“The Man of Character” as “Born Protector”: Magnanimity, Justice, and Moderation in de Gaulle’s The Edge of the Sword

If we wish to uncover the authentic or fuller de Gaulle, the man who lay behind the public de Gaulle who burst on the political scene on June 18, 1940, we must scrutinize closely de Gaulle’s own anticipatory self-portrait of the man of character, a portrait sketched, as we have noted, in The Edge of the Sword and limned briefly in the conclusion of Vers Varmée de Métier.