In (their excellent)
The Age of Federalism, Elkins and McKittrick write
Though Americans in general, over time, have probably tended to be better informed about France than the French about America, the difference has been mainly one of degree. They have in their way been just as distracted in their interest and attention as the French have been regarding them.
Americans' most ardent responses to France have come at times when the French were supplying their deepest needs: ministering to their self-esteem and nourishing their very uncertain sense of national identity....
(Page 306, and see also note 2 to Chapter VII, on "the copy of Elizabeth B. White's excellent
American Opinion of France from Lafayette to Poincare, published in 1927, which sat on the the shelves of the Smith College Library for nearly fifty years with its pages uncut ... [and] E. Malcolm Carroll's
French Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs, 1870-1914, which contains not a single reference to the United States...")
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