When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

"From the blind confusion of factional strife the Frenchman has emerged in this hour all of a piece throughout, stronger, more resolute, silent, smiling, his eyes bright with an invincible fire which affirms that the legend of France shall not fail…It is in that mysterious hour when something comes to birth in us which burns out the dross and clears the way for the casting of a metal which neither steel nor diamond can scratch. And when, some day, after superhuman efforts, all these souls, fatigued with heroism, meet again under the vast blue vault of a regenerated fatherland, it must be that of so many hearts which were sundered a soul of France will forge itself, and the discords which are a condition of life will dissolve, fast fused in a bond of solidarity so closely knit that nothing will have power to shatter it."These were the words which Georges Clemenceau used upon learning of the outbreak of the war. The war would cleanse France of its lethargy, provide it with an opportunity to redeem its past loss