MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IN Pump Court the other morning I observed two United States G.I.'s chewing the cud of home-sickness and gazing upon the ruins of the Temple. I explained to them how, before the blitz, this court had been completely enclosed, so that the windows which faced south reflected in their ancient panes the windows that looked north. I took them across to where they could see the remains of Crown Office Row and showed them the debris of No. 2, in a back room of which Charles Lamb. was born. They looked with mild interest at the remains of a staircase, which ran quite securely up to the first floor landing and there stuck with empty banisters gaping upon the void. I explained where the cloisters had been, and pointed out the bases of the columns lying there symmetrically as if at Pompeii. I indicated the small heap of bricks and mortar which was all that remained of Lamb Building, and, reminded them that it was here that Arthur Pendennis had shared rooms with George Warrington. On the very spot where we were now standing Fanny Bolton had gazed up at Pen's windows after she had been banished by the arrival of Mrs. Pendennis and Laura Bell. I showed them the ruined church, described the lovely appearance of the Master's House, and allowed them to see the dim tombs of the Templars. Their interest in what they saw was perfunctory rather than intense. "You seem to have taken some- thing round here," they said to me, still chewing at their beastly mastic. How could I convey to them the gentle sense of privacy which had once brooded over these blackened remains? The plane trees were swelling into bud, undeterred by the fierce furnace through which they had passed. Upon the bank which leads down to the gardens the daffodil leaves had been stamped by the feet of the girls who work the barrage balloon. I took them up to my rooms and changed the conversation from my memories to theirs. And what part of the States do you come from? " I asked the younger of the two, a dark doughboy with an olive skin. " From Hattiesburg," he said, " in Mississippi."
It was a slow train, I remembered, that had stopped at Hatties- burg. Early that morning I had driven to the station at New Orleans in a downpour of rain such as I had never seen outside the tropics. The water had splashed in torrents from the gutters and had poured in cascades down the iron balconies. The heat inside the train was almost intolerable, and at Hattiesburg I had got down on to the platform for a breath of air. A" youngfarmer, dressed in a bright check shirt and corduroy trousers, had entered the train carrying a round cloth bundle under his arm. When I returned to my seat he was sitting opposite to me. We engaged in conversation. I asked him about Hattiesburg and how he lived and where he had been educated. He had, he informed me, completed his education at the University of Atalanta. " You do
not come from these parts? " he asked me politely. "No," I answered, " I come from England." " I could guess from your accent," he said, " that you were a European." I was amused by this. " But you do not suppose," I asked him, " that all Europeans speak English as well as I do? " He reflected for a moment. " You sure speak English," he said with a slow smile, " very well." I left it at that, not wishing to embarrass him by further questions ; not wishing, either, to destroy the suggestion that here in Mississippi there were people who believed that all Europeans spoke English as their native tongue.
* * * * What I find so difficult about the Americans is to judge where their knowledge begins and where it ends. At one moment they will astonish one by knowing about Perkin Warbeck or John Clare ; at another moment they will suggest to one that the members of the Cabinet are selected by the House of Lords. At times it would seem that they are conscious of a common heritage and well aware that our historical monuments are part of their own tradition. At other moments they will seem to be completely disinterested and the cloud of boredom will settle upon their faces. Their extreme politeness, their terror of saying something foolish, makes difficult any easy interchange of information or ideas. Their assumption that all Englishmen regard them as something untutored and wild renders them diffident of approach. Yet I have discerned from countless contacts with American G.I.'s that the main bar to under- standing is a difference in appreciation. For whereas they admire what is new and enormous, we tend to admire what is small and old. Their familiarity with the wide open spaces makes them uneasy in our tight-packed little island, and obtuse to the charm and beauty of our little fields. Their passion for modernity renders them slightly contemptuous of our careful continuity, nor do they understand at all the appeal of ancient things. Being mechanically minded, and attaching undue importance to those contrivances which represent for them not only a standard of living but an actual social status, they do not understand our comparative in- difference to the comforts of the home. Unconsciously they resent the fact that we possess so many things which they can never possess ; our antiquity arouses in them feelings of discomfort. Nor do we fully understand the importance which they attach to the triumphs of engineering or the infinite ingenuity cf their own civilisation. We do not, in any way, admire the same things.
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How far was my young farmer at Hattiesburg, who in all sincerity confused England with Europe, representative of the United States electorate? To what extent will the ordinary G.I. have learnt from his overseas experience something of the problems and necessities of other continents? Wiil he return convinced that all is shabby and backward in the old world, and that it is only in God's own country that steel is really stainless and that cellophane really cleanses and protects? Or will they go back convinced that there is nothing at all to learn from the more ancient civilisations ; that Europe is, in fact, no more than a reactionary and dangerous area of warring despotisms, and that if the great white soul of America is to be kept immaculate, it must remain isolated from all contact with these ancient and putrescent zones? I do not know. In my contacts with American soldiers over here I strive desperately to pierce the armour of their politeness, to penetrate the fog of their indifference: Is it that their thoughts are too contemptuous, too almost hostile, to be expressed without incivility? Or is it perhaps that, isolated in a dark cloud of nostalgia, they do not think or notice or compare at all? The more educated among then are alert, inquisitive and criticaL But the vast majority appear to us lethargic, silent, ruminative, obtuse and very charming. What- ever the American idea may inculcate, it certainly inculcates a natural habit of courtesy. But even those of us who imagined that they knew something of America find it difficult to understand the United States G.I. abroad.
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One is left not with a psychological problem only, but with a distressing uncertainty regarding the future of the world. Are we to take the Chicago isolationists or the Wisconsin primaries as the true indication of the trend of United States opinion? Or are we to believe that Mr. Cordell Hull's magnificent speech on Easter Sunday is a sound prophecy of the shape of things to come? Nothing, in all seeming, could be so temperate or so encouraging as Mr. Hull's fine statements and assurances. Yet to the European who admires and welcomes these promises there must always remain the recollection of Woodrow Wilson and the memory of former doubts. Few statements of foreign policy have ever been so simple, so direct. Are we to take them as the promise of the people of the United States? Or are we, until November next, to remain in a state of anxious uncertainty, and to remember that there are many millions of American electors who resemble my farmer at Hattiesberg or my two doughboys surveying the ruins of the Temple with courteous ruminative apathy?
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