Authors: Gertrude Stein
The French like variety, that is what makes them pleasant to live with. I like to think of all the forms of government they have had since the revolution until now, in very little over a hundred years I like to tease them about it, when they go solemn about their future. I tell them why worry when they have had such a record.
This is it.
In a little over a hundred years, they have had three different republics, two kinds of kingdoms, a commune, a dictatorship, and this present government of 1943, and yet they worry about what the next government is going to be. I say why worry, it can be anything and if it is it can change to anything else and after all what difference does it make except to the people in power. It certainly does not make any difference to anybody else ever, certainly not.
So after the Balkan wars, and as we had a Serb in the court, who was sensitive to noise, and a great patriot, and we knew a Bulgarian but that was later that was after the 1914–1918 war and he took care of my Ford car and we still know him, so after the two Balkan wars, and there will naturally be plenty more of them,
our dentist is a Serb and he wears his linen blouse with extraordinary elegance, the Serbs are like that, and so as I say the world war 1914–1918 began and the nineteenth century a very resistant strong obstinate and convinced of its service to humanity and progress was trying to be killed that is to say they were trying to kill it but could they. No. Not even by the 1914–1918 war, they could not and they did not and now it is dead Hitler killed it, and like a very Samson he fell down with it and was killed in its ruins. It is rather nice that, no wonder there are predictions that come out right like Saint Odile no wonder when everything is the same with such an intense variety. Including goats and chickens including Saint Odile said that there would be fighting in the streets of the eternal city and that would not be the end but the beginning of the end and after that all the countries that had been invaded would invade the Germans and the countries would then get back all that had been lost and a little more.
I liked that a little more, it was a woman’s thought, that they would need that consolation and that they would have it which they will. They will.
In the nineteenth century of course there were predictions but not important ones and if they were they did not make it be certain that there might be peace and no progress, peace and no progress that is what the twentieth century might do. Peace and no progress.
In the nineteenth century, there is the feeling that one is justified in being angry, in being right, in being justified. In the twentieth century it is not that it is right but that what happens truly happens.
Now in September 1943, just as the vintage is coming and grape juice is intensely sweet and pleasant, they can prepare for the beginning of the end and they do, the beginning of the end and they do.
But before that there is still the nineteenth century and the first world war, 1914–1918, and the witnesses of that war still can remember that war. I remember how amused we were when that
war was not yet over that in an American newspaper they once said, for those of us who can remember the beginning of the war. It is difficult to remember the beginning of the war when the war is beginning to end. That is the reason why really although everybody says that they are going to hang everybody who was not patriotic during the war actually the war being over everybody forgets. Kipling made a song about lest we forget, and the French clandestine press says that the French should be taught to hate. But if they could hate how could they make fashions, you cannot make fashions if you are always remembering and how can you hate if you cannot remember. Etta Cone said that she could forgive but not forget and Alice Toklas answered, I cannot forgive but I do forget, Well anyway, there undoubtedly was the first world war and we and many many other veterans went through it and some of us have a veteran mentality and some of us have not.
Incontestably the 1914–1918 war was a nineteenth century war just as the 1939–19— war incontestably is not. And the hopes and the fears, and the relation to finite and infinity of this war and the method of belief and unbelief, and the hope of progress and reform all these things are not nineteenth century not at all not now.
It is interesting. We have Basket II. He is a pedigreed dog, twenty generations are behind him and all of them German. The other Basket was unpedigreed and entirely French. And Basket II, we have a cat, the peasants who gave it to us had called it by a name Hitler because of his mustache and Basket had not been friendly with him but no matter. But now suddenly he chases him chases him away. Is it an omen. Some things can be an omen but is it.
And just as some thing can be an omen but is it, so now in 1943, there is nothing that is nineteenth century, not here in France, except what is here that does not belong here. Believe it or not it is true. But now to return to the nineteenth century, to the 1914–1918 war, and the way veterans feel. They feel disappointed, not about the 1914–1918 war but about this war. They
liked that war, it was a nice war, a real war a regular war, a commenced war and an ended war. It was a war, and veterans like a war to be a war. They do.
September 1943 they are harvesting their grapes to make their wine, it will be they all say a victory wine, and it is good in quantity and quality. They do not think of the future they only think of being free.
There is one thing that is certain, and nobody really realised it in the 1914–1918 war, they talked about it but they did not realise it but now everybody knows it everybody that the one thing that everybody wants is to be free, to talk to eat to drink to walk to think, to please, to wish, and to do it now if now is what they want, and everybody knows it they know it anybody knows it, they want to be free, they do not want to feel imprisoned they want to feel free, even if they are not free they want to feel free, and they want to feel free now, let the future take care of itself all they want is to be free, not to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered, they want none of these things they all want to feel free, the word discipline, and forbidden and investigated and imprisoned brings horror and fear into all hearts, they do not want to be afraid not more than is necessary in the ordinary business of living where one has to earn one’s living and has to fear want and disease and death. There are enough things to be afraid of, nobody wants to be afraid, just afraid, afraid of things people should not be afraid, they do not. This is true in October 1943, it is true. In 1914–1918, it was still the nineteenth century, and one might still think that something that would happen might lead one to higher and other things but now, the only thing that any one wants now is to be free, to be let alone, to live their life as they can, but not to be watched, controlled, and scared, no no, not.
