From an open letter to French president Jacques Chirac, by Bob Millington, in 
his June 16 column in *The Age*, a Melbourne, Australia, newspaper.  In June,
Chirac announced that France would resume its nuclear testing program by 
staging a series of underwater explosions in the South Pacific.  [Reprinted in 
the November *Harper's Magazine*.  Sorry for the lack of diacritical marks.]

Mon cher Jack:

Je suis a bit fromaged off avec votre decision to blow up La Pacifique avec les 
Frog bombes nuclears.  Je reckon vous must have un spot in La Belle France 
itself pour les explosions.  Le Massive Central?  Le Quay d'Orsay?  Le Champs
Elysees?  Votre own back yard, peut-etre?

La guerre cold est fini, Sport!  Votres forces militaires need la bombe 
atomique about as beaucoup as poisson need les bicyclettes.

Un autre point, cobber.  Votre histoire militaire isn't tres flash, consisting, 
n'est-ce pas, of batailles the likes of Crecy, Agincourt, Poitiers, Trafalgar, 
Borodino, Waterloo, Sedan, et Dien Bien Phu.  Un bombe won't change le 
tradition.  Je/mon pere/mon grandpere/le cousin third de ma grandmere/la plume 
de ma tante fought avec votre soldats against La Bouche in World War I (le Big 
One).  Have vous forgotten?

Reconsider, mon ami.  Otherwise in les hotels et estaminets de l'Australie le
curse anciens d'Angleterre -- "Damnation to the French" -- will be heard autre 
temps.

Votre chums don't want that.