Although he did not refer to de Gaulle in the speech, his name was explicitly raised twice in the subsequent debate by two left-wing opponents of Reynaud’s bill: Léon Blum and the Communist leader Maurice Thorez. They deplored any return to the theories of the offensive that had been so costly in 1914: ‘all that is missing are the red trousers,’ declared Thorez in reference to the red trousers worn by French soldiers as they marched to their deaths in 1914.43 De Gaulle, who presented himself as a modernizer of the army, was depicted as a throwback to the past.
