I came away meditating yes they were American boys but they had a poise and completely lacked the provincialism which did characterise the last American army, they talked and they listened and they had a sureness, they were quite certain of themselves, they had no doubts or uncertainties and they had not to make any explanations. The last army was rather given to explaining, oh just anything, they were given to explaining, these did not explain, they were just conversational.
Then more troop trains came along and we took apples down to them and we talked to them and they talked to us and I was getting more impressed with their being different, they knew where they were and what they were and why they were, yes they did, they had poise and not any of them was ever drunk, not a bit, it was most exciting that they were like that.
The last American army used to ask questions, why do the French people put walls around their houses what are they afraid of what do they want to hide. Why do they want to stay and work this ground when there is so much better land to find. This army does not ask questions like that, they consider that people have their habits and their ways of living, some you can get along with and others you can’t, but they all are perfectly reasonable for the people who use them. That is the great change in the Americans, they are interested, they are observant, they are accustomed to various types of people and ways of being, they have plenty of curiosity, but not any criticism, that is the new army. It was all very exciting.
Then one day down at the station, it was raining, I saw three American soldiers standing, I said hello what are you doing, why we just came here, they said, to stay a few days. I laughed. Is it A.W.O.L. I said or do you call it something else now, well no they said we still call it that. And said I what are you going to do, just stay a few days they said. Come along I said, even if you are A.W.O.L. you will have to be given some tea and cake so come along. They came. One from Detroit, one little one from Tennessee, one big young one from New Jersey. We talked, it seemed somehow more like that old army, their being A.W.O.L. and deciding to stay here a few days. They came back with me, and we talked. They were interested, Tennessee said honestly he was tired of ten inch shells, he just had had enough of ten inch shells. The other two seemed to be just tired, they were not particular what they were tired of, they were just tired. We talked and then in talking to them I began to realise that men from the South seemed to be quite often men who had been orphans since they were children, the men from Tennessee and from Arkansas seemed to tend to be orphans from very young, they were members of large families and the large family once having been made, they promptly became orphans, I also began to realise that there were lots of pure American families where they were lots of brothers and sisters. The last army seven to eleven in a family was rare, but now it seemed to be quite common. Not emigrant families but pure American families. I was very much interested. And now the difference between the old army and the new began to be so real to me that I began to ask the American army about it. In the meanwhile the three A.W.O.L.s after moving into the village and then moving out and then moving in again did finally move out. They came to see us before they left, they did not say where they were going and they said it had been a pleasure to know us.
In the meanwhile, five M.P.s had come to stay in the station to watch the stuff on the trains and see that it did not get stolen, and with these we got to be very good friends, and they were the first ones with whom I began to talk about the difference between the last army and this army. Why is it, I said.
They said, yes we know we are different, and I said and how did you find it out. From what we heard about the other army, that made us know we were very different, I said there is no doubt about that, you don’t drink much I said, no we don’t and we save our money they said, we don’t want to go home and when we get there not have any money, we want to have a thousand dollars or so at least to be able to look around and to find out what we really want to do. (Even the three A.W.O.L.s felt like that about money.) Well I explained what one used to complain of about American men was that as they grew older they did not grow more interesting, they grew duller. When I made that lecture tour in ’35 to the American universities I used to say to them, now all sorts of things interest you but what will happen to you five years hence when you are working at some job will things interest you or will you just get dull. Yes said one of the soldiers yes but you see the depression made them know that a job was not all there was to it as mostly there was no job, and if there was it was any kind of job not the kind of job they had expected it to be, you would see a college man digging on the road doing anything and so we all came to find out you might just as well be interested in anything since anyway your job might not be a job and if it was well then it was not the kind of a job it might have been. Yes that did a lot, they all said, it certainly did do a lot.
Yes said one of the younger ones even if you were only kids during the depression you got to feel that way about it. Anyway they all agreed the depression had a lot to do with it.
There is one thing in which this army is not different from that other army that is in being generous and sweet and particularly kind to children.
They are sweet and kind and considerate all of them, how they do think about what you need and what will please you, they did then that other army and they do now this army.
When our M.P.s had got settled completely in their box car I used to go down to see them, and one day one of the mothers in the town told me that her nine year old daughter had been praying every single day that she might see an American soldier and she never had and now the mother was beginning to be afraid that the child would lose faith in prayer. I said I would take her down to see the American soldiers and we went. Naturally they were sweet and each one of them thought of something to give her, candies chewing gum, one of them gave her one of the U.S. badges they wear on their caps and one gave her a medal that the Pope had blessed in Rome and given to the American soldiers. And she was so happy, she sang them all the old French songs, Clair de la Lune, The Good King Dagobert and On the Bridge of Avignon.
