A Birthday Wish for France

A look back at a moment of tragedy and the triumph of liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Poet and French Resistance leader René Char (1907-1988).

The short piece below was first published by The Wall Street Journal not long after the July 14, 2016, terrorist attack that killed 86 men, women, and children in Nice, France. As the AP described it, “thousands of people had packed Nice’s famed boardwalk on the Mediterranean coast to celebrate Fra…