Wars I Have Seen

  Well anyway the Spanish-American war was modern but it was completely nineteenth century, there was nothing but the question of sea power and whose sea power was it, we all read a book that told us it, but then we had known it anyway, because of Nelson, and now we were doing it again, and it was very exciting, we were all finding out about the difficulty of having to have two fleets a Pacific one and an Atlantic one, and we were all getting to feel that we were to be, well there it was still nineteenth century completely nineteenth century and we were not thinking about a twentieth century, and we were so excited that we were not realising that the nineteenth century was beginning to be over, not the least bit in the world. I was young then but I can still see those young men in San Francisco, those middle-western young men of twenty and twenty-one, with their undeveloped necks, their rather doughy faces, I see why they call them dough-boys, they are like that between twenty and twenty-one, they go to sleep anywhere sitting or standing, their heads and their mouths and their eyes can go to sleep anywhere, and open or not open, that is what it is to be twenty or twenty-one, and now here and now, it is just the same, the young of twenty-one, the young Frenchmen of twenty-one are all being deported to Germany, two came to see me to say good-bye to ask how I could encourage them and all I could say was try to study them and learn their language and get to know their literature, think of yourselves as a tourist and not as a prisoner, and they were worried and nervous and they said will the Americans like it if we think of them like that, sure I said all the Americans want is to make you free, and they said yes we know that. It makes me feel very very much like that, I used to say to any Frenchman or Frenchwoman who complained of anything, I said but every time I go out in the village of Bilignin there I see all your young men whatever is happening they are still there and that is everything that they are not gone. But now they are gone and going. Some of them betake themselves to the mountains others are conspiring, the son of our dentist a boy of eighteen has just been taken because he was helping and will he be shot or not. Oh dear. We all cry. But there is nothing to do but wait for us to come nothing to do. And they look so, I saw a train full of them, everybody was handing them up wine and bread, although nobody has much of it for themselves or to give them, and there they were with the gendarmes, going away. And they were awake then and pretty soon they will be tired out and go to sleep any way that it is possible to be sleeping, in a chair or standing or in any way.

  It is funny but my memory of those middle-western boys going out to the Philippines was that they were just like these French boys twenty and twenty-one going off to Germany, as deported and held away from every one. Dear me.

  So that was realism. Anything is realism but that certainly was realism.

  And it all made me remember the impression I have when I read Wyandotte or The Hutted Knoll which was about then, the shock I had in reading that book because for the first time I realised what it meant not to know whether any one was loyal to you or not, did they or did they not believe in you, were they interested in your interests and how can you tell. I had read laments of great men and many novels but in some strange way Wyandotte or The Hutted Knoll made me understand that you could think that some one was devoted to you and loyal to you and really not at all they were opposed to you and would if such a thing were necessary denounce you. And now and again in June 1943 it is happening all around one.

  Well in the first place Olympe who knows who her enemies are, and are they, could they become another thing or rather could those to whom she was loyal could she stop being loyal to them, could she want so much not to leave you and when she really did have it to leave you did she at the last hour turn against you so as to prepare her mind to be attuned to the other to whom she was going. Could she and did she. She did. Might she and would she denounce the first one the second one or any one or would she only prepare herself in case she had to do something and it might be that something and would any one she was leaving realise that she had not been very serviceable in fact that she had been rather useless although everything made any one think that she was perfection and almost saintly as a character. Dear me. It is like a detective story particularly as her sister Clothilde used a cheap enemy perfume to drown out the smell of onions and cooking on her and does it came to be known that she slept in her mistress’ room. Dear me dear me.

  How many mirrors there can be in a house when all the doors and the doors are many and very wide and tall are filled with mirrors and what a pleasure to see one’s self in them. Expectedly and unexpectedly what a pleasure.

  And now in June 1943 something very strange is happening, every day the feeling is strengthening that one or another has been or will be a traitor to something and what do they do they send them a little wooden coffin sometimes with a letter inside sometimes with a rope inside to tell them to hang themselves, and sometimes it is sent by post or by railroad and sometimes it is hung up in a tree and sometimes hung up in front of the front door. Oh dear me. When this you see remember me is what they mean because some of these people have told where young men of twenty-one were hidden, and it was not necessary to tell they just did tell and so somebody sent them a small wooden coffin. Of course they had to find a reliable carpenter to make the coffins but they did find him.

  So the Spanish-American war and seeing all those middle-western men in San Francisco, made me realise what realism is.

