All these inexactitudes, however regretable and
damaging they may be, are a small thing beside the affir-
mation that General de Gaulle had contributed no more than
the late General Estienne with respect to the use of tanks.
For there we touch upon the essential cause of our defeat.
And there, again, I am on trial on the first count.
     Do you believe that the people of France will never
know that our high military authorities declared that a
continuous front, extending from the North Sea to Switzer-
land, is invulnerable and that the enemy could only cause
breeches in it that would be the more dangerous for him
the deeper they were?
     Do you believe that they will never know that General
de Gaulle declared to the contrary, that an armored corps,
the composition of which he defined, would be an instru-
ment suited for breaking, at a point, that continuous front?
     Do you believe that they will never know:
     1. That on March 31, 1935, five years before the 
German offensive of May 1940, I introduced in the Chamber
a counterplan establishing that armored corps?
     2. That I announced that the German army would pass
through Holland and Belgium, would above the Belgian army
aside on the Albert Canal, and would attack our northern
frontier, which the Higher War Council was refusing to
fortify?
     3. That we would be invaded by a German army composed