Flirting with French

I am reading an eBook (borrowed from Carnegie Library through OverDrive) called “Flirting with French” (by William Alexander).  Earlier this year I wrote a post of “Bill Gates is trying to take up French, so am I”.

I first downloaded a “sample”; I was sold when I read the following paragraph.

A rainy afternoon with my wife at a Left Bank brasserie, watching the city scurry home, the drizzly streets an impressionist canvas come to life.  Anne and I drunk on cold beer, on Paris, on love, happy as happy gets, neither of us speaking much, just enjoying the scene, and realizing how lucky we are to love the same things, and Paris, and each other.

This is not really a learning French book, but the author (an American) talks about French while touring France with his wife.  The following paragraph gives you a feel of it.  The blue/italicized words are French.

. . . even before tackling French I already knew a number of French words, in addition to petit and problème. How much of our vocabulary is shared with French?  To get an idea, take a stroll through an English garden (jardin), where you may find a fleur in bloom, perhaps an insecte perchè atop a rose, enjoying the soft petales.  Attention! Some of these plantes might be dangereuses, while others are quite     dèlicieuses. A quarter to a third of all English words come from French.

Albert Speer deserves no forgiveness: My letter-to-the-editor was published at Observer-Reporter today

On Monday (Dec. 7) a headline article reporting the story of a retired California University professor (Dr. Leonard Siegel) who corresponded with Albert Speer for 12 years after he was released from Spandau prison.  Professor Siegel also interviewed Speer for three days at Speer’s residence in Germany.

In my early days of reading WWII, I was of an opinion that Speer was a decent gentleman, among all the Hitler’s thugs, the likes of Goring, Goebbels, Himmler and Ribbentrop.  Many years of reading later, he became a sly, despicable and immoral figure.  He “escaped a death sentence by presenting a subtle and sophisticated mixture of self-exculpating [exonerating] and self-blame.”  (From Richard Evan’s The Third Reich at War.)  He obviously tricked the judge at Nuremberg trial to spare him from the noose.

Professor said Speer was “an avid gardener who turned a vegetable garden at Spandau Prison into an elaborate garden with paths, and a variety of flowers.”  He also showed the professor his garden as he did Hitler 35 years earlier.

Speer would have liked our garden, no wonder I “liked” this guy in my earlier days of reading.  Reading is to find the truth and beauty; the beauty of people, of mind and of language.  Truth is hard to come by especially reading the history.

Tantalizing 可望不可及: Reading history, learning English

“The ruins of the village of Vaux changed hands thirteen times during March, and yet the fort itself still lay tantalizingly beyond the German reach.”

The above quote is from John Keegan’s (a British military historian) The First World War.  It epitomizes the characteristics of the WWI: stalemate and attrition resulting in enormous casualties for nothing.

There is hardly a day went by without my learning of  how an English word is beautifully and effectively used.  “tantalizingly” here caught my attention.

“Tantalize” originates from Greco-Roman mythology. “Tantalus” was a king who for his sin was condemned to stand on Tantarus up to his chin in water that receded whenever he stooped to drink.  So “tantalize” means “to tease or torment by presenting something to the view and exciting strong desire but continually frustrating the expectation by keeping it out of reach”

The German force very much wanted the fort in Vaux and fought for it ferociously with tenacity and yet couldn’t get it.  可望不可及, so to speak. 

(Many English verbs turn into adjective by adding “ing” to it: ‘tantalize’ is a verb and’ tantalizing’ is adjective)

I was surprised to learn (from Charles) that “serendipity” evolves from an ancient fairy tale.  I bet few people are aware of the origin of “tantalize”.  While I am at “tantalize”, I might as well say something about “tantamount”.

The Lend-Lease is a Bill enacted by Congress, empowering the President to send war supplies to the allied countries fighting the Axis.  This Act was passed (3/11/1941) before America plunged into the war.  It greatly delighted Churchill, who reportedly said the Lend-Lease Act was “tantamount to a declaration of war by the U.S.”

“Tantamount to” is the same as “equivalent to”.

Churchill quoted Scripture with effect

Churchill was not a particularly religious man; he didn’t quote Scripture often, but when he did, it was done superbly.  The following is my favorite.  (One of his great-grandsons has a book with a title of “God & Churchill”.  I didn't read it, but after reading some of the review articles and based on what I have read, I feel there is some imaginative stretch.)

While Cairo Conference was being planned, FDR cabled Churchill that their “meeting place is known to enemy” and suggested moving to Khartoum.  Churchill thought Cairo well protected and cabled FDR, “See St. John, Chapter 14, Verses 1 to 4”; the passages are:

Let not your heart be troubled:
Ye believe in God,
Believe also in me . . .
I go to prepare a place for you.

No sooner had the cable sent out, than Churchill began to regret, as he was afraid that people might be thinking he was so grandiose that he thought he was Jesus.  FDR agreed with Churchill’s plan in no time.

We heard the following in his first speech to the Joint Session of Congress on December 26, 1941, a bit over one year before Madame Chiang Kai-Shek did.

As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable will-power, salvation will not be denied us.  In the words of the Psalmist, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.”  Not all the tidings will be evil.

Churchill was hesitated to quote the Scripture in the speech and mentioned his concern to FDR, who gave his approval; at which time Churchill was living in the White House.

