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> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wa

> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth, and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful. Well. I mean... Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather refreshing way. "The French don't bathe." The French don't bathe often enough. They can't. They don't have real soap. (...) The Germans took the soap.

rsynnott 5y ago
> the text is amazingly blunt and honest It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to people with a fairly low reading level.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  There's also an excerpt from the NYT in there, number 33.
- eplanit 5y ago
  People weren't as fragile and sensitive then. It was better in that way.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Except that it's actual nonsense. Not long after WW2 the congress tried to ban comic books for spoiling the youth,just couple decades later people were holding public protests against the Simpsons, and the first TV show to mention the word "period" was met with similar level of protests as if that's something dirty and unspeakable. No, it's the exact opposite - "back then" people were far more fragile and sensitive and doing or saying the wrong kind of thing could have serious consequences on your life.
    - eplanit 5y ago
      Those are examples of a morally conservative society, in which a Judeo-Christian value system was in place, and when there was a stronger emphasis on conformity. I guess the sensitivity was in breaking those rules. In those times too, however, children were taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me". Now, everyone is comfortable with talk of sex and biological realities...but a book critical of transgenderism is literally called "violence": https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-association-trans/ https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-associati.... I guess critics of such topics are today's Juvenile Delinquents. /s
      - whoaisme 5y ago
        Yeah I wish we could go back to the days when people weren't so sensitive. Nowadays a black man can't even look at a white woman without getting hanged not to mention all the pearl grasping about the queers.
    - 0des 5y ago
      You are both right, in some ways we have become less bashful about certain aspects of life, but also society today is a bit more particular about some things. It is no longer enough to disagree with someone, you must destroy their will to continue.
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  Well yes, but you also use that fact to be blunt and dishonest, like saying "Yep, the french don't wash. Guess they're just uncultured. They're still our allies, get used to it!"
- djrogers 5y ago
  Why? The US literacy rate in the 1940s was 97.1%, and the US military had special programs to teach the illiterate to read. During WW2, 95% of illiterate recruits achieved minimum literacy within two months through the special training units developed for that purpose. I know it’s easy for some people to think of a trigger puller as a dumb grunt - even more so one who served 80 years ago, but it’s not accurate or fair. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp [1] https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/soldiers_lit.htm https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/soldiers_lit.htm
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    I didn’t mean it as a value judgement; it’s clearly written to be very comprehensible. That’s a good thing!
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    Literacy at what level? From your first source: "In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had completed no more than an eighth grade education." The manual had to be written at 8th grade level (at most) in order to be easily understood by more than 50% of the army.
- bonaldi 5y ago
  Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like. There's an important distinction between reading level and intelligence, and I think we conflate the two in modern writing. Simple language doesn't need to be simplistic.
  - memling 5y ago
    > Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like. There's a common trope about "8th-grade" education in the US, and a fairly common response to it, e.g., https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.htm https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.h.... There are, of course, reasons for the differences that aren't merely reactionary "people are dumb now" or "technology FTW!!1!" I suspect some of the quoting of Tacitus is due to a more classical emphasis, even in early education (see, for example, the McGuffey Readers[1]), where Latin and Greek were more widely studied, and their authors more integrated into the grade-level curriculum. I didn't read Herodotus or Tacitus until college (a classics course) and was pleasantly surprised by how readable and accessible they were. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers
