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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 17, 1983
PAGE 10
charisma, a John Paul II in civilian clothes"--an unintentional, on his
part, refere�t�o1)ersonalit1es who will yet emerge on the European
scene, the beast and the false prophet.
France's "Excellency"
Every single chapter of his book is fascinating.
After one reads the
chapter on "The Quarrelsome French," for example, there should remain no
doubt in anyone's mind about which people today comprise Reuben--"the ex
cellency of dignity and the excellency of power [but] unstable as water,
you shall not excel•••" (Gen.
49:3-4) •
The whole chapter confirms the
French passion for their nation to be recognized as a great power, whether
entirely deserved in the present scheme of things or not.
...Above all, they do not allow anybody to forget the memory of
their past grandeur. To be sure, they have many valid grounds
for their pride. France is still one of the greatest countries
in the world, one of the four predominant nations of Europe, in
disputably the preeminent one in many fields. Its culture is
still regarded as the polestar by many intellectuals everywhere;
its language is a prodigious vestment to clothe precise thoughts,
nebulous concepts, or subtle sentiments with clarity and ele
gance: its public administration and the schools training its
civil servants and officials are the envy of the world; .•• But
why the irritating emphasis? Why the shrill persistent crowing?
Why (as Horace Walpole wrote to Hannah More in 1787) "their in
sistent..•airs of superiority"?
General Charles de Gaulle loved to repeat "la France est la
lumiere du monde" (France is the light of the world), thus ex
tending to the whole country an attribute that had usually be
longed to Paris alone [The City of Lights ].
"Son genie est
d' illuminer l' Univers" (its destiny is to illuminate the
Universe), he also said, widening the scope of the French rayon
nement l radiance J to infinity..•.
Surely this urge to set themselves up as the universal paragon,
to consider all foreign things and people good or bad according
to their resemblance to and admiration for French models,...its
effort to force the world to acknowledge its supreme excellence
[Gen.
49:3
again] in all things at all times, and to adopt its
ways, ideas, styles, language, and tastes, its determination to
ignore or fend off all foreign influences have often made its
relations with foreigners sticky.
Along with their excellency (and professed excellency) , the French, ex
plains Barzini, are riven with regional, social and political divisions
which have made governing the country, at the national level, an arduous
task. This is the unstable factor which inhibited the attainment of true
national greatness reached by the British (who as Ephraim inherited part of
the birthright originally intended for Reuben--! Chron. 5:1)�
Charles de Gaulle tried to overcome this congenital weakness, manifested by
the revolving door governments in France after the war, by strengthening
the role of the Presidency. The constitution of the Fifth Republic worked
well--with him at the helm. (De Gaulle, notes Barzini, privately referred