Strong in Will, page 20
December 23, 1940
Ambassador and Mrs. Leahy165 sailed today from Norfolk [Virginia] aboard the USS Tuscaloosa for Lisbon, en route to Vichy….
December 25, 1940
Christmas Day. Music and midnight Mass in the churches were forbidden by Hitler.
My path took me toward the Cathédrale of Notre-Dame this morning. It was bitterly cold. The sun was making every effort to warm the city, but I wrapped my fur coat tightly around me and went into the building to see my armored knight on his horse in the thirteenth century-stained-glass window near the north transept. He was on his way to the Crusades in those far-off days. I wondered if it had been the Christmas season when he started on his journey. Outside the church the gargoyles looked down leeringly on this desolate, defeated France. The gargoyles had not prevented my knight from beginning his mission in that fight for freedom the Crusades were engaged in. Again, the liberty to set free the Christ spirit from the spirit of the unbeliever.
The flower market under the shadow of the Cathédrale towers was almost void of flowers; the plants were there but were too heavy to carry. I found some roses. My day is full with dinner preparations, and my table is complete for my Christmas dinner table, which will be white for a white Christmas. There will be red roses, red ribbon, and candles for festivities to cheer a few of our fellow citizens far from home and to cheer a few French in this troubled land.
We Do Not Know the Future
December 31, 1940
A dreary rain covers the city. Are the elements in tune with the dying year as its light flickers out over wartime France? The “Explosive forties” have run their course.
Assistant Secretary of State Long’s166 message to the Foreign Service touched each one of us profoundly. It was “an individual and personal message because it is directed to every member of the Service whatever rank, be he or she a Chief of Mission or the most junior member of the clerical staff on U.S. Foreign Service…”
To the members of the Foreign Service wherever they may be:
We do not know the future…Times of crisis make for great opportunities. Difficult times prove the man or the woman as no amount of easy living can possibly do and consequently, the times through which you are now living and doing your part prove the value to the United States of the service of which you have so ably, so effectively and so unselfishly formed a part. We in the Department are proud of every one of you—we have no doubts that you will completely measure up in the future as you have done in the past to whatever demands may be made upon you, and we send you our heartfelt congratulations upon a spirit which refuses to complain or quit when the going gets tough and which surmounts physical discomfort and dangers of separation from loved ones or whatever else may confront them for the glory of the service and the welfare of the United States….
….to all of you our best wishes for the coming year….
A cable from Robert Murphy in Dakar, North Africa, reached the Embassy yesterday. Dakar—Free France!
I do not know what was in the cable—that is not my affair. Important? Most probably. For me, word coming from a representative of our country in a part of France that is free, bringing a message to this enslaved land, has untold significance. As the tragic days of 1940 pass into history, as 1941 dawns on a bewildered world, we have thus the inspiration to look upward and onward with love and new hope.
End 1940
CHAPTER 3
January 1, 1941–June 3, 1941
The American Embassy in Paris Relocates to Vichy
January 1, 1941
There were no festivities last night to usher in the somber days of the year that lies ahead. Private parties at home were quiet as the French and Americans made an effort to bring cheer into their own lives and into the lives of so many bending under burdens that seemed too heavy for them to carry. The Nazis were making the most of the coming in of 1941 and were loud and riotous in the night clubs and restaurants. I woke feeling a wearisome in the atmosphere, a dull hope, or it might have been no hope at all.
The snow grated under my feet as I left the apartment of Mrs. Freeman late this evening. On the little rue Barbet-de-Jouy where she lives, all was silent. It had been snowing all day and a white mantle covered the city; no one was on the streets. To be at home in the struggle to keep warm was the aim of the population. The château opposite was like a Christmas card. It, too, was covered with snow, and the light from the windows might have been candles lighting a Christmas tree inside. Tonight, there are no Christmas trees….
Is there nothing that can lift up my spirit, or that can lift up the spirit of those out in the dark to a plane where hope is? Not tonight, but tomorrow it will shine; the evil hour is fleeting, ephemeral, the light of faith lives on. We wait and turn to God….
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.1
January 2, 1941
President Roosevelt’s address that came to the Embassy by radio bulletin and which, in spite of every effort of the Nazis to prevent it from reaching the French, filtered through to them and pierced the darkness. Is the entry of the United States in the war so near? The address unnerved the Americans in France; however, they do not know what to do. Some are too ill to take the trip to America; others are too poor. Should they remain and hazard the harrowing probability of a concentration camp? Should those who are ill risk death on a voyage that in these days would be precarious even to those who are strong?
