Marine Le Pen's Response to the "Generals' Letter"

Marine Le Pen’s response to “the Generals’ letter,” Valeurs actuelles (23 April). English translation of the initial letter available here. The republication of the letter in V.A. on 21 April seems to have been largely responsible for the scandal: it had been up on Place d’armes for a week by then, but to less effect. “The Generals” were to respond to Le Pen on 24 April.

Representatives of every army and every specialism, you have signed an open letter, “For a Return to Honour for Our Leaders.”

Your initiative, rare in the military machine, testifies to the degree of disquiet that you feel faced with the worrying deterioration of our country’s situation. The observations that you present, uncompromising but fair, and the strength of the terms you use amount to a public intervention that, given your status as signatories, nobody can ignore.

With the courage of those who have sworn their lives for the Fatherland, you call our leaders directly to account, whose responsibility you quite legitimately target, calling them to find the lucidity to act and even, you say, to find “the way of honour.” [In fact this phrase does not appear in the letter.]

As a citizen and as a political woman, I subscribe to your analyses and share your pain. Like you I believe it is part of the duty of all French patriots, whatever their origin, to stand up for the recovery and even, let us say, for the salvation of the country.

The one difference I permit myself is to think that an exhortation cannot suffice to rid this failing power of its bad habits.

The very recent statements of the President of the Republic on his project to “deconstruct the history of France” shows us, in fact, that these destructive tendencies are the result not of a moment of carelessness but of political direction driven by fundamentally corruptive ideological considerations.

The concerns you express with such courage cannot remain at the level of an expression of indignation, however powerful. In a democracy this requires the search for a concrete solution which must be made concrete in a cooperative project to be validated by the suffrage of the French.

This is the purpose of my political career, and of my candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic with the objective of a Government of National Unity.

Already many senior bureaucrats and personalities of civil society have rallied to the cause. I invite you to join our action to take part in the battle which is beginning, which is a political and peaceable battle, no doubt, but which is above all the battle for France.