Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 23, 1992 TAG: 9203230153
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES J. KILPATRICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The New York Times reports that more than 100 prominent citizens, among them the wife of President Mitterrand, have endorsed a proposal to rewrite the stirring refrain. This is, of course, France's own business, but the matter is too grave to be met with silence. To arms!
It appears that the lyrics are not politically correct. Peace is in; war is out. In these socially anemic times it is unacceptable to say rude things of any nation, religion, ethnic group, fraternal lodge or baseball team. And "La Marseillaise" is most assuredly hateful to the Prussians.
Those of us who learned the anthem in junior high school were not fully aware of this. We just sang along with Mlle. Bonnard, the shapely young lady who had miraculously been imported to teach beginning French. The boys in that class were smashed on Mlle. Bonnard. When she said "Sing!" we sang.
But it is to digress. "Entendez-vous dans les campagnes mugir ces feroces soldats"? Do you hear the roar of those fierce soldiers? Right on! "Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras egorger nos fils, nos compagnes." At the tender age of 12, this was hot stuff. The fierce soldiers were coming right into our midst to slaughter our families. All right!
Then came the chorus. Not a kid in the class knew what it meant: "Marchons, marchons! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!" In official translation, that call to arms is a call "to drench our fields with the foe's tainted blood."
Tainted blood? "Sang impur"? These are racist words, words that are bound to hurt the feelings of any Prussian who may hear them. In a kinder, gentler world, marked everywhere by politesse, these sanguinary sentiments have no place. The Times reports that an alternative anthem is gaining support.
The alternative is the work of one Armand Thuair, identified as a "former fireman," who studied 175 national anthems and concluded, quite wrongly, that "France today is the only country in the world to have adopted and preserved a bellicose anthem."
In place of the call to arms, the fierce soldiers, the blood-drenched fields and the slaughter of innocents, M. Thuair proposes an anthem that fairly reeks of PC. It calls upon French children to sing together for liberty, O dearest liberty, and to raise their little voices in unison:
"Etre francais, ah! Quelle chance!" The Times translates this as, "Oh, how lucky we are to be French!" The anthem concludes, "Chantons, chantons, que nos chansons fassent taire tous les canons," which is to say, "Sing on, sing on, until our songs silence all cannons," a politically correct sentiment if we ever heard one.
Is "La Marseillaise" the only "bellicose" anthem? Of course not. Our own "Star-Spangled Banner" has some exceedingly ugly things to say about our British friends. We speak harshly of them as "the foe's haughty host." In the third verse, we are pleased to report "their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution." No refuge could save "the hireling and slave" from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave. Them's fighting words.
A few years back, Rep. Andy Jacobs of Indiana briefly sponsored a bill to scrap "The Star-Spangled Banner" in favor of "America the Beautiful." In a misguided moment I supported the gentleman's bill. My reasons were wholly pragmatic: Played in the usual key of C, the anthem is unsingable. Not one citizen in 10,000 can reach that high G with any assurance of getting there. We come to the "land of the free-ee" and we collapse with the wheezes and staggers.
On reflection, I abandoned my support of the Jacobs bill. I judge the gentleman also has abandoned his baby, for nothing has been heard of it lately. Let us pray the same fate will overtake the limp alternative proposed by M. Thuair.
For all its faults, "The Star-Spangled Banner" still raises the old goose bumps. In the form in which it usually is sung, it is the only anthem in the world that ends with a question mark instead of a bang-mark or period. Does our banner still wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? You bet. If the Brits and the Prussians are offended, quel dommage! In translation, who cares? Universal Press Syndicate
by CNB