FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF…

On a word

Marshal Joffre, having gathered the academicians, had them lined up, reviewed them and, in a clear voice of command, told them: "Defeatist?... What's that?... Don't want that, me, in the dictionary... Scrongnieugnieu... Not French, that word!"

Thereupon, the academicians complied and the word "defeatist" was crossed out with a stroke of the pen... or even a stroke of the quill. This way of building a dictionary is both new and original.

Napoleon claimed that the word "impossible" was not French. Marshal Joffre is a type in the same vein as Napoleon, except that, if he knew Austerlitz, he is ignorant of Waterloo and Saint Helena. But he does not realize that despite the Emperor, the banned word is, all the same, in the dictionary.

So the term "defeatism" and its derivatives will not be hospitalized in the great machine of these gentlemen at the end of the bridge. We must draw, from this great act, all the useful consequences. If defeatism does not exist, it is because there are no defeatists, that there have never been defeatists, that the defeatists are pure legend. And it is then permissible to wonder how it was possible, during the great war of Law and Justice, to pursue, imprison and even shoot a bunch of people labeled defeatists, whose main quality was not to exist.

It is hardly useful to emphasize that the purely military decision of the marshal leads, in all justice, to the revision of multiple trials where so-called "defeatists" met with imprisonment and death. Because, let us reason a little. Either defeatism is a word that means something, and then Marshal Joffre is very imprudent. Or Marshal Joffre is right, defeatism is non-existent, and the unfortunate condemned are victims of singular judicial errors.

It is likely that the marshal did not expect such conclusions. Neither did the academicians. But there is worse. If defeatism is removed from the French language, it goes without saying that the word "defeat" cannot survive it. There is no defeat. There can be no defeat for good French people.

I open the dictionary, not the one from the Academy. I read: Crécy, defeat suffered by the French... Poitiers, defeat; Rosbach, defeat; Waterloo, defeat... Oh! No! We will have to change all that. We will have to erase from the dictionary the terms: Crécy, Poitiers, Rosbach, Waterloo, etc. We will even have to destroy the monuments that commemorate them. The towns and villages that bear these names will have to be razed. No defeats. More defeats, a thousand bombardments! Or else let's shake up the definitions. Let's write, for example: "Waterloo, "reverse victory" or "approximate victory" or "battle with negative results".

Did Marshal Joffre think about all the new horizons he was opening up for us? The problem he has just posed is, quite simply, formidable.

But, by the way, can the word "sleep" and its derivatives: "sleep, somnolence" or its equivalents: "roupiller, dormir, ronfler, en écrou, etc.", reasonably take their place in the dictionary of the Academy?

SIRIUS.