2522 ([return])
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, 1.346 (letter of June 21, 1792).]
2523 ([return])
[ Buchez et Roux, VIII. 25 (session of the National Assembly, Nov.10, 1790). Petition presented by Danton in the name of the forty-eight sections of Paris.]
2524 ([return])
[ Buchez et Roux, XIV. 268 (May. 1792). Article by Robespierre against the fête decreed in honor of Simonneau, Mayor of Etampes, assassinated in a riot: "Simonneau was guilty before he became a victim.">[
2525 ([return])
[ How can one forget that great seducer of the masses Hitler? In his book "Hitler Speaks" page 208 Rauschning reports Hitler as saying: "It is true that the masses are uncritical, but not in the way these idiots of Marxists and reactionaries imagine. The masses have their critical faculties, too, but they function differently from those of the private individual. The masses are like an animal they obeys instincts. They do not reach conclusions by reasoning. My success in initiating the greatest people's movement of all time is due to my never having done anything in violation of the vital laws and feelings of the mass. These feelings may be primitive, but they have the resistance and indestructibility of natural qualities. A once intensely felt experience in the life of the masses, like ration cards and inflation, will never again be driven out of their blood. The masses have a simple system of thinking and feeling, and anything that cannot be fitted into it disturbs them. It is only because I take their vital laws into consideration that I can rule them.">[
2526 ([return])
[ Moniteur, XII. 254.—According to the royal almanac of 1792 the Paris national guard comprises 32,000 men, divided into sixty battalions, to which must be added the battalions of pikemen, spontaneously organized and composed, especially of the non-active citizens.—Cf. in "Les Révolutions de Paris," Prudhomme's Journal, the engravings which represent this sort of procession.]