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They were able to do that kind of thing. They had a personal daring and brilliance that would make up for many other things. However, he was in doubt as to whether they were as strong in their defenses as they believed they were.
I talked to Bullitt about all this twice. I, of course, withdrew my position that they were weak, disunited and would fall to pieces if anybody gave them a good blow, and that their army wasn't as good as it was cracked up to be. My friends around the Department of Labor in France to a certain extent corroborated these observations that I had made. Their inspectors get around. They know what is going on among the people. Of course, they were impressed by the bitterness and general antagonisms between the employers and workers in the heavy industries. That would be the first thing they would tall you. That was so clear and so marked that they felt that was a great weakness. I never, of course, asked the people in the Labor Department how they thought the French people would behave in a war, because all Frenchman would say that they would be wonderful, and so they were.
They would have been wonderful if they had had a gun to fight with. I had brokenhearted Frenchmen tell
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