Miscellaneous Notes From Recent Readings

I am preparing some thoughts about the situation in Honduras but do not have time to give a full weigh-in yet so I will just extract a few items from a jar on one of the shelves of my memory.

1. Eisenhower and Patton, around 1918 or 19, were responsible for training tank commanders for use in war. Eisenhower had wanted to go to the war itself but had been good at training infantry so they kept him home. (He treated it more like football practice than war, and made it more lively.) Well, both Patton and Ike felt that a 3 m.p.h. tank was not good. They wrote letters to every superior officer they could find in Washington saying the tank should not be used to accompany the infantry (hence the slow speed) but rather to disrupt the enemy. They were told in no uncertain terms that if they did not stop writing these letters they would be court martialed. History later demonstrated who was right.

2. The Nazi Blitzkrieg was so swift that France fell in six weeks.

3. On one occasion General Rommel, in his lead tank, was so far ahead of his army as it sped forward that he rode into a French village all by himself without any support. The French forces were fleeing before he got there. The German army was (my memory fails me here) either 35 miles behind or 35 minutes.

4. Whittaker Chambers, editor of Time magazine in the late 1940's, had been a communist in the 30's but Josef Stalin's behavior, eliminating nearly everybody on his own side, led him to flee the Communist party. Chambers had been a conduit of U.S. secrets, getting them transported to the Soviet Union. Alger Hiss was his "inside contact."

5. Chambers became a witness for the prosecution in one of the biggest trials of the century. Hiss had been an aide to FDR and the notion that a communist was so close to the pinnacle of power helped feed the Red Scare of the early Cold War. Hiss had worked in the State Department and was a member of the delegation that accompanied FDR to Yalta in 1945.

6. Hiss lost, and went to jail for perjury. He denied ever having been a spy or communist.

7. Allen Weinstein wrote a book about the case called Perjury. His aim was to prove Hiss was innocent. In researching the book he was able to draw upon previously inaccessible information from the Soviet archives. The inescapable conclusion: Hiss was guilty.

8. For some reason people to this day attempt to proclaim Hiss' innocence. Hiss died in 1996.

9. The country of Rhodesia was named after the guy for whom the Rhodes Scholarship was named. Cecil Rhodes owned diamond mines and was a big believer in Colonialism and the supremacy of the the Anglo-Saxon race, proof that smart people can have stupid ideas. Sadly, such ideas were in vogue for a time. (See Rudyard Kipling's poem White Man's Burden.)

10. Today the once Brit colony of Rhodesia has been broken up into Zimbabwe and Zambia.

A Poem About Truth

Short Story Monday.... this one is perhaps unusual in style, written at a time when I was captivated by the South American short story writer Jorge Luis Borges. It's one of my favorites, though often misunderstood being somewhat satirical and mystical at the same time. Enjoy.

A Poem About Truth

May 18, 1944. At Hitler's war conference he is told that the enemy has carried out two spy operations during the night on the heavily defended French coastline. At one place, near Calais, German troops have found an orange peel, an empty flask and a shovel lying on the beach. Years later they would say that they also found a landscape painted on driftwood, a finely crafted home made flute and a dagger. In the estuary of the river Somme, two British commandos were discovered in the late afternoon. "They came ashore in a rubber raft," General Jodl, chief of Wehrmacht operations, tells Hitler. "They claim to know nothing."

The scene changes to a French restaurant once frequented by Napoleon. The restaurant serves excellent Italian fare. Three nights have passed. A stout German woman makes pasta in the kitchen. Two French chefs argue about how to make croissants. They are smoking cigarettes and sipping wine. They know that Hitler is a madman, but it does not affect their cooking. The taller chef, thinnest of the two, is also a writer. At night he composes poetry in the same way that a garden produces flowers. The effect is dazzling. His mother also was a poet, as was his grandfather. He does not believe in war or death. He is restless, anxious about love, and lives alone. If he had a lover, he knows that he would write less poetry, since he writes only to fill his piteous empty hours. When he reads his poems, he cries, then burns them. He is brutally honest with himself.

The following evening he overhears a Nazi under-lieutenant commenting on Britain's secret operations. He seizes the opportunity to become part of an adventure. He never again sees his home. Later that night the chef is captured in a forbidden zone near the Seine whereupon he fakes an English accent and says he is a spy. He is blindfolded and driven to a chateau where he must stand before Rommel. He makes up a story about a wife and daughter in Britain. The details are vivid, but Rommel loses interest and orders him to be shot. That night he writes a poem about the event and leaves it in his cell. The German officer who reads it laughs at the insipid rhymes and melancholy metaphors. He shares it with his friend who notices that the word "mishap" is misapplied and that "appendage" would have been a better choice of words than "freehold."

