M. Larteguy's argument, revolutionary though it is meant to sound, is a familiar one. If anything, that is its strength: The Centurions is a call for a radical defense of the old values. The Communists have remembered what we have forgotten; if we rededicate ourselves to the ideals of strength, independence, self-reliance, we can destroy them and thereby save ourselves. Indeed, we will have saved ourselves by the rededication itself.
Larteguy is probably right on military grounds. The day of Napoleonic Grande Armee has passed; the French experiences discussed in The Centurions prove it, and the United States is learning the same thing today in Viet-Nam.
But his contention that a revolutionized Army is the key to a new Revolutionary France is wide of the mark. Sartre's contrary theory of involution--that the desperation and violence of the Army is corrupting whatever survives of a healthy France--is, I think, more accurate. Perhaps Larteguy is just when he blames domestic decadence for the impotence of the Army in the colonies; but he does not convince me that it can and must therefore save France.
In fairness, I should say that I doubt anybody could sell me on such a theory. But if anyone could, it certainly wouldn't be Larteguy. The problem, as I suggested above, is that The Centurions is a very bad novel. Larteguy has allowed his venomous feelings towards France and his intoxication with the military to overwhelm his book.
Harvard Crimson, 1962
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