How shoddy Paris has become in the last ten years! Some Frenchmen point to the neon signs, the gaudy movie palaces, the automobile sales windows, the cheap bars which now dominate the once beautiful Champs-Élysées, and say: “That is what America has done to us.” Perhaps so, but I think it is what France has done to herself. France has lost something she had when I arrived here fourteen years ago: her taste, part of her soul, the sense of her historical mission. Corruption everywhere, class selfishness partout and political confusion complete. My decent friends have about given up. They say:
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