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very good talk with the Prince de Broglie, walking with him in the garden after coffee. I said something to him about this. He said, “You must have observed that the French people are very disunited. The modern rebellions that we are having are rebellions made because we never tasted the fruits of our revolution.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, “the French made a great revolution. It was based upon the same principles that the American Revolution was based upon. It was based upon the highest eighteenth century concepts of the rights of man, the meaning of freedom in human life and affairs. By one device or another the French people never tasted the fruits of that revolution. Now you, in your country, have enjoyed the fruits of that revolution. So the basic philosophical principles have come to be common ordinary things to you. You hardly appreciate what the rights of man are because you have them. So you never give them a second thought. But in France we are still dealing in words and not experience.”
I said, “Well, how did it happen?”
“Ah,” he said, “my dear young lady, have you not noticed that it was the beginning of the rise of financial management pushing out feudalism. Feudalism was really over before we made our revolution. It
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