All those words to simply state that this once proud nation has absolutely nothing in the last several generations to be proud about?
Sometimes an inferiority complex is perfectly justified!
Every time the subject of France comes up I have to restrain myself because I have so many fond and sentimental memories of the place.
But then I think of that little little man, from a tiny has-been country, lecturing the Eastern Europeans about "manners".
The gall! pun intended