The writer of newish blog ‘Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Republic’ notices the discrepancy between France’s loud calls for a strengthened UNIFIL force in Lebanon and the fact that they’re actually only sending 200 troops.
It reminded him of an earlier example of French military hubris:
As the flood of defeated Spanish Republican forces straggled over the border into France in 1939, a French officer sneered, ‘And this rabble calls itself an army!’
The source of such hauteur hadn’t counted on one of the Spanish Republicans understanding enough French to fire off a riposte:
‘We held off the Fascists for three years. How long will you last?’
In case anyone needs a reminder one of the largest armies in Europe – nearly a million men at arms organised into 100 divisions capitulated to the German forces on 25 June 1940, six weeks after hostilities began.