GAULLE Charles de. Autograph manuscript, [Leçons de la Grande Guerre, ca. 1930]; 47 fol. Manuscript of an unpublished article on the lessons of the 14-18 war. In it, De Gaulle continues his analysis of La Discorde chez l'ennemi, of which this text could be an abandoned conclusion. He would develop the themes of this article in his works Le Fil de l'épée (1932) and Vers l'armée de métier (1934). The manuscript, which has been carefully cleaned up, contains large passages crossed out in blue pencil. It is written in black ink on the front pages, with a few additions on the facing versos. "The Great War was not a war of armies, it was a war of peoples". After this opening sentence, a long passage is crossed out in blue: "The peoples clashed with all their military, moral, political and economic might. It was not so much by breaking the will of the enemy's command as by destroying his means that the great Allies managed to seize victory. They won it only from the day when the peoples they were fighting lost hope and the will to triumph, when the amount of moral and material suffering imposed on the central peoples exceeded their capacity to suffer. On that day, the weapons fell of their own accord from the hands of the vanquished. At home, political fury, social hatred and mortal weariness suddenly burst the dikes where discipline and patriotism, cemented by hope, had until then contained them. It was through the Revolution that the unchained masses expressed their desire to end things at any cost. Disorder and revolt swept through the armies. The military rout was imminent. It had already begun. Only capitulation to the mercy of the victor could stop it. The enemy capitulated..." De Gaulle continued: "This new form of war did not change its essence. As in the past, it remains a clash of wills; a clash of national wills, rather than just a clash of military wills. As in the past, it is ideas that lead the war. As in the past, these ideas are not improvised: they emerge at the moment of crisis only after a long, patient effort. We are going to study how the two main adversaries, France and Germany, conceived and developed the ideas that dominated their actions during the Great War between 1871 and 1914"... The text is divided into four parts: I General points, II From 1871 to 1889, III From 1889 to 1905, IV From 1905 to 1914. And de Gaulle concludes: "A new period of peace has begun for France. How long will it last? Perhaps only a few years. Happier than our elders of 1871 to 1914, we will have to work in the ranks of a victorious army, the most powerful army in the world. We will not have to face the difficulties and bitterness that they so often experienced. May their example be with us! They were good and loyal workers in a sometimes thankless task. It is from their efforts in peacetime and their sacrifices in wartime that France has cemented the edifice of its Victory.