Word: tain
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...French Army's agony over. To Marshal Pétain's plea, sent to Hitler through their mutual friend, Dictator Franco of Spain whom Pétain had once taught the art of war, Adolf Hitler's reply was: drop your arms or be killed. He sent for Benito Mussolini to meet him in Munich to discuss matters on June 18 (125th anniversary of Napoleon's downfall at Waterloo). Surrender, not with honor but unconditional, was reported to be the German's ultimatum to France. Meantime, the war "for which France asked" would continue...
France fell, and as all men do in times of great disaster or triumph, each nation thought of its own. France's white-haired Marshal Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Jo seph Pétain thought of "those who have been fighting, true to their old military tradition, against an enemy of huge numerical superiority; ... of those old combatants whom I commanded during the last war; ... of the men and women on the roads, driven away from their homes." Amid thunder's boom and the crackle of lightning that made radios rasp, Frenchmen heard him ask for peace...
Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill flew again to Paris. No one needed to inquire what he had come to ask of Premier Reynaud, Vice Premier Pétain and the Generalissimo: could Weygand rescue the B. E. F.? It was probably too late to withdraw it by sea-any major part of it at least. Battle was joined and if disaster was at hand, nothing could prevent it from being the worst defeat that Britain ever suffered. While the leaders were facing that fact, Weygand excused himself, saying he had forgotten some papers, and nipped up two flights of stairs...
...High Command became inevitable. Prime Minister Churchill (who named the fight then raging "The Battle of the Bulge") flew to Paris for a meeting of the Allied War Council. Premier Reynaud announced that the moment had come for "a change of men and methods." He called Marshall Pétain, hero of Verdun, to be his adviser, himself took charge of the Defense Ministry...
Next to her " 'Tain't funny, McGee," the most reliable line in the weekly Johnson Wax act is the "deef" Old Timer's topper for Fibber's gags: "That's pretty good, Johnny, but that ain't the way I heerd it. . . ." The Old Timer...