One of my brothers-in-law just sent me a list of funny anti-French quotes, which he suggested that his daughter, who is learning Spanish, send to her French-studying classmates.
They were all the usual stuff about the French as surrender monkeys. I have stopped having a sense of humor about them because they are so one-sided. 
So, we Americans are all heroes, and the French are cowards? This is what I wrote back.
France lost 1,400,000 soldiers in World War I out of a population of about 60 million. [Update: Johnny and Celine both pointed out that in 1914, the French population was 40 million, not 60 million. Think about that proportion.] If the U.S. had lost as many soldiers proportionately as France, World War I would have cost 3,200,000 soldiers' lives. For every 100 soldiers in that war, France lost more than 10 men, the British 5.1 men, the U.S. 0.2 men.
Citizens killed in the war in ratio to the total population and in parentheses, in ratio to the military population, in percentage: France 3.55% (17.3%), Britain 1.36 % (11.6 %), U.S.A. .04 %, ( 1.4%)
Almost the entire war was fought on French soil for four and a half years. Go to Verdun some time. A million men died there.
After we go through a trauma like that in our own country, then we can point fingers at France for being "cowards."
The photo is of the war remembrance list from World War I in Lehon, a tiny village in Brittany. These are the 36 young men who died from this one village, with its single street and two shops.
Thanks for a great blog (you do have regular readers out there, even if they don't comment much), and an especially great post. It is really sad and moving how even the tiniest village in France always has an "aux nos morts" monument from WWI.
As an American living in France, I can certainly understand the exasperation that Chirac and co. can cause Americans. But this "French are cowards" stuff does not fly with me at all, either. There are some things that you shouldn't joke about. Good job.
Posted by: liza | 07 November 2006 at 19:36
Perspective is necessary, especially by US citizens.
Posted by: deb | 07 November 2006 at 21:17
Thank you for this post. I always feel sad when someone (usually an American who never been to France unfortunately) is saying the French are coward.
We have spend centuries to fight with our neighbors and I think we just want a peaceful environment for our children. We know how precious life is. That's how and why the European Union has been created. So many people of our family have been impacted one way or an other by the wars.
The WWI was the most deadly (by the way, there was only about 40 million French in 1914)
The WWII was so "inhumaine". I am very sad regarding the sentence "surrender monkey" because one of my grand-father was forced to work in a German farm, the other one was fighting in the "Vercors"
Posted by: Celine | 07 November 2006 at 22:14
I have a son who is Hispanic, a French son-in-law, a Vietnamese granddaughter and an African American granddaughter. It feels like the world we live in is smaller every day.
I find it sad that these tiresome and untrue lists still get circulated.I wish we as people would get as excited about the positive aspects of other cultures, but I guess it's just easier to perpetuate the same old negative information and give it new life with our younger generation.
I for one, am weary with hearing about it, but I guess it isn't going to go away.
(I will do my part by trying to enlighten the small circle where I do have some influence)
Keep on writing your blog, it always makes me think!!
Posted by: nancy | 07 November 2006 at 22:56
Correction: France lost 1,400,000 soldiers from an entire population of 40 million, not 60 million (that is their roughly their population today). Therefore the casualty to population ratio was even higher during WWI.
Posted by: Johnny | 07 November 2006 at 23:00
moreover, there were not only 1400000 dead men, but also 900 000 'infimes de guerre' when WWI was over (don't know how to translate that)
All these 'gueules cassées' and infirms were for years and years a living proof of the horrors of war.
From Sedulia: In other words, almost a million men badly wounded as well as 1,400,000 men dead, in a population of 40 million.
Posted by: mimi | 10 November 2006 at 10:31