Once there was a war

Now and then a garden just coming in to produce must be deserted as the unit is shifted to another area. But this does not seem to make any difference. The new unit takes over the garden, and the old one, if there is none at the new station, starts afresh. The value is in the doing of it. The morale value of the experiment is very high, so high that it is being suggested that supply officers should be equipped with an assortment of seeds as a matter of course. The seed takes up little room and gardening equipment can be made on the spot or is available nearly everywhere.

There is a great difference in the ordinary preparation of vegetables by the English and by us. The English usually boil their vegetables to a submissive, sticky pulp, in which the shape and, as some say, the flavor have long since been overcome. Our cooks do not cook their vegetables nearly so long, are apt to like them crisp. The English do not use nearly as many onions as we do and they use practically no garlic at all. The little gardens are a kind of symbol of revolt against foreign methods.

For example, the average English cook regards a vegetable with suspicion. It is his conviction that unless the vegetable is dominated and thoroughly convinced that it must offer no nonsense, it is likely to revolt or to demand dominion status. Consequently, only those vegetables are encouraged which are docile and capable of learning English ways.

The Brussels sprout is a good example of the acceptable vegetable. It is first allowed to become large and fierce. It is then picked from its stem and the daylights are boiled out of it. At the end of a few hours the little wild lump of green has disintegrated into a curious, grayish paste. It is then considered fit for consumption.

The same method is followed with cabbage. While the cabbage is boiling it is poked and beaten until, when it is served, it has given up its character and tastes exactly like brussels sprouts, which in turn taste like cabbage. Carrots are allowed to remain yellow but nothing else of their essential character is maintained.

No one has yet explained this innate fear the English suffer of a revolt of the vegetables. The easy-going American attitude of allowing the vegetable a certain amount of latitude short of the ballot is looked upon by the English as soft and degenerate. In the American gardens certain English spies have reported they have seen American soldiers pulling and eating raw carrots and turnips and onions.

It is strange to an American that the English, who love dogs and rarely eat them, nevertheless are brutal with vegetables. It is just one of those national differences which are unfathomable.

THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD

LONDON, July 16, 1943—This is no war, like other wars, to be won as other wars have been won. We remember the last war. It was a simple, easy thing. When we had destroyed the Kaiser and a little military clique, the evil thing was removed and all good things came into flower. It was not so, but the war was fought on that basis by troops who sang and then ran home for the millennium.

It is said that this is not a singing war and that is true. The soldiers fight and work under a load of worry. They know deeply that the destruction of the enemy is not the end of this war. And almost universally you find among the soldiers not a fear of the enemy but a fear of what is going to happen after the war. The collapse of retooled factories, the unemployment of millions due to the increase of automatic machinery, a depression that will make the last one look like a holiday.

They fight under a banner of four unimplemented freedoms—four words, and when anyone in authority tries to give these freedoms implements and methods the soldiers hear that man assaulted and dragged down. It doesn’t matter whether the methods or the plans are good or bad. Any planning is assorted at home. And the troops feel they are going to come home to one of two things—either a painless anarchy, or a system set up in their absence with the cards stacked against them.