- jamesmontalvo3 5y ago
  Perhaps also to enable the French to read and understand it? You wouldn’t want them just reading the gripes (which are short and simple) and then not reading the responses.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I think more writers, especially technical writers, should am for this type of writing. I like simple.
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    The DoD produces documents that are either a) incredibly clear and straightforward, or b) completely impenetrable (esp. anything with a diagram) There is no middle ground. Seriously though, the Army's writing manual is top-notch and most high schools would be better for spending a month or three teaching from it.
eplanit 5y ago
It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. My stepfather escaped nazi Germany, and moved to the us in the 40s. He grudgingly adapted to daily bathing (my mother's insistence), but remarked how very American that is. He was very 20th century European, for sure.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. Americans of a very close earlier ear didn't bathe everyday either...
  - eplanit 5y ago
    That's true. It was the 1970s when we were pressuring the stepfather.
  - jhugo 5y ago
    Many Americans of the exact same era probably didn't bathe every day.
    - eplanit 5y ago
      And true in Europe today. Ever been on a train in Germany in the summertime?
      - techrat 5y ago
        Ever been on the L in Chicago in a car without working air conditioning? Spoiler: Everybody stinks.
        eplanit 5y ago
        Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...). Different folks are indeed different in some ways.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
afr0ck 5y ago
I like the fact that the French didn't like American presence on their sole and had offensive feelings towards that, while at the same time, they were forcefully present all over Africa with totalitarian and oppressive military administrations. In Algeria, many fought in WW2 as part of the French Expeditionary Corps (e.g; my great-grandfather) with the hope that in case the allies win, Algerians could possibly negotiate some sort of self-governance. on the 8th of May 45, thousands of Algerians protested for independence. The civilians faced an immediate annihilation by the French military [1], resulting in up to 30,000 dead civilians. And who can believe this happened in the aftermath of ending NAZI Germany?!!!! I mean that's very ironic but well ... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  A lot of the allied leaders get a better historical reputation because they’re naturally compared to their opponent, Hitler. Without Hitler there as a foil, most of them would be treated far worse by history. Charles de Gaulle should get more crap over his behavior in Algeria than he does. Same for Churchill and his behavior in India.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Geopolitical ambitions were well beyond the daily awareness of French citizens, moreover, we don't know what the average French citizens view on those things would be. Most of them just lived through existential horror.
thih9 5y ago
Number 48. seems related, both about cleanliness and being blunt. I was glancing through the text and I was very surprised when I found it. > "I'd like the French a lot better if they were cleaner." > That's perfectly understandable.
rdiddly 5y ago
Yeah I kept thinking you'd never get away with talking that way now.
SimeVidas 5y ago
Also, page 35: > The French haven’t had paint for a long time.
3np 5y ago
Some cultural asymmetries have swung the other way since. For example: 41. "At the Folies Bergers or the Casino de Paris, even the usher girls demand tips! What a racket!" Imagine a US person going abroad and being upset about tipping expectations today.
leokennis 5y ago
Imagine the first one being written today: *We came to Europe twice in twenty-fee years to save the French* We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. (...) In this war, France fell in June of 1940, We didn't invade Europe until June of 1944. We didn't even think of "saving the French" through military action until after Pearl Harbor -- after the Germans declared war on us. This would not even pass the lowest paid PR lackey at the DoD in 2021.

