I listen with delight to the accounts which reach us
from time tO time of the conduct of the people of Paris under German occupa-
don. The city itself ignores its conquerors with unseeing eyes, retaining a marble impassivity which hides the hunger and the loathing within. Few shops are open, a covey of bicyclists will flash silently along a boulevard, the feet of German soldiers echo clumsily on empty pavements ; the passer-by passes them, not with averted, but with sightless gaze. The Parisians in these two dreadful years have evolved a perfect technique for pretending that the Germans are not really there. The latter are by nature disconcerted by the unexpected ; they may have hoped for friendliness ; they must have expected some hostility ; but they did not foresee the silent icy pride with which they are now encompassed. All Germans have a pathetic longing to be liked, a conviction that they are essentially " liebenswiirdig." The cold hatred which surrounds them from Narvik to Bordeaux—intangible, unexpected, blasting—fills them with an unknown fear. This disquietude is fed from further sources. It is not merely the aloofness of the people of Paris which gets upon their nerves ; they have an uneasy feeling that, in spite of Vichy, in spite of the censorship and Radio Paris, in spite of the quislings, there is something about the mind of France which eludes, not their control merely, but also their powers of observation. There are moments when they know that the French mean something nasty, but are not certain what it is. There are moments when they feel that all their fingers are really thumbs.
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