World: Theirs to Reason Why

“Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black robes or surplices, cloaks and clerical bands, never seek to use authority where it is only a question of reason.”

Doubtless, Voltaire would have included the khakis and braided caps worn by French Army officers. If he’d had his way, the army would be a loose assemblage of carping individualists, all obeying’ only their own inner dictates. One would not expect such reasoning from Charles de Gaulle, supreme authority figure of modern French history. Yet the Old Soldier has now issued an edict that requires every soldier to reason why before he blindly follows orders that “constitute crimes and infractions against the state’s security, the constitution or public order.”

Perhaps De Gaulle was recalling the days when his generals mutinied against the Republic in Algeria (1961) and succeeded in getting junior officers to carry out their orders. To prevent such actions in the future, General Fernand Gambiez and others have spent three years rewriting the French military code. In one of the new provisions, a soldier may refuse to punish prisoners and civilians by “cruel treatment, torture and threats.” Indeed, he may be court-martialed for obeying illegal orders.

Though its drafters hail it as a “civilizing influence on the Army,” some of De Gaulle’s military colleagues were not so elated. Retired Air Force General Pierre Gallois suggested that the new provisions are fine but not “for soldiers at war.” Another veteran officer imagined a situation where “a pilot of a Mirage IV [French nuclear bomber] receives an order to throw his bomb on Square 88, refuses until he has a guarantee that in his sector is neither a school, a hospital or a church.”

Other French troops may have been more disappointed with a provision of the new code that allows them to smoke a pipe and carry packages while walking in uniform but forbids them to offer an arm to a girl.