Béatrice Ouin a chevalier

I made a quick dash to Paris and back this evening to be present at the ceremony at la Maison de l’Europe where one of our most active French members, Béatrice Ouin, was awarded the rank of chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. I was much struck, in Béatrice’s characteristically humble speech, by her observation that members of her generation (which is also, more-or-less, mine) have been among the luckiest individuals in mankind’s history: no war, no poverty, no discomfort, potable water on tap, food on shelves, healthy children and grandchildren, long life expectancy, good health care, and so on. What, she asked implicitly, are we giving back, we who have had the great good fortune to be born in ‘the West’ in the late 1950s or early 1960s? What, indeed?