"How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? Nobody knows – because it's never been done yet."
That joke was making the rounds at a political conference in Washington this weekend. It is a cruel and unjust jest. As Margaret Macmillan writes, in Paris 1919, 1.3 million Frenchmen – one out of every four between 18 and 30 – died in the Great War (1914-1918), and twice as many were wounded fighting successfully to defend Paris.
The French must have bought some of his books.