synarchy movement of empire book ii - Pierre Beaudry's Galactic ...

all costs from the ordinary framework and procedure in a situation
without precedent.
"M. Paul Reynaud did not think fit to take upon himself decisions
so far outside the normal and calculated orbit. He tried to attain the aim
by maneuvering. That explains, in particular, the fact that he envisaged
a possible examination of the enemy's armistice conditions, provided
England gave her consent. No doubt he judged that even those who
were pushing towards an armistice would recoil when they knew its
terms, and that then there would come into play the regroupment of all
men of value, to make war and save the country. But the tragedy was
too harsh to be resolved. Either make war without sparing anything, or
surrender at once: there was no alternative, only these two extremes. M.
Paul Reynaud, through failing to identify himself wholly with the first,
gave place to Petain, who completely adopted the second.
"It has to be said that at the supreme moment the regime offered
to the head of the last government of the Third Republic nothing to fall
back upon. Assuredly many of the men in office looked upon
capitulation with horror. But the authorities, shattered by the disaster
for which they felt themselves responsible, did not react at all. At the
time when they were faced by the problem on which, for France, all the
present and all the future depended, Parliament did not sit, the
government showed itself incapable of adopting as a body a decisive
solution, and the President of the Republic abstained from raising his
voice, even within the Cabinet, to express the supreme interest of the
country. In reality this annihilation of the state was at the bottom of the
national tragedy. By the light of the thunderbolt the regime was
revealed, in its ghastly infirmity, as having no proportion and no
relation to the defense, honor, and independence of France.}" (The
Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle}, p. 78-80).
11.2 THE SINKING OF THE FRENCH FLEET (1940)
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