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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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that you thought that the French were prepared to fight, that no aggressor would gain a step, that France was the great barrier bulwark of the western world. How do you figure it out? I've been going around France and I just don't feel that. Frankly, Bill, this is the way it strikes me. If anybody gave France a good push with a fist, she'd go all to pieces and fall.”

“Oh Frances!,” he said, “that's crazy. That's not true at all. France was never stronger.”

I said, “I don't know how to judge military strength and I don't even know how to judge political strength. I realize that. But I'm an experienced social investigator. I do know how common ordinary, rather poorish people live, how they feel and how they react. I have been around France and that's the type of people I've talked to. That's the kind of entre I've made. That's what I've tried to see. From what I get from the, what they do as well as what they say, I don't think that they would stick together. I don't think they would be loyal, and I don't think they would fight in time of any real trouble.”

“Why,” he said, “I don't know where you've been, what you've seen. That's perfectly ridiculous. All the observations I've been able to make, all the observations I've gotten from other people - and I've gotten





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