The death of Lauren Bacall, the last of World War II’s pinup girls, reminds us of how far distant that era is becoming. The WWII generation of men and women failed to prevent the Holocaust, but their rhetoric and actions prevented Hitler from completing it. The contrast with today is palpable. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor but after the Fall of France, FDR used the analogy of lending a neighbor your garden hose if his house was on fire and thereby keeping the fire from spreading to your own house, to gain support for Lend Lease military aid to Churchill’s Great Britain. Now, the Conservative government of David Cameron—bowing to both public opinion polls and the Liberal Democratic Arab panderers in his own coalition—has conditionally barred arms sales to Israel in the event of any further hostilities with Hamas, thereby empowering the genocidal terrorist organization. FDR extended “a garden hose”—or lifeline—to an earlier generation of Brits. Now, the UK government offers the Jewish state a noose, inviting it to hang itself. For shame. In France, where the WWII Resistance—in whose ranks men and women like the great Jewish medieval historian Mark Bloch made a modern existential commitment and died fighting Hitler to redeem the honor of their country from Vichy collaboration—Christophe Barbier, the force behind France’s left-of-center magazine “L’Express”—has castigated Jews who leave France in response to the rising tide of Muslim-driven anti-Semitism “deserters” while castigated those who stay for assertive self-defense, support for Israel, and the ultimate sin of supports for Marine Le Pen’s ultra-nationalists. Despicable is too kind a word for Barbier’s betrayal of the highest values of the French Republican tradition that once rallied decent Frenchmen to free Captain Dreyfus but has now sunk so low. FDR denounced Mussolini’s attack on France in terms of “the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back” of its neighbor. Now, France—whose foreign minister talks of “imposing” a disastrous peace on Israel—has stabbed in the back the Jewish state it once supported. There are hardly words harsh enough to characterize this betrayal. One might take some comfort in the prophetic assurance that God will not be mocked, and today’s true deserters, some day in the not too distant future, will get their comeuppance.