Carton de Wiart on command and pre-war complacency

Carton de Wiart takes command of the second-line 61st Territorial Division, whose scattered units are training and trying to equip themselves during the static early war. Confidence in France hides the danger gathering on the continent. He admits that he imagined the Maginot Line stretching securely from frontier to frontier and did not understand that its end could simply be bypassed. He describes the French Army as suffering from *la cafard*, a collapse of spirit that modern equipment could not cure. He extends the diagnosis to French women without work and separated from husbands, sons, or lovers, treating their boredom as part of the national malaise. It is a sharply personal assessment of pre-war complacency: faith in an ally's apparent strength concealed both a physical gap in the defenses and a broader crisis of morale.