Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a facade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder: “Well, he’s French.”
The Agreement being concluded, no response is expected. On the other hand, the Czech government must send its representative to Berlin this very day, by 3:00 p.m. at the latest (it is now 3:00 a.m.), to attend a meeting of the commission responsible for enforcing the Agreement. On Saturday, a Czechoslovak official must also appear in Berlin to settle the details of the evacuation. The diplomat’s tone hardens with each command that he utters. In front of him, one of the two Czech representatives bursts into tears. Saint-John Perse, irritated by this, and as if to justify his own brutality, adds that the situation is beginning to get dangerous for the whole world. He’s not joking!
Thus it is a French poet who pronounces, almost performatively, the death sentence of Czechoslovakia, the country I love most in the world.
65
At his hotel in Munich, a journalist asks him:
“But, Mr. Ambassador, in the end this agreement must be a great relief, no?”
Silence. Then the Foreign Office secretary sighs:
“Oh yes, a relief… like when you do it in your pants!”
This belated truthfulness, coupled with a clever joke, is not enough to salvage his reputation. Saint-John Perse acted like a big shit. Or, as he would have said—with the ridiculous affectation of a stuffy diplomat—an “excrement.”
66
67
Chamberlain, on a balcony in London: “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.”
68
Krofta, the Czech foreign minister: “They have put us in this situation. Now it’s our turn; tomorrow it will be their turn.”
69
Out of some kind of childish pedantry, I have scrupulously avoided using the most famous French quotation to come out of this whole sad affair. But I can’t not cite Daladier, who after getting off his airplane, cheered by the crowd, said: “Oh, the fools! Those fools, if they knew what was coming…”
Some people doubt whether he actually spoke these words, whether he had enough clarity of mind, or enough wit. In fact, this apocryphal quotation became widely known because of Sartre, who used it in his novel
70
Churchill’s words, spoken in the House of Commons, are distinguished by their greater perceptiveness and, as always, their grandeur:
“We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.”
(Churchill has to stop speaking for some time while he waits for the whistles and shouts of protest to die down.)
“We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude. The road down the Danube Valley to the Black Sea has been opened. All those Danubian countries will, one after another, be drawn into this vast system of power politics radiating from Berlin. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning…”
Not long afterward, Churchill sums it all up with his immortal phrase:
“You had to choose between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor. You will have war.”
71
(FRANTISEK HALAS)
72
On the half-corpse of a nation betrayed, France went back to belote and Tino Rossi.[4]