Then as we were going home I said to her, about that chewing gum you must chew it but be careful not to swallow it. Oh yes I know she said. How do you know that I asked oh she said because when there was the last war my mother was a little girl and the American soldiers gave her chewing gum and all through this war my mother used to tell us about it, and she gave a rapturous sigh and said and now I have it.
More Americans came to stay at Culoz station, this time railroad workers and it became natural to have them there, natural for them and natural for us. They used all of them to want to know how we managed to escape the Germans and gradually with their asking and with the news that in the month of August the Gestapo had been in my apartment in Paris to look at everything, naturally I began to have what you might call a posthumous fear. I was quite frightened. All the time the Germans were here we were so busy trying to live through each day that except once in a while when something happened you did not know about being frightened, but now somehow with the American soldiers questions and hearing what had been happening to others, of course one knew it but now one had time to feel it and so I was quite frightened, now that there was nothing dangerous and the whole American army between us and danger. One is like that.
As I say we were getting used to having Americans here and they getting used to being here.
In the early days when the American army was first passing by, in jeeps and trucks the Americans used to say to me but they do not seem to get used to us, we have been right here over a week and they get just as excited when they see us as if they had never seen us before. You do not understand, I said to them you see every time they see you it makes them know it is not a dream that it is true that the Germans are gone and that you are here that you are here and that the Germans are gone. Every time they see you it is a new proof, a new proof that it is all true really true that the Germans are really truly completely and entirely gone, gone gone.
Yes even now when it has become so natural to see them here there are moments when it is hard to believe it. Yes of course they are really here.
Just this evening I saw a nun who had come over from Aix-les-Bains to see some sisters here, she had been in a convent in Connecticut. She said to me you know I just saw some American soldiers in the square and I just had to speak to them I just had to.
That is the way we all were we just had to.
So there were more Americans here and naturally we talked a lot, and one day one of them Ernest Humphrey from Tennessee was here and a French friend was here, he had known the American army of ’17 and he too was struck with the poise and the conversation of this army. He asked him lots of questions, about what Americans feel about France about the French country and about French girls and about American men, and said my friend after Humphrey left, they are different now, they are so easy to converse with, the last army was easy to get along with but this army is easy to converse with and as French people do believe that conversation is the finest part of civilisation, naturally what he said meant a great deal.
Is it, said the Frenchman, the cinema that has taught them to be such men of the world, to be sure it has not much effect on our young men he added.
I asked so many of them about it, we had long talks about it, they all agreed that the depression had a lot to do with it, it made people stay at home because they had no money to go out with, all the same said some of them that military service that they did before we came into the war had something to do with it, it kind of sobered everybody up, kind of made them feel what it was to get ready. Some of them said the radio had a lot to do with it, they got the habit of listening to information, and then the quizzes that the radio used to give kind of made them feel that it was no use just being ignorant, and then some of them said crossword puzzles had a lot to do with it.
The conclusion that one came to was that it had happened the American men had at last come to be interested and to be interesting and conversational, and it was mighty interesting to see and hear it. Naturally we exchanged books a lot, I have all kinds here and they gave me what they had, two I enjoyed immensely, Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War, and Helen MacInnes, Assignment in Brittany, some of the boys passing through on the train gave me the one and the railroad boys at Chambery gave me the other, the house here is filled with English books that I have been buying as I could through the war and other odds and ends, I was interested that they were a bit tired of detectives, I like them as much as ever but that is because I am so much older and they do like Westerns and then they like adventures, and any longish American novel. They do not care for English ones, they say they can’t seem to get into them. They also gave me a book on Head Hunters in the Solomon Islands which they all read. Well of course they did in the last war give me The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, they did not read much not those we knew. Undoubtedly the depression had a lot to do with that, a lot.
They asked me in Lyon to go and speak to the French on the radio. When I was there I saw lots of Americans on the streets but as I was in cars I could not speak to them but one evening I wandered out on foot and in a school near by I found a number of them. Naturally well just so naturally we talked, they were glad to see me and I was glad to see them, there were about thirty of them and we told each other a lot. One who had been a school-teacher in North Carolina walked home with me and we interested each other very much. He said I was quite right about the difference between the two armies, he said he had noticed it before he had left home but now he was sure. We said we would meet again but in a war it is always difficult to meet again, very often not possible. I do hope that we will meet again.
Of course one has to remember that many in fact most of these soldiers have not been home for almost two years. It is a long time a very long time.
