Today's Date:

Former Ministers,
Member of Parliament,
Mister General Secretary,
Ambassadors,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear friends,
Dear Jim,

I am greatly pleased that we all are gathered here today to pay homage to Jim Hoagland, surrounded by his family. Many of you have crossed the Atlantic to take part in this moment of friendship: that is an unmistakable sign of the attachment of those closest to you, Jim, and it is, in my view, a striking demonstration of a great quality you have, and that is loyalty.

Beginning with loyalty to your birthplace, the South. Only someone who has never heard you speak with emotion of your South Carolina will fail to be moved by a desire to dis-cover the Southern United States whose praises you sing so well. It was there that you were born, in Rock Hill, there that you earned your first degree in journalism, at the University of South Carolina, and it is there that you return regularly to remind yourself of your roots, you, for whom Washington, like most of the world’s capitals, has no secrets.

Shaped as you were by the American South, you were entirely prepared to understand and love the French South, where you chose to study in Aix-en-Provence, spending an entire year there, until the summer of 1962. In doing so, your choice was already worthy of a con-noisseur, electing as you did to go to one of the most beautiful and welcoming of France’s university towns. To it also you have been loyal, since it was there that your son chose to study before going to Paris.

You consider your encounter with France to have been an “existential culture shock”. All at once, you discovered in France literature, philosophy and film: “a whole new world” as you like to say. Your idols of the time were travelers such as Saint-Exupéry, Aznavour and Jacques Brel, personalities as diverse as Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot and Raymond Aron, Albert Camus and Edith Piaf, all symbols of the culture of our country. Since that time, you have never ceased to further your knowledge of Francophone culture in memory of that stay in France which, I believe, left its mark deep within you. You have no hesitation in saying that you became an “adult” with this change of continent, language and culture.

Your encounter with France was also political. 1961-1962… it was at this time that you discovered General de Gaulle, Pierre Mendès-France and … as you sometimes tell your friends … Poujadism. Surely it was this initial experience of France that enabled you to un-derstand and to analyze so subtly the France of today?

Looking at your career, once again its most striking feature is loyalty, the loyalty that led you to stay at the Washington Post for 40 years. You have seen many hours of glory and many unexpected events at that great newspaper that some have called “the conscience of the Nation”. You yourself have given it a great deal: you joined its staff in 1966, covering, as tra-dition dictates, local affairs for the “most influential of local newspapers”. But very soon, the call of far horizons proved stronger and you found yourself in Nairobi in 1972, as the Post’s Africa correspondent, then in Beirut, covering the Middle East. Next, it was Paris for your first experience in France as a journalist, which was, fortunately, not to be the last, and from where you covered the whole of Western Europe. In 1979, you returned to Washington as foreign editor and it was there, a few years later, that I had the pleasure of meeting you – as did many here today – when I myself had the privilege of serving two of our ambassadors to the United States with all those you know so well and who are your friends to this day.

The attraction of Paris was still strong enough to draw you back in 1986, when you started your twice-weekly column, which you continue today and in which you chronicled, from Europe, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the rise of China and issues in the Middle East and the Gulf.

You returned to Washington in 1990 just in time, if I may put it that way, for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the First Gulf War. You have continued since to chronicle interna-tional affairs from there, interviewing the greatest world leaders, winning their trust and es-teem. I can testify to that of the Head of State, whom you have met on a number of occasions since 1995.

Dear Jim, the excellence of your work is universally recognized. The exceptional award of two Pulitzer Prizes stands as testimony to the fact: the first was awarded to you in 1971 for the best international reporting in a ten-part series on South Africa under apartheid, a country that continues to be important to you and on which you were later to publish a book, “South Africa: Civilizations in Conflict”. Your second Pulitzer in 1991 honored your qualities as commentator for alerting public opinion to the expansionist designs of Saddam Hussein and seeking to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since then, you have continued to take a passionate interest in those subjects.

Another example of the lucidity of your judgment came in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, when we read the following words penned by you: “The United States is engaged in a shadow war that must now be the central priority for this president and his ad-ministration for every day of his term”. Rereading this text, one asks oneself, dear Jim, if it is you who can read the minds of others or if others take their decisions only after having read what you have written. I do not know what the President of the United States of America would say about that, but whatever the truth, what talent you have!

From the entire span of this brilliant career in journalism, I would personally pick out the special interest and subtle understanding you have never ceased to show for Europe and for France. Where Europe, and more specifically the construction of Europe, are concerned, the American media rarely take a deep interest in this area and, let us be honest, even more rarely do they understand it. Your tireless curiosity and subtlety of analysis, free of all preju-dice, stand out as all the more remarkable. Your contribution to mutual understanding and the rich diversity of transatlantic links is all the more indispensable.

As for France, rarely has an American commentator shown such an appetite for every-thing French, including the most sophisticated of internal political struggles. There can be little doubt that the months to come will bring “grist to your mill” and although you are on occasion critical of France, I wish to say here today that you have always criticized in good faith. You have never succumbed to the temptations of ridiculous “French bashing”, which at times some of your colleagues across the Atlantic have unfortunately been unable to resist; likewise, a good many commentators on this side of the Atlantic have great difficulty in re-sisting the easy option of misunderstanding the reality of America. While we may on occa-sion, sometimes wrongly but not always, rail against inaccuracies and outrageous comments on France, when we do so we do not of course, dear Jim, have you in mind. We have some-times disagreed, but it has invariably been in the context of an honest intellectual and political debate, with full mutual respect.

In a country like our own, I will end with what is of the essence: the understanding of France, the loyalty to our country that goes so far as to make of you a lover of Bordeaux and Bourgogne. And, when you married Jane, and it is with pleasure that I salute her presence today at your side, you chose no other date than July 14 for your wedding.

It is that loyalty, the meticulous care you have continually taken in knowing and un-derstanding France that I am particularly happy to honor today by bestowing upon you France’s highest honorary distinction: the French Legion of Honor. Jim Hoagland, “on behalf of the President of the French Republic, I present you with the insignia of Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor”./.