January 3, 1941
No food in the market today. My governess told me that there is no food line as there is no food. The expensive restaurants are filled with the Nazis; in the smaller ones and bistrots the French find cheaper and simpler meals. Food and restaurants—where to go, what are the prices? These are the only topics of conversation. The ration tickets issued by the Nazis give more than one can possibly eat, even should one be able to procure the food. These tickets are given to the Diplomatic Corps, and we in turn pass them on to our French friends and, of course, to our compatriots not attached to the Embassy. The Nazis seem to have the capacity of eating a great quantity of food. They have a kind of appreciation of the French cooking but, as a French friend of mine remarked, “We cannot forgive the Germans for eating oysters with red wine.” An unforgivable sin in the French mind is to serve the wrong wine.
My shoemaker informed my governess that the next time my shoes needed mending, it would be necessary to take them to the police station where the agent in charge would decide whether they really needed new leather. Leather is scarce, and what they have today will soon give out.
From the British radio: success and important British victories in Libya2….
January 8, 1941
Down in Vichy, Admiral Leahy has arrived as the new American Ambassador to the Vichy government. He will present his credentials to Maréchal Pétain.
The French cling to the predictions from the clairvoyants. Today the prediction of Sainte Odile3 came to my notice. It was a letter foretelling present events by this same Saint who lived centuries ago: that a second Joan of Arc would appear to lead the Allies to victory, that the war would end in 1942 with the defeat of the Germans, and that Paris would be free. In the concentration camp where the British are interned, a fortune teller had told Diana FitzHerbert that she would soon be free and that the war would end in 1942.
January 9, 1941
There are rumors that Hitler is putting pressure on Spain to allow German troops to pass through the country; that the British are bombarding the French coast.
From the Paris-soir (German-controlled): not one British subject believes in victory; failure of preparation being the cause of defeat….
Notices on the walls of buildings in Paris read: “Vive Pétain” and “Let me alone with your talk of the de Gaullists, the British, the lies.”
January 10, 1941
Today I went to escape from all this tragedy. I want to leave the war to others. Why should I bother about it? It does not belong to me. It is not my war….
I almost ran to the rue de Verneuil to visit again the apartment I had seen in 1939 when I had searched for my own; I was being drawn to it again; it seemed so familiar as though I had been there long ago, had lived in it, had indeed known the people in it; I wanted to be sure that it was not only a dream. I wondered if the people had come back, or if the dust was still thick on the furniture because no one had come back; if the pictures loosening in their frames were still crooked against the walls; if the cobwebs still stretched from the ceiling down to the piano; or if, indeed, the restless spirit of the owner who had passed on to the Beyond, was still hovering around his dwelling seeking what? whom?
I was never to know the answers to these questions; I found an answer, however, in the impulse to wander into the past. I left rue de Verneuil and the apartment undisturbed as there was no response to my knocking or ringing from the concierge.
I turned to the rue de Lille that is quite nearby. Here I went backwards across the years, twenty-three to be exact, to that other war when I first came to France. Rushing past the concierge, I climbed the four flights and entered the tiny apartment that I had lived in for so long. There was the open fireplace; the embers were there, too, as quiet as they were in that time long ago when I sat before it trying to keep warm waiting for him….
Quite near was the small room where every bit of space seemed taken up with an object of antique art; next to it the bedroom, and beyond was the kitchen where I prepared a simple meal for him when he came for dinner. Romance was stretched out through the rooms as though it had never left. Love had been there; it must have stayed. I closed my eyes; love was a living thing in those past years. Where had it flown? Where does love wing its flight when it seems over and gone?
I ran down the broad stairs. There were tears in my heart; love had left its scar.
I crossed the spacious courtyard. The snow was falling in large flakes. Out on the street the concierge, the same concierge, older and grey, was shoveling the snow making a path for the tenants. She gave me a glance and turned away. Had the years changed me so much? All the memories of my life in rue de Lille rushed past. They disappeared, however, as I ran and ran. Even the nostalgia they had left in their wake vanished. I held one memory close, however—the one that had left a scar….
In the blackout I could not remember if I was living in 1919 or 1941. Time is an illusion….
A group of German soldiers passed. That brought me back into the present. German boots were not heard on a Paris street in 1919. Paris belonged to France in those days….
I am late. I must hurry on to my rue de Varenne, my dwelling. I must follow on with my people, my Allies, in this—my war. It makes me one with the great heart of the world. This is my war.
Names of Embassy Staff Given to German Authorities
January 11, 1941
The names of everyone on the Embassy staff were given to the German authorities a short time ago. The occupying power must take count of friends and enemies alike.
