We women of a certain age, we reduce to a certain place and then we seem to get along all right, but the middle aged men get thin, and thinner and thinner. Naturally those that had been fat. Oh dear me.

So the Boer war was the first time we really realized that war made them thin that is the civilian population, it must have been true in the civil war, but at that time, there were so many pioneers and pioneers are always thin, and Boers were fat, and the Boer war made them thin just like that.

I just heard a nice story about a farmer’s wife. She complained that her cow could not live because she had no hay. Some one who had a large house and a lot of land heard her and said I will give you two thousand pounds of hay that is a load of hay as a present if you will sell me every day a litre of milk. And said the farmer’s wife what will I do having so much less butter. No not at all said the farmer’s wife. The Boer war might be like that just like that and so is 1943.

And so there was the Spanish-American war. So much happened in the Spanish-American war, to us and to me to the United States and to us, something to Spain too and to any Spaniard but then that was a habit, they always had these things happen in Europe. But with us although in a kind of a way in our short history it had very frequently happened still it was not a habit.

To-day we were at Aix-les-Bains, end of June 1943 when this you see remember me, and in a kind of way it was different but in a kind of way it was the middle western dough boys in San Francisco. We were at the station it was the first of July and there were many trains and many people, on one track where our train should have been it was not. And then a train came along, all trains go very slowly now, the engineers are used up the track is used up and the coal is bad so therefore there are a fair number of trains moving they move at a walk. This train that came along and kept moving and did not stop had on it tanks and trucks which did not look very strong, as they were not armored and seated on them and seated in the open cars placed on trucks and seated anywhere were Germans all naked except a little trouser nothing on their heads and sitting there and the train went on slowly and all the French people were as if they were at a theatre that was not interesting and the train went on slowly and then our train came in and I got on it with my white dog Basket and the French people were pleased, Basket was the real circus, he was a theatre that they found interesting and they were interested and they said so, and nobody had noticed the train full of Germans except four young Frenchmen from the camp de Jeunesse and they like all young fellows of that age laughed, which reminded me of the dough boys in San Francisco, in the midst of the San Francisco public. Which ones. Those Germans.

It is funny funny in the sense of strange and peculiar and unrealisable, the fact that so many are prisoners, prisoners, prisoners every where, and now Berard where we used to lunch is in prison, for black traffic, and an Alsatian and his wife and his son, because of the younger son who went to the funeral of his fiancée and on his way he was taken and he escaped and they were in prison and now they are out and he is in safety but where. Anywhere. And whole countries in prison and now we have a feeling that they who put everybody in prison are now in prison they feel themselves in prison, they feel imprisoned. They have just told us that our friends the American consul and vice-consul although in prison and are very free and amusing themselves and have flowers in their rooms and play tennis and send messages and make excursions. Oh dear me, when this you see, but after all, when this you see, and after all you would imagine that with all that I would not any longer want to read mystery stories and spy stories and all that but not at all I want to read them more than ever, to change one reality for another, one unreality for another and so the Spanish-American war made us Americans conscious of being a world power, conscious of the school of realism, conscious of England being nineteenth century, with Kipling and the white man’s burden, was in a way for me the beginning of killing the nineteenth century, which is now not any longer dying but dead and the little coffins that are being sent to all pro-Germans are part of the funeral. French people like New Englanders like funerals, they are a peaceful occupation, nice and quiet, and certain. Ah say the French before all this we were so happy but we did not appreciate our good fortune.

Realism.

After all there has to be realism realism in romance and in novels and the reason why is this. Novels have to resemble something and in order that they do there must be realism. Of course all writers had had realism, writers and readers always have a realism, after all living is in a way always real, that is to say what one hears and sees, even what one feels is in a way always real, but the realism of the present seems new because the realism of the past is no longer real.

And so just at the time of the Spanish-American war, there commenced the difference between Kipling’s realism, which was romanticism, but real enough, and the French and Russian realism, which was so real that it was real enough. Was it real as anybody could know realism, or was it not. Just at the time of the Spanish-American war and later the Russo-Japanese war this question of realism was becoming the vital question for Americans who having a land with a clear light manufacturing light and resistant steel, their life needed a clean and resistant realism but at the same time they needed to move around and you cannot keep moving around without feeling romantic. The nineteenth century was then in its full strength and everybody knew it, and everybody knew that when a thing is like that you have to begin to try to forget it, and they all began to they all began to begin to forget it.

It is funny about things being real. Something happened a few months ago like that, in February 1943.

We had been in Bilignin all these years of the war and now our lease had run out and our landlord and his wife wanted their home back, not that they needed it just then, but they did want it back. And so for the first time in my life, I had a lawyer and a law-suit, and we lost but nevertheless, they gave us longer, and the authorities said as long as they did not consent that we should be put out the others in spite of what the law said could do nothing about it. And then the situation changed, the French army was disbanded, and our landlord who was a captain did have more reason in asking to have his house back again and so finally some one offered us this house in Culoz, and it is quite wonderful even though modern, but after you have been living in an old house for so long a new house has pleasant things about it, windows that fit and light and air, well anyway we told the lawyer it was all right, and the new law-suit we were about to start did not go on, and we had made all our arrangements for moving including our electric water heater and our bathtub and our electric kitchen stove and our refrigerator, and we had made all preparations, and our late landlords had decided to behave nicely at last and I went down to say good-bye to everybody in Belley and first of all to my lawyer. I had always been so much taken with the way all English people I knew always were going to see their lawyer.