The Chief of the Staff of the French Army (French: Chef d'État-Major de l'Armée de Terre, CEMAT) is the professional head of the French Army. The current Chief of Staff of the French Army has been General Bertrand Ract-Madoux since September, 1st 2011. The CEMAT title has been in use since 1962; prior to that the position for the general in charge of France's land forces was referred to as Chef d'État-Major de l'Armée. The modern form of a general staff for the French Army emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with Louis Alexandre Berthier being Chief-of-Staff for the Grand État-Major Général (Army General Headquarters) of Napoleon's Grand Armée.
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“Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men like himself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things.... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind.”
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“Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They’re inexpensive and easy to procure.”
—Robert Penn Warren (b. 1905)
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“I don’t see what for French Canadians to go to defend a bunch of Poles. I don’t get that at all. I don’t see what they mean to us. And they all one kind government much same like the other.”
—Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)