Wars I Have Seen

by Gertrude Stein

  And now about Saint Odile.

  Our young servant when she came this morning and I asked her was there any news said I can tell you very little, it is always the same some one is winning and some one is losing. It is always the same.

  And that is what made the prophecies of Saint Odile seem different, the final winning was so tremendous. This is the story.

  In 1940 when we were all filled with sorrow and despair and a little hope and a complete certainty that after all, the Germans were not going to win. To my great surprise a prisoner a young musician who said the worst of being a prisoner was that you were all day and all night always together with seventy other men, men alone always together, just like Cummings described it in The Enormous Room. Well anyway he said in spite of everything every morning all of the roomful took it simply and completely for granted that the Germans were not going to win. They all greeted each other good-morning and how long before the Germans are going to be defeated. But said I how did you keep that faith. We do not keep it he said we had it, we just naturally did not have any other feeling. Well we the civilian population did not have it so simply, we had to have the prophecies of Saint Odile but they did help a lot.

  To-day August 1943 I saw another returned prisoner, he was pale and his eyes glowed and as I came into the grocery store I heard some one say the pigs the rascals. And the grocer said to me do not be startled he is only talking about the Boches. Yes said the man I do not understand how anybody cannot realise that we are still at war with the Germans. An armistice is a pause but it is not an end, and as long as there is no peace we are at war, and as long as we are at war any one helping the enemy is a traitor to his country, that is the way I see it he said and his eyes glowed and he said they say that the Americans are slow but I dont know, Roosevelt said that in 1943 they would be here, and now it is 1943 and here they are. I dont know what anybody wants that satisfies me, they said they would be here and here they are. And I said I as an American I want to thank you and we shook hands and he said thank you and I said thank you.

  This is what a prediction is. Just that, but of course that was near, it was said in ’42, and then there is the unconditional surrender, which they are demanding from the enemy. When I was a child and later and always I admired General Grant, and I knew that they used his initials Ulysses Simpson to mean Unconditional Surrender Grant. It was reasonable very reasonable very logical I thought so then and I said it just today, if the winner wins, then the vanquished should give in, and why ask for terms beforehand, if the winner is going to be generous he is going to be generous and if he is not going to be generous he is not going to be generous so what is the use of making terms. Unconditional surrender and then let them be generous or not. That is reasonable, because any way the ones beaten are beaten. That is the difference between European logic and American logic just that. So in a way my always quoting Unconditional Surrender Grant was a prediction. In a way yes it was. It is strange just as strange as it can be. Since yesterday or day before yesterday it seems but it was only yesterday, we have a German officer a major and his orderly stationed in the house and now August 1943, they are very meek, just as meek as that. The cook said to him that it was the Germans who had stolen the gardener’s radio, and that the gardener was a prisoner. He will be coming home now very soon, said the major.

  Saint Odile predicted much further away that is what any one can say, does it make it more interesting, yes it does and no it does not and yes it does.

  If you try to kill five hundred years or a thousand years is it more interesting than just killing one hundred years is it. And is there any hope that the hundred years or the thousand years which have been killed to make room for another thousand years or five hundred years will make that difference. Saint Odile thought so and thinking so she was a comfort to all of us. That is what makes predictions. Knowing what is going to happen to-day or to-morrow, or next week, that is some people’s predictions, and other people’s predictions is what some one person or kind of person will do at any time, and other people’s predictions is what some country will do and what will happen when any one or any body of them do do it. I have always loved to read Shakespeare’s Henry VI in three parts and now just now August 1943, I find it more so than ever much more even so much more so than ever which I always did find it fun when I was eight years old until now. Saint Odile.