  Just to-night June 1943 I was out walking in the twilight in the mountain village of Culoz where I live now and my dog Basket was running around and a young man in working clothes said he is a nice dog but I have been whistling to him and he wont come. Oh I said you have to do more than whistle, you have to talk English and he said my father could and I could too once but I now have forgotten. And I said but how is that not that you have forgotten but that your father talked English, that he said is very simple he is an American, ah I said yes, he came to France in the last war as a soldier he married a Frenchwoman, he got a good job at Chaumont and he stayed, and in ’38 we intended to go away but my mother fell ill and we did not leave. And she, I said, oh she is dead, and he, oh he is in a concentration camp when America came into the war they came and took him, and you, we are four brothers and a sister, and the oldest is an actor in the Comedie Française and the second is a plumber and the third is head butcher in a camp of youth and here I am working for farmers and my name is Robert Nelson White and I looked as if I was not sure that all he said was so and he said here are my papers, they do not spell white right, but my name there is Robert White, I left out the Nelson all right. And it all made me feel a little funny anything these days these strange days can make you feel a little funny so I shook hands with him and we went up Basket and I up the hill and he Robert Nelson White went on down, down the hill.

  Now all that made me feel all the more how different was that Spanish-American war. I asked Robert Nelson White if his father was a Frenchman by blood, if his grandfather or grandmother either one was French but no he said he was always American his people never had been anything but American and his little sister of fourteen was at school and he and his brother had crossed the lines at night to come into the free zone and here he was.

  In the Spanish-American war romance was simple and realistic like the young Californians who went to the war and General King wrote novels about it and in one he said and I threw the bridle of my horse to my orderly Ned Hanford, and it was Ned Hanford and when he read these simple words, he had a thrill he always had a thrill. That was the way it was then in the Spanish-American war. It was then that they began to think about realism. The Red Badge of Courage by Crane, and any simple description of war as done by the Russians, later on a naval battle in the next war, the Russo-Japanese war, which described it just as it was not as it felt or looked. But anyway there they were they middle-western boys in San Francisco, and there was Chinatown and there was the French quarter, and there were the Lurline baths and there was everything that they never had seen before. It is always that way
in war, always.

  And now in June 1943, it is trying, there are so many sad things happening, so many in prison, so many going away, our dentist’s son and he was only eighteen and he should have been taking his entrance university examinations and he with others in a camion took shoes and clothes and weapons to give to the young men who had taken themselves to the mountains, to avoid being sent away and what has happened to him and to them. I have just met a very charming woman courageous and lives in an old castle and has five children and the youngest one is twenty-one and he has gone, she has never lost any money but life is always dearer and she and her children have worked very hard to keep their castle sheared their own sheep, and everything, and now she said, of course she would not mind Christian’s going away, that is to say not to mind if it were not the times are so uncertain and so troubling, and he is very sweet and he is big and tall and very winning and since he was born there have never been three months without their seeing him, never and now, well I said he hopes to come back for the vintage and she had clear eyes very wide open and she said yes.

  And all that makes one think more and more of the strangeness and the unreality of those middle-western boys who were naturally called dough-boys, being in San Francisco, and then going to the Philippines, when they got to the Philippines and back again I never saw them so I do not really know what happened to them, by that time we were all interested in realism in literature, and that kind of went on until 1938, when it was all over, there was an end of the nineteenth century and realism was the last thing the nineteenth century did completely. Anybody can understand that there is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter.

  During the Spanish-American war there were food scandals, and in the Boer war there were concentration camps where they had nothing to eat, and all that is natural enough. The concentration camps for the Boers excited us all, nobody knew then how everybody was finally that is everybody in Europe was finally not going to have anything to eat. There was famine in China even in Russia and there was famine in India and every one then in the time of the Boer war and before and after was very much excited about it but now here in 1943 not having anything to eat enough to eat, having what you can eat, buying eating black, that is black traffic, thinking about eating, everybody on the road bicycling or walking with a pack on their back or a basket in the hand, or a big bundle on the bicycle, hoping for provisions, somewhere in the country there would be an egg or something or something, and perhaps you will get that something. One day I was out walking, well naturally I had a basket and big prospects and hopes and I met a nice gentle little bourgeoise from Belley, and it was spring time and she had a very charming and quite large bouquet of flowers very beautifully arranged in her hand and I said what a charming bouquet of flowers, yes she said eyeing the bouquet carefully, yes, I have been in the country to visit some relations, and I had hoped, I had hoped perhaps for an egg, perhaps even perhaps for a chicken, and she heaved a little breath they gave me these flowers. They are very charming flowers I said, yes she said, and we said good-bye and went each one on our way. There are so many people in prison because they sell what they should not sell, and yet, well and yet, I met Roselyn I said you are looking very well, the restrictions do not seem to have had any effect on you, well said Roselyn, one finds things. Roselyn, I said, you indulging in black traffic, mais non, she said of course I would not, to find something is one thing, to indulge in black traffic is quite another thing. Explain the difference to me I said Well said Roselyn, to find is when you find a small amount any day at a reasonable price which will just augment your diet and keep you healthy. Black traffic is when you pay a very large sum for a large amount of food, that is the difference. And she is right that is a difference and we all all day and every day go about and in every way we do or do not find something that helps the day along. As Madame Pierlot said, you do not buy now-a-days only with money you buy with your personality. Jo Davidson used to say that you always had to sell your personality, but now it is not a question of selling it is a question of buying by personality. Nothing is sadder these days than people who never make friends, they poor dears have nothing to eat, neither do the indiscreet, and yet almost everybody does eat. Almost everybody, almost, it comes hardest on middle aged men, not women they resist better but middle aged men, without wine and cheese, they get thinner and thinner and thinner. We women of a certain age, we reduce to a certain place and then we seem to get along all right, but the middle aged men get thin, and thinner and thinner. Naturally those that had been fat. Oh dear me.

