Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill on April 26, 2021, one day late due to DOS attacks. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
Today is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, a day of remembrance and respect to those who have served in the armed forces of these two nations. April 25th was the day that ANZAC troops came ashore at the Gallipoli Peninsula as one of the spearheads of the allied attack in an effort to force the Dardanelles, knock the Ottomans out of the Great War, and link up with and relieve Russia.
The battlefield quickly deteriorated into trench warfare in the suffocating heat of a long Turkish summer. In early December 1915, the troops were quietly pulled away in the darkness of a moonless night without a single casualty. The Turks woke to find themselves victorious on a deserted battlefield.
A few days’ ago, an open letter was penned to the French parliament. Signed by twenty retired French generals, the letter is a plea for something to be done at the abject political and social state of the nation, and a warning that if the politicians continue to obfuscate then the military, past and serving members, might have to roll up their sleeves and step in.
Perils are mounting, violence is increasing day by day. Who would have predicted ten years ago that a professor would one day be beheaded when he left college? However, we, servants of the Nation, who have always been ready to put our skin at the end of our engagement – as required by our military state, cannot be in front of such acts of the passive spectators.
Also, those who lead our country must imperatively find the courage necessary to eradicate these dangers. To do this, it is often sufficient to apply existing laws without weakness. Do not forget that, like us, a large majority of our fellow citizens are overwhelmed by your dabbling and guilty silences. As Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, said: “When prudence is everywhere, courage is nowhere.”
So, ladies and gentlemen, enough stalling, the situation is serious, work is enormous; do not waste time and know that we are ready to support policies which will take into consideration the safeguard of the nation.
On the other hand, if nothing is done, laxity will continue to spread inexorably in society, ultimately causing an explosion and the intervention of our active comrades in a perilous mission of protecting our civilizational values and safeguarding our compatriots on the national territory.
As we can see, it is no longer time to procrastinate, otherwise, tomorrow the civil war will put an end to this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will bear the responsibility, will number in the thousands.
In the same week, alarmed at the rising risk of conflict on the Russian/Ukrainian border, a conflict that has been brokered and provoked by the United States, Paris and Berlin scrambled to head off the threat with strong diplomatic efforts to appease the Russians. The USA might still have a presence in continental Europe, but it is no longer 1991, and with the exception of a seemingly insane Great Britain, Europe might soon find itself looking to the Russians for protection from their increasingly unhinged allies.
But all that is for naught if France’s domestic situation remains so incoherent. Which is why the timing of this letter is so effective. Something has to give, and the generals must sense that now is the moment to fix the tottering zombie that is their nation before it collapses in a heap.
In that letter, the generals make reference to “Honor and Fatherland”. That they attempt to do so while attempting to pass off any reference to skin color or religion is either a sop to reassure the easily offended, a tragic miscalculation, or a cynical ploy to ensure that they will have a free hand to fix an easily identifiable problem.
The tragedy for Australia and New Zealand is that it is simply inconceivable that past senior officers of their armed forces would attempt the same gesture, let alone contemplate any serious action. New Zealand’s military may as well not even exist, while Australia’s has been reduced to a clown circus of political hacks attempting to ferret out any remaining shred of masculinity while past senior officers parade around in dresses and lipstick on the media circuit and mouthing platitudes to a conservatism that is long dead Down Under.
I came across the French letter in a post at the Australian conservative site, Catallaxy Files. The comments on that piece eventually degenerated into a sort of gleeful mocking of the myth of French cowardice on the battlefield. That these derogatory comments were made on a day that celebrates a total defeat of Australia’s first major effort at war seems lost on those commenters. Australians shroud our mythology of ANZAC Cove with the feeble excuse that we were lions led by donkeys. No such olive branch of understanding is ever held out towards the French, a nation whose brave fighting men inflicted 40,000 killed in action in 1940 on the invading Germans.
I hold out some hope that the French are finally beginning to stir. Would that such a similar letter ever be written in Australia; perhaps to protest the mass import of foreigners in their millions to replace the native white Australians while Marxist revolutionary theories infect our national discourse and all of our institutions. No, such an act would be beyond the pale for our politely dying societies. Perhaps our only hope is for nations like the French to succeed and then for them to come and bail us out. Hopefully they will have a better understanding and appreciation for recent history than we do.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill on April 26, 2021, one day late due to DOS attacks. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
