De Gaulle was as much a Victorian as Churchill, but he lasted much longer, striding into the modern era not just as an object of reverence but as an active political force. His childhood in France’s austere northern regions was soaked in patriotism and religion, administered and absorbed in strong doses which would now be regarded as dangerous. In those years of toy soldiers and strict mealtimes he learned, among other things, to dislike, mistrust, and resent the ancient English foe, so much that he would never fully shake off these feelings. His was the France wounded and dismembered by the debacle of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, appalled by the rising of the Paris Commune, shaken and divided by the wrongful humiliation, prosecution, and cruel imprisonment of Captain Dreyfus. The shadow of Germany was unavoidable. In Paris, the statue on the Place de la Concorde that represented the city of Strasbourg was veiled in black, in mourning at its seizure by the German Empire. Professor Jackson tries hard to acquit de Gaulle of any allegiance, then or later, to the anti-Dreyfus faction. There is no doubt that de Gaulle in his later life was far too intelligent to fall for the crude anti-Semitism that infects so much French conservatism and was especially strong in de Gaulle’s youth. Still, it is hard to accept that he was never touched by it, and in moments of strain he would make remarks or use derogatory words that no person should make or use.
Peter Hitchens, “A Certain Idea of France”, First Things, 2019-04.
