PRELUDE
I have secured for myself in this tempestuous academic climate a short-lived calm, within which I prioritized the publication of this very issue. As tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day, I felt it would be appropriate to honor both the subject of the occasion and the people who are so renowned for promoting that ethereal force that drives good men to do wicked things. For a more detailed discussion of the history of Valentine’s Day, see Quotidian vol. 1 no. 5.

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“We love what we should scorn if we were wiser.”
—Marie de France

“A woman is more responsive to a man’s forgetfulness than to his attentions.”
—Jules Janin

“In love, victory goes to the man who runs away.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

FEBRUARY 17, 1877: André Maginot, French civil servant and veteran of World War I, is born in Paris. Maginot is best remembered for his advocacy of the Maginot Line, a string of concrete forts built along the Franco-German border between 1930 and 1940.
               The Maginot Line was a product of post-WWI French thinking. France had suffered millions of casualties and immense physical damage to its landscape, as well as severe damage to its national psyche. There was general discontent with the Treaty of Versailles, as many felt Germany had gotten off too lightly. Others felt that Versailles was more like an armistice, and that war would eventually resume. Plans for the general defense of France became an official matter in 1919, when prime minister Clemenceau discussed various options with Marshal Pétain, head of the French armed forces. Three schools of thought emerged: (1) mimic the fortifications at Verdun, which had sustained little damage. The largest fortress at Verdun, Douaumont, had (continued on page 2, column 1)