By week's end a hundred eyes have seen the poem. Many jokes are made of it. Heinrich (we do not know his last name), a company agent from Stuttgart, makes a copy of the poem, then translates it into German. In the translation he improves the meter and resolves the problematic third stanza. He sends it to his mother who doesn’t understand it, but keeps it in a small wooden box on the bureau next to a framed photo of the Fuhrer.

It’s possible the original poem is still in existence somewhere, but no one knows for certain. My cousin, who married a German woman, says her father saw the poem, the original version, and remembers that it was called Truth Is A Fire That Burns. We don’t know if this was the same poem, or if he saw the poem at all. After the war many German soldiers say they saw the poem, and many more say they made copies of it to send to the Fatherland. We know that most of them are lying. Over the years versions have appeared in literary journals, some superior to others, all of them improvements on the original. I have seen it thrice in English literary journals -- once, I believe, in the Antioch Review, though it may have been one of the other college publications that begin with an A. Someone told me that it has been translated into 57 languages. In Laos, the mountain peoples now say that it is the Word of God.

No one remembers the French chef who gave his life to produce the poem. His unknown name has been swallowed up by history, but his poem lives on in human hearts.

The End

Copyright 1998 ~ Ed Newman
PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED if attribution is cited.

A Poem About Truth

The opening paragraph is derivative. The story is original.

“The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

May 18, 1944. At Hitler's war conference he is told that the enemy has carried out two spy operations during the night on the heavily defended French coastline. At one place, near Calais, German troops have found an orange peel, an empty flask and a shovel lying on the beach. Years later they would say that they also found a landscape painted on driftwood, a finely crafted home made flute and a dagger. In the estuary of the river Somme, two British commandos were discovered in the late afternoon. "They came ashore in a rubber raft," General Jodl, chief of Wehrmach operations, tells Hitler. "They claim to know nothing."

The scene changes to a French restaurant once frequented by Napoleon. The restaurant serves excellent Italian fare. Three nights have passed. A stout German woman makes pasta in the kitchen. Two French chefs argue about how to make croissants. They are smoking cigarettes and sipping wine. They know that Hitler is a madman, but it does not affect their cooking. The taller chef, thinnest of the two, is also a writer. At night he composes poetry in the same way that a garden produces flowers. The effect is dazzling. His mother also was a poet, as was his grandfather. He does not believe in war or death. He is restless, anxious about love, and lives alone. If he had a lover, he knows that he would write less poetry, since he writes only to fill his piteous empty hours. When he reads his poems, he cries, then burns them. He is brutally honest with himself.

The following evening he overhears a Nazi under-lieutenant commenting on Britain's secret operations. He seizes the opportunity to become part of an adventure. He never again sees his home. Later that night the chef is captured in a forbidden zone near the Seine whereupon he fakes an English accent and says he is a spy. He is blindfolded and driven to a chateau where he must stand before Rommel. He makes up a story about a wife and daughter in Britain. The details are vivid, but Rommel loses interest and orders him to be shot. That night he writes a poem about the event and leaves it in his cell. The German officer who reads it laughs at the insipid rhymes and melancholy metaphors. He shares it with his friend who notices that the word "mayhap" is misapplied and that "appanage" would have been a better choice of words than "largess."

By week's end a hundred eyes have beheld the poem. Many jokes are made of it. Heinrich (we do not know his last name), a company agent from Stuttgart, makes a copy of the poem, then translates it into German. In the translation he improves the meter and resolves the problematic third stanza. He sends it to his mother who does not understand it, but keeps it in a small wooden box on the bureau next to a framed photo of the Fuhrer.

It is possible the original poem is still in existence somewhere, but no one knows for certain. My cousin, who married a German woman, says that her father saw the poem, the original version, and remembers that it was called Truth Is A Fire That Burns. We do not know if this was the same poem, or if he saw the poem at all. After the war many German soldiers say they saw the poem, and many more say they made copies of it to send to the Fatherland. We know that most of them are lying. Over the years versions have appeared in journals, some superior to others, all of them improvements on the original. I have seen it thrice in English literary journals -- once, I believe, in the Antioch Review, though it may have been one of the other college publications that begin with an A. Someone told me that it has been translated into 57 languages. In Thailand, the mountain peoples now say that it is the Word of God.

No one remembers the French chef who gave his life to produce the poem. His unknown name has been swallowed up by history, but his poem lives on in human hearts.

- end -

Translated 8-22-98 by ennyman

“There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Editor's Note: Short Fiction Monday has fallen on a Tuesday this week due to Labor Day.

EdNote 2: Borges is to be credited for the inspiration that produced this strange tale, not to be blamed for its failings.