Civic Spirit

A citizen of France last week scolded his countrymen for letting their democratic spirit flag. The French nation, he said in a front-page editorial in La Vie Franc,aise, is the victim of a "degradation of civic spirit accompanied by the atrophy of the sense of collective responsibility." The French people, he added, "criticize the parliament and their institutions," yet millions of them abstain from voting. The result "one of these days" might be "an authoritarian regime." The man who wrote these words is King Louis Philippe's 44-year-old great-great-grandson, Henri d'Orleans, Comte de Paris, who might himself be King of France today if the democratic spirit had not intervened.

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