De 'Gaulle
Sir: Patrick Cosgrave's contribution to the decline of The Spectator continues, I notice. On one point at least, he does not misinterpret me in his. review of De Gaulle the Warrior. I do regret that my work was divided into two volumes, if only because I knew it would expose me to the kind of misleading nonsense Mr Cosgrave .writes. That his remarks are malicious and envy-ridden must, I suppose, be accepted as part of the hazards of be
ing a serious and productive writer. But his distortions do call for comment.
Much of the review is devoted to volume two, to which Mr Cosgrave does not appear to have had access. This enables him to assume that I have not dealt with ,De Gaulle's intellectual background, and in particular with his i)iterest in raison d'citut (yes, we have ...beard-of -Machiavelli). In fact, there is a good deal about the intellectual background even in volume one, which the reviewer does not seem to have read beyond the Preface, and several pages (263 at seq) are devoted to de Gaulle's decision to have the leading • Vichy collaborator Pucheu executed, for a raison d'etat.
Mr Cosgrave says that I offer a controversial view of de Gaulle's contribution to the theory of mechanised Warfare; then that I side with the Gaullists rather than with Mr Alistair Horne in the controversy about de Gaulle's ideas; and finally (all in the same paragraph) that I decline to sum up "almost as though he were ignorant of the existence of the debate." In fact, 1 do deal with the controversy (pp. 61-66); and I do sum up. Moreover, I do not side with the Gaullists: p.64 opensthus:" To understand de Gaulle's contribution to the theory of mechanised warfare and to see, it in proportion, the first essential is to clear the mind of the legend carefully manufactured by the Gaullist mythmaking machine during the second world war."
The reviewer alleges that I tell readers little about the internal stresses within the French military system. In fact, these stresses permeate the first 100 pages of my work.
For Mr Cosgrove to call my carefully constructed book " ramshackle" is, I suppose, a mere impertinence --unless he is not familiar with the meaning of the word. He is entitled to his view that only Frenchmen can write about de Gaulle convincingly, but the fact is that no Frenchman (even the admirable J.-R. Tournoux) has yet written a full biography of de Gaulle (unless one has just appeared while I wasn't looking); even de la Gorce, in De Gaulle entre deux Mondes, only takes the story up to 1964, and omits anything likely to give offence to the Gaullist establishment. It was therefore up to an 'Anglo-Saxon' to do the job. If Mr Cosgrave finds the result unsatisfactory (for a priori reasons, since he plainly has not read the book), the answer is simple: let him have a go.
Brian Crozier 199 Piccadilly, London WI
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