  Saint Odile said that the world would go on and there would come the worst war of all and the fire would be thrown down from the heavens and there would be freezing and heating and rivers running and at last there would be winning by the enemy and everybody would say and how can they be so strong, and everybody would say and give us peace and then little by little there would come the battle of the mountain and that was certainly Moscow, because even in the time of Saint Odile Moscow because of its many religious houses was called the Holy Mountain, and indeed it was there that the enemy received its first check, and then she said much later there would be fighting in the streets of the eternal city and indeed there it is, we did sometimes think it might be Constantinople or even possibly Jerusalem but no it certainly was Rome and now they are fighting in the streets of Rome, now in 1943 in August in the evening and that would not yet be the end but would be the beginning of the end, which it is, and then there would for the first time in the history of the world there would be peace, east and west, west and east and all together.

  And this was a comfort so often a comfort and it is a comfort again, like a road you find on the map and then see in real life or a road you see in real life and then see on a map. So that is the difference between the nineteenth and the twentieth century just that.

  This is my scientific history. Not Saint Odile, but this, that I am about to tell.

  August 1943. Here we can see every night when the moon is bright and even when it is not, we cannot see them but we hear them, they hum and then from time to time they drop a light and they give us all a very great deal of delight. And why. Because they are going to drop bombs on the Italians. Anybody can like an Italian but just the same we can have a great deal of pleasure in hearing all these airplanes hum and see them drop lights on their way to bomb Italians. Why we all say do they not give in. Not so exciting perhaps but more useful, useful that is if you want to go on living in a country that has not been overwhelmed by destruction. Last night just before the airplanes came there was a complete eclipse of the moon, the shadow of the earth fell on the moon, none too soon and then slowly it passed away, it was very nice, but none of the newspapers and none of the radios mentioned it. Eclipses are an amusement for peace time and yet all the same said my neighbor, she is a country-woman, it makes one think of all those worlds turning around and around. Yes I said it is more terrifying even than war. Yes she said. And it was twelve o’clock at night and the moon was shining bright again and we went to bed and a little after we heard the airplanes humming and we saw the lights dropping and then we shut out the moonlight and then we were sleeping. All this is an introduction to the nineteenth century feeling about science.

  To believe in progress and in science you had to know what science was and what progress might be. Having been born in the nineteenth century it was natural enough to know what science was. Darwin was still alive and Huxley and Agassiz and after all they all made the difference of before and after. And now in 1943 none of it means more than it did. Not so much more as not more. Not more at all.

  And I began with evolution. Most pleasant and exciting and decisive. It justified peace and justified war. It also justified life and it also justified death and it also justified life. Evolution did all that. And now. Evolution is no longer interesting. It is historical now and no longer actual. Not even pleasant or exciting, not at all. To those of us who were interested in science then it had to do tremendously with the history of the world, the history of all animals, the history of death and life, and all that had to do with the round world. Evolution was as exciting as the discovery of America, by Columbus qui
te as exciting, and quite as much an opening up and a limiting, quite as much. By that I mean that discovering America, by reasoning and then finding, opened up a new world and at the same time closed the circle, there was no longer any beyond. Evolution did the same thing, it opened up the history of all animals vegetables and minerals, and man, and at the same time it made them all confined, confined within a circle, no excitement of creation any more. It is funny all this and this was my childhood and youth and beginning of existence. War oh yes war but logical and incessant war, and peace oh yes, peace because if war is completely understood then peace was the ideal. It was just like that.

  Stars are not really more than just what they look like. If they are then are they really realer than war. It is just that that makes the twentieth century, know what science teaches and whether it is or whether it is not what science teaches, since war is really and therefore it is what it is, that is everybody gets to meet anybody friends and enemies we have then now enemies in the house and in the barn, and it does not make any difference about the stars and it does not make any difference about war, only really it does make a difference about war seeing the trains pass with the enemy on them yes it does, but the stars whether they are what they look like or what science teaches, does it make any difference and anybody can answer that it does not.

  I did live in the nineteenth century and the difference was that then the answer was that it did make a difference, that the stars were what science teaches and now in August 1943 it does not.

