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of champagne. He was very gracious, graceful, and all that. He was a man of great wisdom, perhaps moving a little more slowly than he had before, but still had great wisdom. I got the impression that he and the army were clean, clear of any scandal. A part of the reason they were was Marshal Petain's great cleanness and great honesty. I felt that he knew was about in the training of troops, that they didn't train their troops for parade purposes, but that they had a fine batch of fighting men, that the Maginot Line was inexplicable, that much of it could never be seen or told about. It was secret strength that wasn't going to be shown to anybody, and certainly not to me. Of course, I wouldn't have asked to see it. That would have been again lost on me, because I wouldn't have been any judge of it.
However, I gathered all that from that afternoon. I then had some other travels to make in France. Bearing all this in mind, and the great strength of the Maginot Line and the French army, I began looking at the French army more than I had and asking the ordinary man in the street when I was in a small town about the army. I heard over and over again, “Pfui! Pfui!” which meant, “They're fools. They're nothing.” I don't know exactly what it does mean, but it's always said with a
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