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Colonialism and Neocolonialism 56
An exhausted, humiliated country, undermined by dissent, which, disgraced and
sulking, sinks deeper into hopeless wars and degrades itself a little more each day by
selling its sovereignty and then laying the sheaf of its freedoms at the jackbooted feet of
the military.
A paralysed country that is drowning in dreams and resentment. An arrested country
with an outmoded economy that had to wait until 1949 to renew its equipment and then
did so haphazardly without giving much thought to the markets which would absorb its
excess production. A stratified country, numb with mistrust and gloom, which constantly
repeated, not without self-conceit: ‘I have a date with History!’ and which has realized
that History had stood it up.
The Assembly? Pooh! It is made in the country’s image. If you want to change the
Assembly, then change the country first. And of course we can change the latter; all of
us, by getting at the root of its problems: for we are the country.
Understand that the greatness of a nation is not measured by the quantity of blood it
causes to flow, but by the number of human problems it solves; stop the hostilities
immediately, negotiate, reconsider the question of the associated colonies with their
representatives; win back our lost sovereignty and work towards the break-up of the
blocs, i.e. for peace; bring together all men of the left and reunite them on a jointly agreed
programme; stop the currency haemorrhage by giving France an economy which
complements the other European economies, encourage major industries to increase their
productivity, fight in every possible way to ensure that the increase of so much
production benefits the workers first and foremost, and – via the demographic movement
occasioned by economic restructuring – break through the strata that separate groups and
drive them into inert antagonisms; balance the redundancies that the rise in productivity
might bring by a programme of re-skilling, then, by a series of classifications and reclassifications,
reduce or even remove the conflicts of interest which divide the working
class; develop scientific, literary, artistic and political culture in the most underprivileged
social classes, etc., set up agricultural education, particularly in the Centre and South of
France, increase agricultural productivity in those regions by encouraging agricultural
communities, where the terrain permits, collectively to acquire motorized machinery etc.
In ten years, the face of France will no longer be the same: the tertiary sector, bloated
today, will deflate, the primary sector will reduce by a third, the secondary sector will be
more homogeneous and its standard of living higher. If we did that ourselves and if we
did it within ten years, we would perhaps be entitled to say without too much vanity that
France is a great country.
But if I am quickly sketching out the main lines of a programme, it is not to propose it
today. It is to ask of the republicans who will cast their vote for de Gaulle on Sunday: is
that the reason you are going to vote for him? Are you going to demand from him
housing, tractors, schools, a reorganization of the economy, an alliance pact with the
overseas nations? I already know that the answer is no.
So why should you expect from him what he has never promised? Why should you
claim you are voting for a programme when you are actually voting for the man himself?
You will reply that this man is capable in three years of carrying out more projects, and
more ambitious ones, than the Fourth Republic has done in thirteen. I would believe you
if I had the slightest proof. But your candidate is more famous for the noble stubbornness