最後のペタン通り - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

JOHN TAGLIABUE “Both Hero and Traitor, but No Longer on the Map” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/world/europe/03petain.html

仏蘭西の白耳義国境に近いTremblois-lès-Carignan村の議会は、村内のRue Pétainを改名することを可決した。これで、仏蘭西からはペタン元帥の名を冠した通りは消滅することになる。

Tremblois has only three streets, and they are named for three French heroes of World War I: Marshals Ferdinand Foch, Joseph Joffre and Philippe Pétain.
The problem is that Marshal Pétain had a second act as head of state during World War II, when his administration in the unoccupied part of the country that was known as Vichy France collaborated with Nazi Germany in eliminating its enemies, notably the Jews.
So under pressure from the national government, veterans and Jewish groups, the council voted unanimously to drop the name Pétain from a little street about 600 feet long, renaming it Rue de la Belle-Croix, for a chapel that stands in a wood at its foot.

しかし、地元民は納得していない。この村の周辺は第一次大戦最大の激戦地であった一方、第二次大戦では殆ど戦火が及ばなかったという歴史的事情故に、村人にとって、フィリップ・ペタンは〈ナチスに協力してユダヤ人を迫害した売国奴〉というよりはあくまでも〈第一次大戦の英雄〉なのである。

World War I left deep scars in the village, which lies among the killing fields of 1914-18, near the Belgian border. It is a short drive from here to Verdun, where armies faced off for years in one of the war’s most calamitous battles. It is hard by the Marne River and Chemin des Dames ridge, where the slaughter of French troops in 1917 incited mutinies that only the calm but firm hands of Marshals Foch and Pétain put down.
Tremblois was leveled by shelling, save for a few houses and the church. A monument to the war dead — a statue of a French poilu, or doughboy, in bright colors — bears the names of 15 villagers, roughly 15 percent of the population then.
By comparison, World War II left the village relatively untouched. For Jean Ponsart, who was 13 in 1945, the principal memory is of the endless column of American trucks and tanks rumbling along Rue Foch, the main street, stopping now and then, out of precaution, but usually long enough to give candy to the village children.

それにしても、ペタン通りが米国にもあったということは知らなかった。勿論上海にもあったのだが（現在の衡山路）*1。
第一次世界大戦については、桜井哲夫『戦争の世紀　第一次世界大戦と精神の危機』を取り敢えずマークしておく。また、高山宏「クリティックなんて「プー」！　Ａ・Ａ・ミルン文学の「プー」ラドックス」（『ユリイカ』2004年１月号、pp.61-71）*2も。