  Naturally if you were born in the nineteenth century when evolution first began to be known, and everything was being understood, really understood everybody knew that if everything was really being and going to be understood, and if everything was understood then there would be progress and if there was going to be progress there would not be any wars, and if there were not any wars then everything could be and would be understood, and even if death and life were not understood and eternity and beginning was not understood well that is to say if they were not understood more than science understood them better after all except in the unhappiness of adolescence better not think about that. That was what the nineteenth century knew to be true, and they wanted it to be like that. To be sure there were a great many wars, but on the other hand there was a great deal of civilising going on so much so that by the time the twentieth century began almost any one could read and write, and now in the twentieth century anybody can listen to the radio, in any language and everybody is civilised enough to do that, but wars are more than ever and now everybody knows that although everybody is civilised there is no progress and everybody knows even though anybody flies higher and higher they cannot explain eternity any more than before, and everybody can persecute anybody just as much if not more than ever, it is rather ridiculous so much science, so much civilisation that is so much reading and writing and listening to the radio, and they persecute anybody, and put books on the index, that and ban them publicly just like that. It is funny.

  Just now we have just been hearing about prisoners escaping from prison, it is very interesting. There is a nice story about a compass.

  As some of them escape on foot and keep on on foot until they get home, it is better to have a compass. Two of them had with the compass gotten as far as the Swiss frontier and there they were caught by the Germans before they could cross it. They were questioned and they found the compass it was a lovely compass and the questioner put it on the table in front of him, the two while they were being questioned one of them leaned forward and took the compass and slipped it into his pocket. When the questioner missed the compass from the table he said search him and while they searched the one he slipped the compass to the other one and then while he was searched he slipped it back again, and then the examiner said search them both at the same time and the compass was found and was again put on the table in front of them. Then while the questioner went on one of them took the compass again and slipped it to the other one who put it into his shoe and then in making a movement it fell out on the floor and it was once more taken from them and put back on the table in front of them. The questioner went on and finally it was done and finished and they all stood up and they all left and one of the Frenchmen as he was leaving put his hand out in back of him took the compass and put it in his pocket and nobody noticed him or that it was gone as they all had left the room with them. They were sent away that evening and so nobody noticed the compass and nobody took it away from them, and so the two of them escaping for the third time with the help of the compass came into France and home and just the other day we saw them in August 1943 and they told us that and many other stories of prisoners escaping. We like that one perhaps the best.

  William James was of the strongest scientific influences that I had and he said he always said there is the will to live without the will to live there is destruction, but there is also the will to destroy, and the two like everything are in opposition, like wanting to be alone and when you are alone wanting to have company and when you have company wanting to be alone and liking wanting eternity and wanting a beginning and middle and ending and now in 1943 the thing that we know most about is the opposition between the will to live and the will to destroy, and when like with the Germans it is almost fifty fifty they do not mind they commit suicide. There was a farmer who once said to me he said it in 1941, he said they say it is Hitler, but it is not Hitler. I fought all the other war and I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing some one to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go. They cannot help themselves they are not led, it is not the Kaiser, it is not Hitler, who leads them, it is they themselves who choose the man and really force him to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go. That is because the will to live and the will to destroy is fifty fifty which is what it ought not to be. And that is why French people do not have to say as the English do are we down hearted, no. They are so completely filled with the will to live that they never heard of down-heartedness. The other day here when the Germans came and occupied us again, here in Culoz, August 1943 one of the women said, well of course it is disagreeable, very disagreeable, but nothing as it would have been if we had been beaten. And she was quite right. They were not beaten, the Germans being beaten even if they did not beat them they themselves were not beaten and she was right.

