And when there is no war, well just now I cannot remember just how it is when there is no war.

And then my mother had enough even in Paris of being away from America and all her family in Baltimore and my father going back to America to do business and so we all packed up, after having bought dozens of everything and we went to London and then to America. In London there was no war no war at all but the first theatre I ever saw, which was Pinafore and I do not remember it but I remember the hall of the theatre and I remember a glitter and I remember that one followed the other and that was all there was of London. The trip home on the boat I do not remember at all and I do not remember that any one ever said there was anything to remember. Up to that time such emotions as I had had expressed themselves in German and then in French and then in Baltimore although I do not think we stayed there very long emotions began to feel themselves in English. There was the one my mother told that there was one little Indian two little Indians three little Indian boys, four little five little six little seven little eight little Indian boys. And then also war obtruded itself, I do not quite know how but Baltimore was a place where when my mother was young there had been a war, and where she had seen the Yankee soldiers going from one station to another and they had been shot at and she remembered it and we remembered it and there was a mysterious uncle who went all through the war and came out with or without or only with or only without a pair of shoes and he was then in the shoe business and naturally there was a connection. It was only later when I was a passionate admirer of General Grant and the Northern army that I realised that the uncle had been in the Southern army.

After Baltimore we went to California and then I really did begin to remember. I naturally did remember, not all, but at least really some landscape as well as eating and moving. I do not remember that we saw Indians but I was told afterwards that we had, and now for almost a great number of years there was no war, there was history of course and there was the civil war which had been but otherwise there were no wars. Such wars as there were were inside in me, and naturally although I was a very happy child there were quite a number of such wars. Not many with anybody else because I was not quarrelsome and continuing being the youngest in the family continued being very well taken care of by everybody, also as being the youngest I had cajoling ways, one has when one continues to be the youngest.

In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of the children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children’s lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel. And so it being now war and I seeing just incidentally but nevertheless inevitably seeing and knowing of the feeling of children of any age I do not now have to remember about my feeling but just feel the feeling of having been a certain age. And so there was life in California from about six to sixteen, and as each thing happened it did happen. So many things happened but really in remembering not more than one or two a year certainly not one every month certainly not one every week certainly not one every day. Well say two or three a year. Quite enough too to remember because the rest of the time was just the rest of the time.

During these years there was no war and if there was it was not any war of mine. But of course there was history, and there were novels historical novels and so there was in a way war all the time. Why not when there is always war and sometimes a nice war and sometimes an interesting war. And children do not take war seriously as war. War is soldiers and soldiers have not to be war but they have to be soldiers. Which is a nice thing. I remember that the only war that was not soldiers to me but war was the civil war. The other wars were soldiers emotion and something to see. They said things that sounded like soldiers not like war, but the civil war, not the other wars in America, not the revolutionary war or Indian wars they were soldiers not war. One of the first outside of English wars that I remember and after all that was an English war was the defeat of Braddock by the Indians because we had a story about that but this again was soldiers and not war but the American civil war was not soldiers it was war. And it is like the wars now they are not soldiers they are war. Veterans always feel that it is soldiers even though they know that it is war. Somehow General Grant was not a soldier he was war and that is the reason I liked him.

Well all this time I went to school and school in California meant knowing lots of nationalities. And if you went to school with them and knew about their hair and their ways and all you were bound later not to be surprised that Germans are as they are and French and Greeks and Chinamen and Japs.