Historian Arthur Marder wrote, “A stream of memoranda, virtually ultimata, issued from the Private Office covering every aspect of the war at sea and leaving the recipient in no doubt as to what the First Lord [Churchill was the First Lord of Admiralty during WWI and WWII] wanted.” These memoranda became irreverently known as the First Lord’s Prayers because they frequently opened with “Pray inform me . . .” or “Pray why has . . . not been done.”

In the old days “pray” was often used, instead of “please”.

Churchill’s first speech as the Prime Minister through BBC on May 19, 1940 is known as “Be Ye Men of Valour” as it was concluded by quoting 1 Maccabees 3:58-60 in Apocrypha.
Today is Trinity Sunday.  Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.  As the Will of Gods is in Heaven, even so let it be.” (1 Maccabees 3:58–60)

By teh way “ye” is the plural form of “thou”.  I think this is from Hebrew Bible written at the time after the conquest of Judea by Alexander the Great.  But one doesn’t need to know the story behind it to appreciate how good a quote for the occasion.

Did Madame Chiang Kai-shek conduct sexy and seductive diplomacy?

I was hoping to learn some modern Chinese history by reading Hannah Pakula’s The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of modern China, but I was disappointed as I have my doubt about some of the material she used.  As the New York Times Book Review said of the book, “Pakula uses no source in Chinese and offers little evaluation of the ones she does use.”  Pakula is no historian; she may not have the professional training to evaluate the material she uses.

In the book Pakula was making a case that Mme. Chiang and Wendell Willkie had an affair and even a one-night stand when Willkie visited Chongqing in October 1942.

After losing to FDR in his Presidency bid in 1940, Willkie traveled the world representing FDR.  He was a very respectful and influential political figure, advocating Lend-Lease (a 1941 Act by Congress, empowering the president to send war supplies/money to the allied countries).

Madame Chiang understandably wanted to charm and woo such an important figure from USA, from whence their war supply and money came.  But the book portrays her as a seducer and that she wanted to come to USA with Willkie.  When Gardner Cowles (a publisher, who accompanied Willkie on the trip) told May-ling that she could not come to the States with Willkie.  May-ling scratched her long fingernails down Cowles’ cheeks, so deeply that the marks remained for a week.   Sensational story if it were true.

In Hannah Pakula’s The Last Empress, we read the following paragraph (at Cairo Conference),

May-ling, who was wearing a black satin sheath dotted with yellow chrysanthemums, continually arranged and rearranged her feet in order to give glimpse of what Brooke called “the most shapely of legs” via the long slits in her skirt. “This caused a rustle amongst those attending the conference,” he wrote, “and I even thought I heard a suppressed neigh come from a group of some of the younger members!”

The following paragraph is from William Manchester/Paul Reid’s The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm 1940-1965 Volume 3 (Churchill’s biography).  Paul Reid, using Manchester’s material after the latter was stricken by stroke, to complete the book.  Manchester was a respected historian, who apparently felt Alan Brooke’s diary (Churchill’s right hand man—Chief of Staff during WWII) was credible and trustworthy.

Madame Chiang, who spoke perfect English, translated for her husband, leaving Brooke with the impression that Madame “was the leading spirit of the two, and I would not trust her very far . . .The more I see of her the less I like her.”  Not so the other staff officers, whose collective breathing almost stopped when Madame’s “closely clinging dress of black satin with yellow chrysanthemums displayed a slit which extended to her hip bone and exposed one of the most shapely of legs.”

In the Volume V (Closing the Ring) of Churchill’s The Second World War, with which, I feel, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Churchill wrote about his impression of Mme. Chiang during Cairo Conference (Nov. 1943).

I had a very pleasant conversation with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and found her a most remarkable and charming personality.  I told her how much I had regretted that we could not fix an occasion for a meeting at the time when we had both been in America together, and we agree that no undue formalities should stand in the way of our talks in the future.  The President had us all photographed together at one of our meetings at his villa, and although both the Generalissimo and his wife are now regarded as wicked and corrupt reactionaries by many of their former admirers, I am glad to keep this as a souvenir.

In the Volume IV (The Hinge of Fate) of Churchill’s The Second World War, we read why Churchill and Mme. Chiang did see each other when they both were in America (also in 1943).

On this weekend was discussed the question of my meeting Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who was making and extensive tour of the United States.  She was at this time in New York, and intimated that she would be glad to receive me there.  Amid the pressure under which we were working and in the few days that remained before I must leave I did not feel able to make so long a journey.  The President therefore invited the lady to lunch with him to meet me at the White House.  The invitation was refused with some hauteur.  Madame was of the opinion that I should make the pilgrimage to New York.  The President was somewhat vexed that she had not adapted his plan.  It was my strong desire to preserve the unity in the Grand Alliance, and I offered to go half-way if she would do the same.  This offer was however considered facetious, so I never had the pleasure and advantage of meeting this lady until the Cairo Conference.

In Hannah Pakula’s The Last Empress, we read the following conversation between Churchill and Mme. Chiang, (so far I cannot verify this conversation indeed happened.)

Churchill: You think I’m a terrible old man, don’t you?
Mme. 
Chiang: I really don’t know.  You believe in colonialism and I don’t.
Churchill: Now tell me what do you think of me?
Mme. 
Chiang: I think your bark is worse than your bite.