Some one has just told me that in 1918, two little children had a vision that they saw the Virgin and she told them that the world was going to have a much worse war than the one they had just had, and when that came and the roads would be full of fleeing
people the Pope would be imprisoned in his house, the square of Saint Peter’s would be filled with a fighting multitude and the Pope all alone in his home would be sitting and weeping. That is what the Virgin told them.
I suppose in a kind of way what the nineteenth century really meant was that they believed in free will, they did not believe in the inevitable, and this 1939–1943 war makes people know that the inevitable is inevitable and that everybody wants to be free, and needs to be free, which really makes the present life an absolute realisation of the old scholastic arguments about free will, and necessity. The nineteenth century did not understand this, not even in the 1914–1918 war which tried to end the nineteenth century but since it itself did not understand it, it could not end the nineteenth century, but now now we all realise, the inevitable and the thirst for freedom, we all do.
It is all right, and a funny story. Everything is so logical, in this war, it was much more confused in the 1914–1918 one, and therefore the things one predicts are truer for this war than they were for that one. A German whom we know, and have known all this time, calls me the general, because I have been right about what has been happening, but that is only because this war is logical, more so than most wars, and I will tell you why.
As I said the grapes are being gathered to make the victory wine. It is funny anything is funny. The 1914–1918 war made everybody drink. There was never so much drunkenness in France as there was then, soldiers all learned to drink, everybody drank, and after war, and now in this 1939–1943 war, nobody drinks not here anyway not in France, the wine is all taken away and there is only enough even for the wine growers to have a bottle a day, they who used to drink anything from four to nine bottles a day, and those who are on the regular supply only have four bottles a month, and oh dear me, after all is it better or is it worse. It is pleasanter for the women and the children when men drink less undoubtedly pleasanter, and the men’s health is in general better, that is if they could have a little more meat and fats, well anyway
are they healthier or are they not anyway they want to be free, and not have the wine taken away from them. They want to be free.
Undoubtedly this war is more logical that is more inevitable than any other war. They say there have been surprises but actually there have not been surprises. It all has been inevitable so much more so than the 1914–1918 war so much more so.
The 1914–1918 war was just like our civil war, it was that kind of a war and that made it possible for Elmer Harden to make Pierre Caous admit that it was a nice war. A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war. The English are still feeling that there are nice modest heroes in this war but actually this war which is an interesting war is not a nice war, people are sacrificed and imprisoned, so many of them so very very many of them and in such very different ways, and there are so many that hide in the heather as it is called which may be anywhere, or not at all and the police who want not to arrest them get killed because they have to arrest them, and some are called one thing and some are called another thing, and everybody can change about what they call them and everybody does, and there is nothing to hope for, and yet it will end because it is inevitable that it should but nobody really can call it a nice war, not really, not really a nice war. The children play being taken to prison, and the children play the commandos in the heather, and anywhere from two years old they sit behind some one who is on a bicycle, and nobody pays any attention to them but they do not fall off not any of them, they hold on to whoever is in front of them and they go miles and miles like that because everybody has to go miles and miles in the hope of getting something to eat miles and miles, on foot or on bicycles. It is only the French who could make the bicycles last so long. They make noises all of them but they keep going that is somebody makes them keep on going and always with a very little child on behind the seat and holding on to the person in front of them. In 1914–1918 they did not do that.
To-day October 1943, I was very pleased to hear about somebody’s
troubles that had nothing to do with the war. It was like in 1916, when our servant was so proud of her brother who was dead having had a civil and not a military funeral. Our young servant was telling us to-day that in a working-class family it was better to have more daughters than sons. The son when he is little is not a help and when he gets older he is apprenticed to a trade and earns very little and then for a little while he contributes to the family purse and then he gets engaged to be married and he has to save for the marriage and then he gets married and that is the end, so if there are three or four boys and only two girls the mother has to go out working to help support the family and then has to come home and do all the house work and not get to bed until two o’clock in the morning, while if there are four girls and two boys it makes out very much better. The mother can stay at home and do the housework in the daytime which she does. It was pleasant listening to this which had nothing to do with war nothing at all, to do with war.
Sometime and every one is hoping it is going to be pretty soon now there will be everything happening and nothing at all to do with war.
It is the story that they all told last fall. They were talking people in a position to know and one of them said it was going to be over now, and they all said eagerly how do you know and he said very easily, my wife has had enough of it.
Yes everybody has had enough of it everybody’s wife and everybody’s husband and everybody’s mother and everybody’s father and everybody’s daughter and everybody’s son, they all have had enough of it.
In 1918 they did not all feel like that, there had been a great deal of it, a great deal of war but not everybody was fully simply naturally and uninterestedly tired of it, they all have had enough of it. That is all.
That shows the complete difference between the 1914–1918 war and this war, both world wars, but one did not end the nineteenth century it tried to but it did not succeed but this one did
or does. It does end the nineteenth century, kills it dead, dead dead.
There is another nice story that always pleases me, in a bus in Paris, there were on the back platform a German soldier and some Frenchmen and the soldier accidentally stepped on the foot of the Frenchman and he having sensitive feet hit out and hit the German, before anything more could happen a very little Frenchman at the completely other end of the bus came rushing and he too hit the soldier. They were all three taken to the police station, and the first Frenchman explained about his sensitive feet and how sorry he was he had made this instinctive action and he apologised and the soldier accepted the apology, and then the second and little Frenchman was asked why he had rushed out and hit the soldier. Well he said it was like this, I suddenly saw a Frenchman hit out and strike a German soldier and I said hello the war must be over let me go to it and I rushed forward and hit him. And now he said it was a mistake the war is not over.