  So the Boer war was the first time we really realized that war made them thin that is the civilian population, it must have been true in the civil war, but at that time, there were so many pioneers and pioneers are always thin, and Boers were fat, and the Boer war made them thin just like that.

  I just heard a nice story about a farmer’s wife. She complained that her cow could not live because she had no hay. Some one who had a large house and a lot of land heard her and said I will give you two thousand pounds of hay that is a load of hay as a present if you will sell me every day a litre of milk. And said the farmer’s wife what will I do having so much less butter. No not at all said the farmer’s wife. The Boer war might be like that just like that and so is 1943.

  And so there was the Spanish-American war. So much happened in the Spanish-American war, to us and to me to the United States and to us, something to Spain too and to any Spaniard but then that was a habit, they always had these things happen in Europe. But with us although in a kind of a way in our short history it had very frequently happened still it was not a habit.

  To-day we were at Aix-les-Bains, end of June 1943 when this you see remember me, and in a kind of way it was different but in a kind of way it was the middle western dough boys in San Francisco. We were at the station it was the first of July and there were many trains and many people, on one track where our train should have been it was not. And then a train came along, all trains go very slowly now, the engineers are used up the track is used up and the coal is bad so therefore there are a fair number of trains moving they move at a walk. This train that came along and kept moving and did not stop had on it tanks and trucks which did not look very strong, as they were not armored and seated on them and seated in the open cars placed on trucks and seated anywhere were Germans all naked except a little trouser nothing on their heads and sitting there and the train went on slowly and all the French people were as if they were at a theatre that was not interesting and the train went on slowly and then our train came in and I got on it with my white dog Basket and the French people were pleased, Basket was the real circus, he was a theatre that they found interesting and they were interested and they said so, and nobody had noticed the train full of Germans except four young Frenchmen from the camp de Jeunesse and they like all young fellows of that age laughed, which reminded me of the dough boys in San Francisco, in the midst of the San Francisco public. Which ones. Those Germans.

  It is funny funny in the sense of strange and peculiar and unrealisable, the fact that so many are prisoners, prisoners, prisoners every where, and now Berard where we used to lunch is in prison, for black traffic, and an Alsatian and his wife and his son, because of the younger son who went to the funeral of his fiancée and on his way he was taken and he escaped and they were in prison and now they are out and he is in safety but where. Anywhere. And whole countries in prison and now we have a feeling that they who put everybody in prison are now in prison they feel themselves in prison, they feel imprisoned. They have just told us that our friends the American consul and vice-consul although in prison and are very free and amusing themselves and have flowers in their rooms and play tennis and send messages and make excursions. Oh dear me, when this you see, but after all, when this you see, and after all you
would imagine that with all that I would not any longer want to read mystery stories and spy stories and all that but not at all I want to read them more than ever, to change one reality for another, one unreality for another and so the Spanish-American war made us Americans conscious of being a world power, conscious of the school of realism, conscious of England being nineteenth century, with Kipling and the white man’s burden, was in a way for me the beginning of killing the nineteenth century, which is now not any longer dying but dead and the little coffins that are being sent to all pro-Germans are part of the funeral. French people like New Englanders like funerals, they are a peaceful occupation, nice and quiet, and certain. Ah say the French before all this we were so happy but we did not appreciate our good fortune.

  Realism.

  After all there has to be realism realism in romance and in novels and the reason why is this. Novels have to resemble something and in order that they do there must be realism. Of course all writers had had realism, writers and readers always have a realism, after all living is in a way always real, that is to say what one hears and sees, even what one feels is in a way always real, but the realism of the present seems new because the realism of the past is no longer real.