FRATERNISATION
Sm,—May I be permitted to offer some solace to that Dutch lady, E. H. Fermin, rightly perplexed at what she considers the British, in particular the British soldiers', keenness for fraternisation with the Germans.
As one who has lived with his fellows-in-arms in North Africa, France and Germany, may I suggest that we now admit the word " Fraternisa- tion " to be a typically British—and American—euphemism ; a sop to our puritanical and still Victorian national conscience ; a nice word to cloak a nasty-sounding subject. Until recently did we not habitually evade the expression " V.D." when talking of sexual diseases, just as we still talk vaguely of woman's " normal functions " instead of using the simpler expression. And so we talk of fraternisation when we mean something quite different. Let us examine the evidence of what fraternisation really means to 99 per cent, of soldiers.
In North Africa there was no ban on social intercourse with the French or Arabs, and it was permitted to queue six-deep outside the licensed brothels—or must we still pretend that natural actions of soldiers overseas don't happen just because it isn't " nice " to be human that way? When allowed his " freedoms " with the opposite sex among the French, the soldier in North Africa invented no urge to fraternise, and only the barest minimum made any attempt at social understanding with the French people, far less the despised Arab—though where ' la (tile francaise was " interclite " or unobtainable, Fraternisation, called in those uncultured days by blunter title, was quickly introduced to the fairer members of the Arab population.
The British soldier does not noticeably feel impelled to fraternise with the German prisoners in this country—the German is the same ; it is the motive which is lacking! Have six years of war not taught us yet to call a spade a spade rather than a digging-implement? It would be better to confess our sexual trespasses, as our European neighbours so blithely do theirs, than to risk alienating our friends by denying the true basis of " Fraternisation," which is primarily a sexual and not a social impulse, a get-together with German womankind and not with the German race. The admission may temporarily lose us ,our own good opinion of ourselves as being different from all the other human animals, but we shall regain the respect and confidence of the lately occupied countries ; indeed, they will like us all the better for our
admitted human frailties.—Yours faithfully, SERVING OFFICER.
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