and saved Poland from foreign domination.nDecorated by the Polish government,nde Gaulle evidently regardednPoland as an exception to the perfidiousngeneral run of foreign countries.nHe condemned the Yalta settlementnfrom the beginning and, as late asn1967, visited Gdansk and said, “Thenobstacles that you think are insurmountablentoday, you will without anyndoubt surmount them. You know whatnI mean.” Poland too had becomen”his.”nNo tyrant, de Gaulle admired thymosnin others. In the 1920’s he saw thenFrench colonies in the Mideast andnwrote, “My impression is that wenhaven’t really made much impactnhere, and that the people are as aliennto us—and we to them—as they evernwere.” The French must therefore eitherncompel obedience or “get out.”nHis decision to disband France’s colonialnempire followed from this recognitionnof both the strength and thenlimits of thymos.n”A statesman is needed.” De Gaullenwrote that on May 3, 1940 to thenThird Republic’s last prime minister,nPaul Reynaud, who proved unequal tonthe need. As the nazis conquerednFrance and his mentor, MarshallnRetain, capitulated, de Gaulle reactednsimply to France’s “men withoutnchests”: “I saw treason before my eyes,nand my heart refused in disgust tonrecognize it as victorious.” Not onlynmilitary and political timeservers butnmany intellectual luminaries endorsednPetain; these included Gide, Mauriac,nand Glaudel.nIn those early days, it was notnmen of experience or leadership,nit was not the intellectuals or politiciansnor administrators or servingnofficers who were the first Gaullistsnand rallied to the Cross ofnLorraine. They did not come fromnthe chateaux or the cathedrals, butnfrom the parish churches and thensynagogues, the French of thenParis Metro, the fishing villages,nthe factories, for whom all wasnclear and simple.nWhen de Gaulle founded Free Francenin London, less than one-sixth of thenFrench then on British soil joined him;nthose likely to be on foreign soil werenunlikely to respond to a simple call tonhonor.n12/CHRONICLES OF CULTUREnBy 1941, “he had made up hisnmind that the war would be long,nthat Britain and the Allies would win,nand that his priority from then onnwould be to claw back everything hencould for a victory for France.” Thenclawing among de Gaulle andnChurchill, Roosevelt, and the anti-nGaullist French drew blood. AlthoughnChurchill quarreled angrily with himn(going so far as to threaten, “If younobstruct me, I shall liquidate you!”) denGaulle found Roosevelt and thenFrench elites more consistently hostile.nThe American President dreamednof a new, postwar state, “Wallonia,” tonbe fabricated from “the Walloon partsnof Belgium with Luxembourg, Alsace-nLorraine and part of northern France.”nAlthough he considers various explanationsnof Roosevelt’s allergy to denGaulle, Cook finally decides thatn”there can be no rationale or explanationnof what amounted to a personalnobsession.” (Perhaps Roosevelt, whonexemplified the American liberal’snambivalence toward thymos, resentedna man “of one piece,” a man who atnonce blocked the liberal’s ambitionsnbut who did not share the liberal’snmoral reservations concerning ambition.)nAs for the French, during thenwar de Gaulle contended with the oldnright (the Vichyites condemned him tondeath in absentia); after the liberationn”it was a struggle for local power betweennthe Communists and the Gaullists,”na struggle de Gaulle won by thenspirited expedient of ordering thenCommunists to the front lines. It wasnthe postwar exhaustion of thymos thatncaused de Gaulle to resign as primenminister.nAlthough de Gaulle could be anmaster of any parliamentary debatenhe chose to enter, he wasnnever cut out for the maneuversnand cut-and-thrust of parliamentaryndemocracy. … It was notnhis idea of how to run a .government.nThe French viewed his departure withnrelief and did not expect him to return.nWhen he did, it was of course on hisnterms. Foremost among these was annew constitution, a presidential regimenthat ended parliamentarism. Thenmen without chests, talkers who confusednaction with the force of inertia,nfound themselves subordinate oncennnmore to the man of thymos.nIn previous books. Cook has writtennextensively on World War II, and 60npercent of this book concerns the warnand its aftermath. The chapters on denGaulle’s founding and defense of thenFifth Republic are well supplementednby Bernard Ledwidge’s recent biographyn(De Gaulle; St. Martin’s Press)nand by several chapters in Malraux’snLe Miroir des Limbes (Holt, Rinehartn& Winston). De Gaulle’s constantntheme during those years, la grandeur,ninspired fear and hatred, admirationnand ridicule. Cook does not quitenunderstand de Gaulle’s intention, butnhe does present the words and actionsnof a statesman attempting to bring anthoroughly modernized populace tonthe unmodern virtues of courage andnmoderation, a statesman forced to usenmodern tools for unmodern ends.nCook gives the two customary explanationsnof de Gaulle’s failure toncomplete his second term as president:nfrom 1958 to 1968, French universitynenrollments tripled and de Gaulle didnnot sufficiently anticipate the resultingntensions; in 1968, the Soviets crushednCzechoslovakia’s experiment with civilnliberties, thus refuhng de Gaulle’snclaim that Soviet ideology matterednless than Russian nationality. In bothninstances, the man of thymos underestimatednthe power of ideologies. (ThenFrench university students were notnonly more numerous; a significantnfraction of them put on ideologicalncostumes, stitching together patches ofnanarchism, pop psychology, and thenteachings of Mao Zedong.) De Gaullenrightly considered these ideologies absurd.nHe wrongly dismissed them asnirrelevant to serious politics. That is,nhe underestimated the power of intellectualnabsurdity in human life, anpower that never lasts at its peak butnreappears with the persistence of dandelions.nIf allied with reason, thymosncan rule the appetites. But in latenmodernity the appetites have themselvesnmade alliance with reason,nusing reason to build ideologies, distinguishednfrom religions or philosophiesnby their egalitarianism.nStatesmen are still needed. ccn