Paris has been looking like a war zone a few days before hostilities began. The city has emptied of its inhabitants; in some places, fences have been erected along the streets. At all hours of the day and even night, police cars and vans are rolling in from everywhere, sirens blaring. Metro stations have closed their doors. To get from one place to another, you have to get a pass.
Anyone who landed from the moon would think, given this spectacle, that Paris was on the eve of a bloody battle. However, according to the latest news, Germany was still hesitating to cross the Rhine while the advance of the Austrian armies had been stopped at Montélimar. As for the Russian army, since its breakthrough near Sedan, according to the latest information gathered from the general staff, it was waiting for reinforcements from the second infantry battalion to go on the offensive. But for the moment, all was calm on the Eastern Front.
Who would have imagined that the simple organization of the Olympic Games would lead to such upheaval, such security debauchery? To be honest, one would think Really witness the preparations for a fateful battle, one that determines the course of history. Imagine that there is 10,000 soldiers deployed in Paris and the surrounding area! We thought we were celebrating sport, but we found ourselves immersed in the atmosphere of a Napoleonic campaign or on the eve of a general mobilization.
Who knows if tomorrow, first thing in the morning, recruitment offices will not open all over the capital? Unless we are invited, with loud sirens, to find refuge in the cellars of our buildings and other makeshift shelters. Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris Olympiad! Olympiad by itself, Olympiad by its people with the support of the armies of France, with the support of all of France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the true France, of the eternal France.
It must be said that all this mess would never have happened if Paris had been content to organize its opening ceremony at the Stade de France. But no, through some sort of patriotic megalomania, our Olympic Games had to be unlike any other. After all, we are France, not Bangladesh or England. We are the world’s beacon, its North Star, its sextant, its compass, its guide. We weren’t going to be content to see delegations running around an athletics track like idiots, no sir, in France we think big, we think hard, we see far, very far even.
This is how we decided to privatize the Seine to make it the setting for a ceremony that promises to surpass in beauty and grandeur anything that has ever been conceived by the human mind. On Friday, France has a date with its age-old genius. It is as if through this ceremony, France were seeking to reassure itself about itself, to find in the form of a nautical parade material to embrace the entire century. To regain its place among the greats of this world.
And after all, why not? France, for a thousand reasons, occupies a special place in the concert of nations. France never does anything like the others. For better or for worse. It gave the Revolution to the world, it was the only European nation to sign an armistice with the Nazi invader and to collaborate actively with him. In France, everything is done to excess, in a kind of panache that can annoy as much as amaze. French arrogance is not a myth, it is sometimes a flamboyance of the spirit that provokes the admiration of everyone, it is often the demonstration of a misplaced pride where one can guess, between the lines, a malaise, a need to dazzle in order to be better loved.
The Olympic Games should be a celebration of innocence regained. Of universal brotherhood. Of the reunion of humanity reconciled with itself. Alas, for a long time now, they have been content to be a sort of trade fair with increasingly excessive ambitions, a race for gigantism where we no longer know very well what we should admire, the exploits of the champions or the dizzying deployment of the security forces.
We would like to be able to attend competitions, hands in pockets, carefree and free as a bird. It is quite the opposite. We must show our credentials, show authorizations, be searched, walk among soldiers armed to the teeth, be vigilant at the slightest movement of the crowd. A kind of modern-day madness where pleasure is only given to those crazy enough to endure a thousand inconveniences.
But I have to leave you, it’s getting late.
Before going to bed, I still have to polish my rifle, check my gear, make sure everything is in order.
Tomorrow the mother of all battles begins!
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Source: www.slate.fr