The clandestine tracts from the Résistance come to us more frequently as the Gestapo becomes stronger and crueler. The Musée de l’Homme4 at the Trocadéro is one of the centers of the underground. It is a glorious, courageous group of men and women, and it is in direct contact with England. The pamphlets issued by the different groups5 are diffused throughout France from such groups as “Résistance,” “Le Coq Enchainé,” “Libération Sud,” etc. The members of some of the groups are charged with the sabotage of transportation lines and munitions factories, attacks on isolated German soldiers, and the cutting of lines of communication. The reprisals by the Nazis go on, but instead of stopping these patriots of the underground, the resistance groups continue their work with ever greater activity.
Every day Frenchmen are taken by the Nazis: sent to camps, to Germany, to prison; some are shot or denounced sometimes by their own people. God forgive them.
January 16, 1941
From the bridge I watched the ice floating swiftly down the Seine. My fingers were almost frozen, and the icy wind attacked my ears. Leaning over the parapet quite near me was a Frenchman with only one arm; no overcoat covered the thin body; his suit was worn and of light material; tragedy and misery were in his eyes. Indeed, this is my war. There is no escape; so little one can do in the immensity of it….
In Le Matin yesterday appeared an article describing a Franco-American incident,6 scarcely amicable, which took place in Vichy. In a gathering of French and Americans to celebrate the Eve of the New Year, a Frenchman of the Vichy government protested that the gramophone was playing the British national anthem. Outside the building where the Frenchman and one of the American guests, who had resented the Frenchman’s remarks, discussed the matter somewhat forcibly; the former was given to understand that the gramophone had been playing one of America’s anthems, which has the same music as that of the British “God Save the King.” Unfortunately the German-controlled Le Matin made no mention of this, but suggested that the American be requested to leave France to “exercise his talent of a boxer somewhere else.”
It is 10:00 p.m. Not a sound is on the streets. The blackness outside is thick. It is not as safe in Paris as it was a year ago. Incidents occur every day of handbags being taken from women after dark, of assaults on passersby. One does not express any opinion concerning the present regime; those who have done so have suddenly disappeared leaving no trace. When an investigation begins by the family of the vanished person through the police, the Nazi authorities, naturally, are unable to find him or her….
The press continues to reiterate the intention of the Nazis to feed the Paris population. Germany is sending 400,000 tons of potatoes, 100,000 tons of meat, etc. to France they say. So far it has not arrived. Nazi promises!
Reading Mademoiselle’s household budget, I find for the week the following items for food: bread, barley (to mix with what is called coffee), onions, cheese (with no taste, a kind of Swiss cheese), apples, watered milk, lemons, ham, turnips, oranges, carrots and rutabaga. One day there was some butter. This is what we had for a week. It is excellent for reducing one’s weight. A friend asked me what I did to have become more slender.
It is time to write and read during these winter evenings by my fire, when all is dark outside, making it difficult to roam about even with an electric lamp. I take up my Middle Ages in France.7 There is a similarity in those far-off days and in Paris of the present time: dark streets, narrow streets, women with hoods as the snow falls in great flakes. There are few vehicles; at times none can be seen at all. Over in the Latin Quarter today I met Sylvia Beach,8 the attractive owner of her library “Shakespeare and Company.” Afterwards I wandered through the small byways leading to houses built in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Beneath the snow there was the aspect of the villages of that dawn of French history, the beginning of French culture that has never been equaled….
I leave the French Middle Ages and return to the dynamics of today of this twentieth century full of explosives from the English Channel down to Africa. There are days when one does not know whether a bomb will land some place near; or whether tomorrow will bring forth enough food for us to carry on; or whether an ultimatum or a simple invasion of another country will send us into different parts of the globe or even to our own land in defense of our liberties; or whether a member of the Gestapo will knock at our door some morning and take us up for questioning for something we are ignorant of, or make some grave accusation.
Embassy work goes on with increased tension. Crowds still remain to be repatriated; foreign refugees from other countries are still seeking visas to travel to the United States. There are American wives who must leave, separated from French husbands who cannot leave but who want their women to reach safety. There are sons separated from parents who want their children away from the danger of being sent to Germany or imprisoned. There are rich women leaving all the beautiful things they have collected during the years to return home.
January 23, 1941
The British took Tobruk yesterday.9 There was uplift of morale and in the atmosphere, as the voice over the radio rang out this splendid victory. It gave us new hope. Even those French who distrusted the British caught the glimmer of a light of liberation for their country. Twenty-five thousand Italians were taken prisoners by the British.
The German soldiers refuse to remain in their barracks around and in Paris. They know that the British bombs are merciless, as merciless as the Nazis have been and are, with this exception: the British make every effort not to kill women and children. As a result of this bombing, the Nazis are requisitioning more hotels. They give the residents already there twelve hours to vacate.
It is warmer during these days; there is a lull, so to speak, in the intense cold of last week. One can almost smell the spring. One cannot, however, be too optimistic. There is much cold ahead before the buds begin to show their first green in the gardens.
