Lament for an Ally

No better friend of France ever lived than Sir Robert Gilbert Vansittart, who for more than a generation in the British Foreign Office fought valiantly for Franco-British solidarity. When Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in 1937 and set out to appease the dictators, he kicked Sir Robert upstairs from his post as Permanent Under Secretary to a vague something called Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Secretary. Winston Churchill brought him downstairs again as one of his key advisers. Last week, as the French colonial armies and fleet joined the Petain Government in surrender (see p. 32) 59-year-old Sir Robert could no longer contain his sorrow. He expressed it, as many an Englishman would, in a letter to the London Times. The letter was a poem whose title embraced the years of the Entente Cordiale:

1904-1940

Was I not faithful to you from the first?

When have I ever failed you since my youth?

I loved without illusion, knew the worst,

But felt the best was nearer to the truth.

You were indulgent, too, and open-eyed

To the shortcomings I was frank to own.

So we were mingled, destined side by side

To face a world we could not face alone.

Did you keep faith with me? When all was well,

Yes, but I clave to you when all was not.

And, when temptation touched your citadel,

Your weakness won again, and you forgot!

Forgot yourself, and freedom and your friends,

Even interest; and now our vaunted glow

Becomes a blush, as the long story ends In sorry separation at Bordeaux.

You hate me now; you will not hate me less

If I go on unshaken by your fall,

If for your sake, devoid of bitterness,

I face the world without you after all.

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