In 1912, on the eve of World War I, the French Minister of War, Adolphe Messimy, attempted to modernize the French army's uniforms, which since before 1830 had been a combination of bright reds and blues set off by flashy red trousers. The British and the German armies had already switched to uniforms of browns and grays more fitting to the necessities of modern warfare with its rifles that could shoot accurately over many hundreds of yards. The French military, however, bitterly resisted Messimy's attempted reform. It felt that the army's prestige and honor were at stake. One witness at the parliamentary hearings on the matter, a former Minister of War himself, exclaimed, "Eliminate the red trousers? Never! Le pantalon rouge c'est la France!" Some years later Messimy observed, "That blind and imbecile attachment to the most visible of all colors was to have cruel consequences." (See Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, 55.)One hundred years later, it is easy to smile at this "quaint" story taken from an era when war and honor were still synonymous terms, but one cannot help but observe how frequently churches and their leaders adhere to the outmoded ways of thinking and behaving, crying out with fervor, "Le pantalon rouge c'est la France!" "True believers" of all stripes, indeed, are particularly prone to a "blind and imbecile" attachment to the past because they assign eternal consequences to every word they utter and belief they cherish.