When I got back from Lyon the Americans here in Culoz wanted to know what I had talked about in Lyon, I said I had been telling French people what Americans are and they said what are they, and I said this is what I told them and so I told them. They were interested.
I said that I had begun by saying that after all to-day, America was the oldest country in the world and the reason why was that she was the first country to enter into the twentieth century. She had her birthday of the twentieth century when the other countries were still all either in the nineteenth century or still further back in other centuries, now all the countries except Germany, are trying to be in the twentieth century, so that considering the world as twentieth century America is the oldest as she came into the twentieth century in the eighties before any other country had any idea what the twentieth century was going to be. And now what is the twentieth century that America discovered. The twentieth century is a century that found out that the cheapest articles should be made of the very best material. The nineteenth century believed that the best material should be only used in expensive objects and that cheap things should be made of cheap material. The Americans knew that if you wanted to make a lot of things that is things that will sell cheap you had to make them of the best material otherwise you could not turn them out fast enough, that is series manufacture because cheap material could not stand the strain. So America began to live in the twentieth century in the eighties with the Ford car and all the other series manufacturing.
And so America is at the present moment the oldest country in the world because she had her twentieth century birthday in the eighteen eighties, long before any other country had their twentieth century birthday.
There is one thing one has to remember about America, it had a certain difficulty in proving itself American which no other nation has ever had.
After all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high. Anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. That is what makes a people, makes their kind of looks, their kind of thinking, their subtlety and their stupidity, and their eating and their drinking and their language.
I was much taken with what one American soldier said when he was in England. He said we did not get along at all with the English until they finally did get it into their heads that we were not cousins, but foreigners, once they really got that, there was no more trouble.
The trouble of course is or was that by the time America became itself everybody or very nearly everybody could read and write and so the language which would naturally have changed as Latin languages changed to suit each country, French, Italian and Spanish, Saxon countries England and Germany, Slav countries etcetera, America as everybody knew how to read and write the language instead of changing as it did in countries where nobody knew how to read and write while the language was being formed, the American language instead of changing remained English, long after the Americans in their nature their habits their feelings their pleasures and their pains had nothing to do with England.
So the only way the Americans could change their language was by choosing words which they liked better than other words, by putting words next to each other in a different way than the English way, by shoving the language around until at last now the job is done, we use the same words as the English do but the words say an entirely different thing.
Yes in that sense Americans have changed, I think of the Americans of the last war, they had their language but they were not yet in possession of it, and the children of the depression as that generation called itself it was beginning to possess its language but it was still struggling but now the job is done, the G.I. Joes have this language that is theirs, they do not have to worry about it, they dominate their language and in dominating their language which is now all theirs they have ceased to be adolescents and have become men.
When I was in America in ’34 they asked me if I did not find Americans changed. I said no what could they change to, just to become more American. No I said I could have gone to school with any of them.
But all the same yes that is what they have changed to they have become more American all American, and the G.I. J
oes show it and know it, God bless them.
About the Author
GERTRUDE STEIN was born in Pennsylvania in 1874. Her grandparents had been German-Jewish immigrants who had prospered in the United States; her parents had been beguiled by art, languages, and educational theory. At Radcliffe, Gertrude Stein was an outstanding student of William James in psychology, and conducted laboratory experiments with Hugo Münsterberg, which led her to study the anatomy of the brain at Johns Hopkins. In 1902 she joined her brother Leo in Paris, and lived abroad until her death in 1946. Her salon in the rue de Fleurus, over which she presided with Alice B. Toklas, became the gathering place for prominent writers and painters, among them Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway, Matisse and Picasso.
Gertrude Stein remained in France during the German occupation; as F. W. Dupee says, “following World War II she became a kind of oracle and motherly hostess to American military personnel in liberated Paris.”
Her philosophy of composition, which was partly indebted to the aesthetic theories of William James and Bergson’s concept of time, and her experiments in writing influenced other writers of her period.
Also by
Gertrude Stein
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Stein’s most famous work, and one of the richest, wittiest, and most irreverent biographies ever written.
Three Lives
The unforgettable stories of three women, told with poignancy and compassion, by one of the most important writers of our century.
Ida
This is the story of Ida, whose life consists mainly of resting, because she is always tired; of talking to herself; and of getting married, time after time.
“One might call it a short novel, a long poem, or a modern fairy tale; or a painting in words … Miss Stein’s book, however futuristic or surrealistic, is a rounded piece of writing, cleverly balanced in its own way and not to be torn apart.”
Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein Page 73