MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
RECENT criticisms of the discipline and behaviour of the United States troops in this country have, as is proper, led many people to rush to their defence. It is surprising indeed that any responsible person should, without careful verification of his facts, without attempting any adjusttnent of the true proportions of the problem, have made statements which were certain to offend
• our friends and to delight our enemies. It should be realised in the first place that it is for us a God-sent benefit that the Americans should be here at all ; and that it is ungracious beyond measure to criticise men who have travelled many thousand miles to our assistance. It should be realised in the second place that the Presence in our small island of vast mobilised armies is a circum- stance which even in the most favourable conditions would create inconvenience, irritation and damage: and that when the occupying forces wear a foreign uniform dissatisfaction is inevitably increased. Nor should it be forgotten that in the fifth year of total war even the most patient and unselfish people are apt to feel overstrained and to attribute to outside causes feelings which are occasioned by their own inner weariness and discomfort. It must be accepted also that the superficial differences of temperament, tradition and manner which separate us from the Americans are more apparent and more obtrusive at first contact, and • that the deep similarity of thought and feeling which unquestionably exists becomes known only after intimate and prolonged acquaintance. Nobody could have visited the United States for any length of time without acquiring the conviction that the American people are the warmest, kindest and most generous of the nations of the earth.
It is necessary on the other hand to realise that very few Americans have ever before been in any foreign country, and that they do not possess our more continental awareness of the fact that foreigners are not necessarily either hostile or funny, and that different customs and habits of living need not necessarily be taken as a criticism of one's own. Considering the insistence with which the American Idea is drummed into every little citizen of the United States, con- sidering the immense pressure by which their heterogeneous popula- tion is moulded into a uniform pattern, it is astonishing that the Americans over here (and contrary to popular belief the American man, at least, is in no sense an adaptable animal) have so well adapted themselves to conditions which to them must seem small, and old, and odd. It is undeniable that Americans are apt to be more emphatic than we are ; that they do not always share our preference for the undertone ; that if they blush unseen they are apt to make a noise about it ; and that, whereas our own military police melt modestly into the background, the American snowdrops can be seen from three miles away. It must be recognised also that, owing perhaps to the ravages of co-education, their attitude towards women is more intimate, more casual, but no less courteous than our own. Nor is it possible, or important, to contradict those who contend that almost every American is a health-fuss and that their germ-consciousness is acute. But these arc tiny things which can rapidly be understood and as easily ignored. There is no justifica- tion at all for stating that the Americans in this country have as a whole conducted themselves with anything but friendliness and good-manners. Such incidents as have occurred have been much exaggerated. This is no idle assertion. In one area of England it was found necessary to billet many tens of thousands of Americans in private homes ; the complaints received from either side did not exceed the remarkably low percentage of one per thousand.
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In North Africa, where differences of language and religion came to complicate relations, the American forces have been less success- ful in making their presence either welcome or unfelt. Their bewilderment when faced with such unfamiliar circumstances, their failure fully to appreciate either French or Moslem susceptibilities,
their innocent assumption that Algerian wine must be some form of fruit-juice, have occasioned a few regrettable incidents and many wounded heads and feelings. It will be important, now that we are about to liberate occupied territories in Europe, to foresee that comparisons will be drawn between the behaviour of our own forces and the behaviour of the German armies of occupation. The German private soldier has been subjected to strict regulations and an iron discipline ; it has been left to the Gestapo and the S.A. to do the really dirty work. It is earnestly to be hoped that the comparisons which, after the first bout of excitement, will inevitably be drawn will be comparisons favourable to ourselves and our allies. Mean- while there exists the problem of the relations between the British and American armies. Experience has abundantly shown that these relations are bad only when contacts are casual or intermittent and that when members of the two forces are engaged in a common task, or exposed to a common danger, their understanding of each other becomes surprisingly cordial. It is too much to expect that every American, or every Briton, can share the Supreme Com- mander's conviction that we have only one army and not two armies: men of General Eisenhower's warmth and wisdom -are rare indeed. But much useful and ingenious work is being done to bring the two armies into integrated contact with each other: and in this work the Adjutant-General's Department of our own War Office (a department which from the start has displayed great tact and imagination) is taking a leading and constructive part.
It is not generally realised how much has already been done to help the men of Lhe two armies to understand each other and to supplement casual contacts by more intimate acquaintance. There is the Balliol College scheme, under which officers from the United States and Dominion forces mix with their British counterparts in short Oxford courses. Our guests from over the seas are thereby enabled to fuse with their British contemporaries in identical circum- stances and to appreciate incidentally the rigours and discomforts to which the British undergraduate is exposed. The United States authorities have started to produce educational pamphlets on the basis of our own A.B.C.A. pamphlets and many of the articles :n the two publications are interchanged. And mixed educational teams, composed partly of American and partly of British lecturers, tour the several units indiscriminately and institute discussion groups among the officers and men of the two armies. More important still is the device adopted some time ago by the Committee which is known as the " Anglo-American (Army) Relations Committee." This Committee sits at the War Office and is composed in equal pro- portions of British and Arrierican officers ; its function is to iron out any difficulties or disputes which may arise. It was soon dis- covered that the difficulty was not so much that relations were either good or bad, but that the men of the two armies avoided each other so that in fact, apart from casual and often inauspicious encounters, there were no relations at all. A scheme was therefore devised last October under which, for a period of a fortnight, small detachments from each army should be interchanged. Under this scheme an officer and ten men from a British regiment are incorporated for two weeks in an American unit and vice versa ; up to date some 1,300 officers and 9,000 men have undergone this interesting interchange. So far, not a single unfortunate incident has been reported. On the contrary, the increase in understanding which has resulted has been most remarkable. The British troops who have visited American units in this way no longer regard the Americans as boastful or noisy; the Americans who have been in British regiments no longer regard the British as stiff-necked and aloof. They admire our N.C.O. system and our drill, while they retain some doubts about our cooking ; we appreciate their candy and their ice-cream and come to understand their unfailing gaiety and kindliness. If this imaginative experiment could be continued for another year there might be no further talk about Anglo-American misunderitandirg.
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