A catalogue (and this book has been little else) of the reasons for such
remembrance has doubtless brought little comfort; indeed, it may have
brought some pain, because the recital of the reasons has but emphasized
the forgetting and accentuated the loss.
But is France not to find, in a fuller consciousness of what has developed
in that valley into which she led Europe, a higher satisfaction than could
have come through the formal relationship of mother and colony, or any
other that could be reasonably conjectured?
For Turgot's prophecy would have some day been realized, and there would
perhaps have been a bitterness where now there is gratitude. I can think
of no series of relations that could have been of more profound and
momentous import in the history of that continent, or that should give
higher satisfaction to France in her thought of America than that which
this summation permits us to recall once more.
France not only christened America; she not only stood first far inside
that continent at the north and furnished Europe proof of its mighty
dimensions; she also gave to this continent, child of her christening, the
richest great valley of the world.
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