Resistance is Fertile

Toward the end of her excellent biography of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade(Madame Fourcade’s Secret War), the courageous woman who led France’s largest anti-Nazi resistance organization during World War II, Lynne Olson quotes the beginning of the unofficial anthem of the French resistance:

Friend, do you hear
The dark flight of crow
Over our plains?
Friend, do you hear
The muffled cries
Of a country in chains?

It is a poignant stanza that, sadly, has deep resonance in our day. And Olson ends the book with a very concise description of what brought the members of the French underground together, what helped them save the soul and honor of France: “a refusal to be silenced and an iron determination to fight against the destruction of freedom and human dignity.”