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Yesterday was a big one, and today's quiz in class will prove it (we have a great group of listeners and questioners this year, once again). For the moment another quick note. June 8 is another in the sequence of big June days we've seen of late. Today in Paris and across the land is the day to remember the 100,000 French soldiers who died in Indochina -- that's Viet-Nām to some of us. Our visit yesterday took us to the village of Clemenceau and de Lattre. All his life Clemenceau believed that militarism for conquest was a crime. He opposed every single war - and there were many - where his nation pretended to establish Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in foreign soils. He thought those values would spread through other means. Many of his allies were pure pacifists - not him. He also believed any price must be paid to protect the homeland. Clemenceau was a thinker and fighter. A generation later, de Lattre was born. He was a fighter, and he fought -- both against the Nazi's and then in Viet-Nām. He died in 1952, not of wounds but of cancer. It was de Lattre's son who died in the field of honor fighting for liberty in Viet-Nām. He was among the 100,000 honored today in this nation's capital.
