Emmanuel Macron has provoked a row by ordering that ceremonies in France marking the centenary of the end of the First World War next month must avoid commemorating it as a military triumph.<\/p>\n
Sixty heads of state and government including US President Donald Trump are to attend ceremonies in Paris on\u00a0Armistice\u00a0Day, November 11.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The French president will make a speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe.<\/p>\n
But Mr Macron\u2019s office said an \u201coverly military\u201d ceremony would risk offending the French, who now view the First World War as a \u201cmass slaughter\u201d rather than a glorious victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An Elys\u00e9e Palace source said: \u201cThe combatants were mainly civilians who had been armed.\u201d About 40 million soldiers and civilians died in the four-year conflict.<\/p>\n
Mr Macron decided to downplay the November 11 commemorations communicated to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who agreed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However his decision is likely to disappoint President Trump, who was so delighted to attend the Bastille Day military parade in Paris on July 14 that he announced plans to introduce a similar event in the United States.<\/p>\n
The French President was keen to avoid any homage to Marshal P\u00e9tain, a French hero of the First World War who is reviled for his later role as head of the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War.<\/p>\n However he sparked a furious row on social media. Michel Goya, a historian and former infantry colonel, accused him of \u201cinsulting the soldiers of 1918\u201d.<\/p>\n B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Ch\u00e9ron, a military historian and author, said the Elys\u00e9e was making a faux pas.<\/p>\n However, General Bruno Dary, head of the committee in charge of the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, said that even without a large-scale military parade, \u201cthe military dispositions will be the same as in previous years\u201d.<\/p>\n Mr Macron was criticised in August for failing to interrupt his holiday to join Theresa May May and the Duke of Cambridge at a ceremony in Amiens, his home town, on the centenary of a battle that marked the beginning of the end of the First World War.\u00a0<\/p>\n The British Government\u00a0 has been invited to attend and will send a "senior Government minister", the Foreign Office said last night.<\/p>\n Last night spokesman said: \u201cThe UK Government has been invited to the\u00a0Armistice\u00a0centenary commemorations in France and a senior government minister will attend.<\/p>\n \u201cThe UK has worked closely with France and Belgium throughout the four-year Centenary commemorations and ministers have regularly attended commemorative events.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will confirm attendance and further details for these events in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n Royal sources said it was likely that the Queen, with the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be at the Cenotaph.<\/p>\n Instead more junior members of the family such as the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester or the Duke and Duchess of Kent are likely to attend.<\/p>\n Lord Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff from 2006 to 2009 who has sat on the UK Government\u2019s World War One advisory board since 2013, welcomed President Macron\u2019s tone.<\/p>\n He told The Daily Telegraph: \u201cTriumphalism, victory, those sort of notions are inappropriate. …\u00a0<\/p>\n "There is no need for jingoistic reaction at all and for Macron to be just coming to that conclusion now shows he is a pretty inexperienced politician.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emmanuel Macron has provoked a row by ordering that ceremonies in France marking the centenary of the end of the First World War next month must avoid commemorating it as a military triumph. Sixty heads of state and government including US President Donald Trump are to attend ceremonies in Paris on\u00a0Armistice\u00a0Day, November 11.\u00a0 The French…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT\/\u00a0AFP\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n