  The Chinese-Japanese war and the Russo-Japanese war completed the work of Christopher Columbus, it made the world all one, it made the East no longer a mysterious something, not so much later any American woman could make a home for a year in Pekin and then go home again to America just as she might go to Paris or to California, and so the work of Christopher Columbus was finished, the North Pole was found and the South Pole was found, and the work of Christopher Columbus was over, and so the nineteenth century which had undertaken to make science more important than anything by having finished the work of Christopher Columbus and reduced the world to a place where there was only that, forced the world into world wars to give everybody a new thing to do as discoveries being over science not being interesting because so limiting there was nothing else to do to keep everybody from doing everything in the same way but a world war particularly this present one where everybody had to stay at home and could not even write letters to friends not most of the time, as some one said not long ago, any public character can talk and talk all day long over the radio and any radio speaker but any of us who just want to send a post card to somebody well we just cannot, we have to stay at home and not meet anybody. Such is the result of the world war after the work of Christopher Columbus was all over, and science was not interesting any longer, and evolution was so completely confined to the earth and the earth was all there, and so the nineteenth century is over, killed at last, by the twentieth century.

  But now not now we are still at the Russo-Japanese war and the first Balkan wars.

  Now in September 1943 I am beginning to like trains again. For thirty years I never went int
o a train, automobiles were the means of transport including airplanes but no trains. When in America I did once or twice have to get into trains I was struck with the fact that there had been no progress in train travel, trains were just as dirty and just as much like themselves, night trains and day trains as when I knew them in the days of the Russo-Japanese war, or any other time. I once mentioned this to a French engineer and he said naturally enough, trains could not improve could not get more comfortable because cars had to keep the same shape. All the tracks having been made that is the road bed of a certain width cars could not be made wider nothing could really change there was too much to do to change anything, not like automobiles or airplanes which can constantly change their sizes and their shapes. And then there is another peculiarity of trains. They spend so much more time in stations than on the road. All of which made for thirty years made one feel that trains were far away, and now there being only walking bicycling and trains we take trains and all the old delight in trains comes back. The making of so many acquaintances. There being so many people in a compartment and in the corridors, there being so many things happening, there being eating and drinking and very strange eating and drinking these days in a train, everybody carrying something and some quite openly eating what they are not supposed to be having and others not eating anything at all at least it might just as well not be anything, and in a station having a long conversation with a very nice refugee she in one train and I in another one, and telling each other all about what we were and where we came from. It also is very amusing. The German army was a motorised army so everybody said and so everybody thought and so everybody knew and now their automobiles travel on the trains, there are none of them on the road. Here where we see the trains pass, continuously the German army moves with all its automobiles but all of them on the train. No automobile on the road. Not one, not one solitary one. All of them on flat baggage cars with soldiers sitting around them and this must be a pleasure to every one. To be sure in a way trains are more romantic than automobiles but even though Germans love the romantic, it cannot really be a comfort to them. I realised some years ago that trains were really more romantic than automobiles, and it was in this way. They were having their annual fair in Belley and they had as one of the attractions, a little tunnel and a train going in and coming out of it and going around and around. Almost everybody in Belley had been in automobiles some even in airplanes but quite a number had never been in a train, and it excited them going in and out of the little tunnel and around and around. There are two things that are exciting going around and around and around and going straight ahead on rails. Rails are in a way more romantic than a road. A road is picturesque and it can even be endless and straight, but even when it has white lines marked on it to separate one piece of it from the other piece of it which is done in modern highways, it has not the fascination of the converging lines of rails. Now we are in Culoz, and not any longer in Bilignin, in Bilignin there were roads but here there is a station and trains so naturally I know all there is to know about both of them. Now in September 1943, they are blowing up the trains as they come through the tunnel, just this afternoon, some heard a loud noise and it was the end of a train blowing up just as it came out of a tunnel and a little child was suffocated. Well nobody just knows why they do it, but they do and the young people including the young girls want to do it too. Not blow up trains but blow up bridges and tracks. I suppose it is that the German troops who have gone to Italy will not be able to get back to France. Simple human means have come to replace science. All the science is there if anybody can have anything with which to use it, but everybody is so busy having enough to eat, that science is not important, eating is important, and what can be more important than eating, nothing although everybody is getting pretty tired of growing everything themselves they are to eat or if not walking miles, or bicycling to bring it back, in order to eat it. Interesting if true, and it is true, very true.