MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON and American troops on board in the hope of discovering what effect these programmes had upon the men for whom they had been prepared. I have always felt that the reason why we do not often catch the point of American humour is that it is designed to render the fantastic real, whereas our own humour is designed to render the real fantastic. But I had no opportunity on this occasion to subject my theory to any laboratory test. The British Tommies chatted grinning together without lending even half an ear to the programme which was being relayed for their instruction and delight ; the American G.I.'s merely chewed the cud of rumination. At a certain stage, the crooning, the jazz and swing were suddenly inter- rupted, and we were informed that the United States armies had captured Cologne. The effect of this astonishing announcement upon my own section of the Allied Expeditionary Force was slight ; one G.I. emitted a low whistle ; a British officer leaning beside me against the rail said " Gosh! " The remainder of the A.E.F. treated the news with utter apathy. "How different," I thought to myself, "will it be when we reach the other side! The French at least realise the importance of this strategic capture." I had imagined, indeed, that I might find the French harbour gay with flags, and the school children singing, "Nous rayons eu, votre Rhin allemand." But not at all. The customs official with whom I sought to share the news greeted it with polite acceptance ; it was as if I had said to him "We had a calm crossing." The ticket-collector was equally unmoved. I watched the dock hands throwing mail-bags into the van of my train. "Beauvais," shouted the foreman, " Trente pour quatre."
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We reached Paris at 5.30 in the morning, and as we steamed into the station I could see the Sacre Coeur gleaming dimly under the light of a gibbous moon. A few hours later Paris stretched its great limbs luxuriantly m the warmth of a spring morning ; the buds upon the chestnut trees broke their sticky sheaves ; the old people crept out to sun themselves upon the benches ; the children danced around. Glittering and superb the tremendous perspectives of Paris opened once again before me. That quality in the Parisian air which lends colour to the colourless, giving a touch of C.ezanne to every suburban allotment, and a touch of thrill° to the meanest alley, has prevented Paris from acquiring the untidy drabness of London. The avenues seem wider, cleaner, emptier than ever before ; the glass is in the windows ; the concierge, with *wicker carpet-beater, still bangs the door-mat out into the street. There is scaffolding around the Hotel Crillon, the Grand Palais is blackened with smoke, the office wing of the Quai d'Orsay shows hollow windows gaping on a void, and one of the two Sphinxes by the Louvre has received a bullet in her heart. At street corners on the Left Bank one can see the vestiges of snipers, and occasionally of shells, upon the plaster of the apartment .houses. A few miserable fiacres, disinterred from the days of Felix Faure, creep slowly along the streets. But super- ficially Paris is 'as resplendent as ever ; luxurious and proud she glitters in the sun. And yet almost at once one notices a difference. There is something which is not the same. It is then that one realises that Paris is tired ; tired almost to death.
* * * * To a large extent, of course, this exhaustion is physical, and due to prolonged under-nourishment, and the sufferings entailed by the intense cold of the last three months. This is a practical problem, and as such remediable ; there is no reason why the people of Paris should have to endure another winter like the last. It is the moral exhaustion of the elderly and the middle-aged which arouses such sympathy in the observer. One has the impression of visiting a friend who is convalescent after a long illness. One notices the acute sensibility, the morbid sensitiveness, the alternations of somewhat fevered impulsiveness with long periods, of lethargy and despair. What France needs beyond anything , at this moment is food and warmth and rest. She is not in the mood for revolutions ; I doubt even whether she is in the mood for politics. And we who visit her, and who must seem in comparison so confident and so robust, have need of all our delicacy if every finger on our hands is not to be as clumsy as a thumb. For us during these five years there has been no alternative to endurance ; even in the darkest days we could drink great gulps of the oxygen of liberty, and feel around us the clean air of unity and mutual trust. The very atmosphere of France has been poisoned during these atrocious years by suspicion and un- certainty, by humiliation and self-questioning, by shame and fear. The physical partition of France between the occupied and the un- occupied zones has- had its psychological counterpart in the division between the men and women of the Resistance, the collaborationists, and those countless others who merely stood aside. It is tragic to meet intelligent and honourable people who will seek, in the presence
of an Englishman, to find an alibi and to explain away their own inaction. One is afraid that one's sympathy may seem to be pity or one's condolenci patronising. Never has one desired- to be more tactful ; never has one realised what a tiny ineffective instrument is tact. The very generosity which the British and American peoples have displayed seems in itself an unspoken reproach.
* * * *-
It is difficult for those who have not experienced it to understand the psychological effects of enemy occupation. There was the con- stant pang of seeing the swastika flying triumphantly from every public building. There was the remorse of those who gave despair- ing confidence to Marshal Petain at feeling that they had been tricked into a deed of shame. And there was fear, not for oneself only, but for one's family. "You who have never lost it," remarked a French- man, "do not know what liberty really is. If you hear a knock at the door at seven in the morning you will turn over in bed and murmur to yourself, 'That, must be the milk.' When we hear it even today the hair rises upon our heads. ' Gestapo ' is the word that thumps in our hearts." This meant no quick heroic death upon the bastions of the Mont Valerien, or in the moai at Vincennes ; it meant interrogations under the glare. of searchlights, it meant beatings day and night, it meant the refinement of torture. It is not surprising that a people who have suffered from such things should be labouring under acute nervous shock. What is more surprising is the amazing resilience of the French nature. The men and women of my own generation, it is true, appeared aged to me beyond their years. But one afternoon I addressed the students across the river; the hall was packed from roof to corridor ; and I realised from the yells with which 'they greeted me that the pulse of the young genera- tion in France is strong, and firm, and quick. To their 'hands France can entrust her future with confidence and hope.
* *_ * *
"France drained her capacity s for enthusiasm on the day of liberation." That was the explanation given to me when I remarked upon the indifference of the douanier to the capture of Cologne. I did not feel that the younger generation had exhausted any en- thusiasm. I have never witnessed such enthusiasm in any university. I felt rather that on us, who are closer to them, and who are able better to understand, a serious responsibility is imposed. To America they will 'look for economic assistance ; to Russia they will look for their security against a German revival ; we can help them to recover their health. I was saddened by what I saw,- but not de- pressed ; their spiritual, as distinct from their intellectual, exhaustion was deeper than I had imagined ; the spirit of their young people even more magnificent. After five days I found myself back again in the harbour at which I had disembarked. There was the foreman and his gang still unloading mail bags. "Beauvais," he shouted. " Trente pour quaire." And all this on z,zoo calories a day.
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