the horizon, are the first rays of dawn. Here is the announcement of pride regained, of strength reborn, of greatness reappearing. Soon, yes, soon, unclasping the bloody hands behind which it shelters its pain, France will reveal to the world its renewed face. If this face appears hardened by all the tears that furrow it, tense with all the hopes it discovers, it will be, we are sure, more nobly illuminated than ever by the sacred lights of the spirit.