The Hope of France

Extract

‘We, the writers, friends, readers of “Temps Nouveau” do not pretend to consider ourselves the only or the sufficient expression of the hope of France; but we are firmly convinced that our “little flock’ is one of the armies—of the vanguards—of the reconquest and the restoration of France…

My purpose, in this article, is to say something about this ‘little flock’ with whom I was privileged to work up till the capitulation, and whose activities I have tried to follow in spite of the prison walls which to-day surround their country.

On June 18th, 1940, I was driving south towards Bayonne. A little way ahead, on a hill, a small boy-scout was directing the traffic. He beckoned us on. And as we continued down the long, straight, poplar-studded roads of the Landes, I knew that that little boy would go on with his job, and that he represented the real France—youthful in its enterprise and energy and courage, mature in its perseverance and devotion. We talked then, my friends and I, of all those other young people whom we had seen or of whom we had heard, who were directing refugees, housing and feeding people, giving information, carrying luggage, delivering post, in fact, governing—that is, doing the real work of administration—a country whose official bureaucracy and civil service had collapsed. For those who knew the French youth movements this was less a cause for surprise than for admiration : it was to have been expected that France’s Catholic Action should fulfil its magnificent promise at the moment of France’s greatest tragedy.