rsynnott 5y ago

> the text is amazingly blunt and honest It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to people with a fairly low reading level.

read_if_gay_ 5y ago
There's also an excerpt from the NYT in there, number 33.
eplanit 5y ago
People weren't as fragile and sensitive then. It was better in that way.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Except that it's actual nonsense. Not long after WW2 the congress tried to ban comic books for spoiling the youth,just couple decades later people were holding public protests against the Simpsons, and the first TV show to mention the word "period" was met with similar level of protests as if that's something dirty and unspeakable. No, it's the exact opposite - "back then" people were far more fragile and sensitive and doing or saying the wrong kind of thing could have serious consequences on your life.
  - eplanit 5y ago
    Those are examples of a morally conservative society, in which a Judeo-Christian value system was in place, and when there was a stronger emphasis on conformity. I guess the sensitivity was in breaking those rules. In those times too, however, children were taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me". Now, everyone is comfortable with talk of sex and biological realities...but a book critical of transgenderism is literally called "violence": https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-association-trans/ https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-associati.... I guess critics of such topics are today's Juvenile Delinquents. /s
    - whoaisme 5y ago
      Yeah I wish we could go back to the days when people weren't so sensitive. Nowadays a black man can't even look at a white woman without getting hanged not to mention all the pearl grasping about the queers.
  - 0des 5y ago
    You are both right, in some ways we have become less bashful about certain aspects of life, but also society today is a bit more particular about some things. It is no longer enough to disagree with someone, you must destroy their will to continue.
ThePadawan 5y ago
Well yes, but you also use that fact to be blunt and dishonest, like saying "Yep, the french don't wash. Guess they're just uncultured. They're still our allies, get used to it!"
djrogers 5y ago
Why? The US literacy rate in the 1940s was 97.1%, and the US military had special programs to teach the illiterate to read. During WW2, 95% of illiterate recruits achieved minimum literacy within two months through the special training units developed for that purpose. I know it’s easy for some people to think of a trigger puller as a dumb grunt - even more so one who served 80 years ago, but it’s not accurate or fair. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp [1] https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/soldiers_lit.htm https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/soldiers_lit.htm
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I didn’t mean it as a value judgement; it’s clearly written to be very comprehensible. That’s a good thing!
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Literacy at what level? From your first source: "In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had completed no more than an eighth grade education." The manual had to be written at 8th grade level (at most) in order to be easily understood by more than 50% of the army.
bonaldi 5y ago
Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like. There's an important distinction between reading level and intelligence, and I think we conflate the two in modern writing. Simple language doesn't need to be simplistic.
- memling 5y ago
  > Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like. There's a common trope about "8th-grade" education in the US, and a fairly common response to it, e.g., https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.htm https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.h.... There are, of course, reasons for the differences that aren't merely reactionary "people are dumb now" or "technology FTW!!1!" I suspect some of the quoting of Tacitus is due to a more classical emphasis, even in early education (see, for example, the McGuffey Readers[1]), where Latin and Greek were more widely studied, and their authors more integrated into the grade-level curriculum. I didn't read Herodotus or Tacitus until college (a classics course) and was pleasantly surprised by how readable and accessible they were. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers
jamesmontalvo3 5y ago
Perhaps also to enable the French to read and understand it? You wouldn’t want them just reading the gripes (which are short and simple) and then not reading the responses.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I think more writers, especially technical writers, should am for this type of writing. I like simple.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  The DoD produces documents that are either a) incredibly clear and straightforward, or b) completely impenetrable (esp. anything with a diagram) There is no middle ground. Seriously though, the Army's writing manual is top-notch and most high schools would be better for spending a month or three teaching from it.

eplanit 5y ago

It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. My stepfather escaped nazi Germany, and moved to the us in the 40s. He grudgingly adapted to daily bathing (my mother's insistence), but remarked how very American that is. He was very 20th century European, for sure.

coldtea 5y ago
>It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. Americans of a very close earlier ear didn't bathe everyday either...
- eplanit 5y ago
  That's true. It was the 1970s when we were pressuring the stepfather.
- jhugo 5y ago
  Many Americans of the exact same era probably didn't bathe every day.
  - eplanit 5y ago
    And true in Europe today. Ever been on a train in Germany in the summertime?
    - techrat 5y ago
      Ever been on the L in Chicago in a car without working air conditioning? Spoiler: Everybody stinks.
      - eplanit 5y ago
        Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...). Different folks are indeed different in some ways.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

afr0ck 5y ago

I like the fact that the French didn't like American presence on their sole and had offensive feelings towards that, while at the same time, they were forcefully present all over Africa with totalitarian and oppressive military administrations. In Algeria, many fought in WW2 as part of the French Expeditionary Corps (e.g; my great-grandfather) with the hope that in case the allies win, Algerians could possibly negotiate some sort of self-governance. on the 8th of May 45, thousands of Algerians protested for independence. The civilians faced an immediate annihilation by the French military [1], resulting in up to 30,000 dead civilians. And who can believe this happened in the aftermath of ending NAZI Germany?!!!! I mean that's very ironic but well ... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre

ashtonkem 5y ago
A lot of the allied leaders get a better historical reputation because they’re naturally compared to their opponent, Hitler. Without Hitler there as a foil, most of them would be treated far worse by history. Charles de Gaulle should get more crap over his behavior in Algeria than he does. Same for Churchill and his behavior in India.
jollybean 5y ago
Geopolitical ambitions were well beyond the daily awareness of French citizens, moreover, we don't know what the average French citizens view on those things would be. Most of them just lived through existential horror.

thih9 5y ago

Number 48. seems related, both about cleanliness and being blunt. I was glancing through the text and I was very surprised when I found it. > "I'd like the French a lot better if they were cleaner." > That's perfectly understandable.

rdiddly 5y ago

Yeah I kept thinking you'd never get away with talking that way now.

SimeVidas 5y ago

Also, page 35: > The French haven’t had paint for a long time.

3np 5y ago

Some cultural asymmetries have swung the other way since. For example: 41. "At the Folies Bergers or the Casino de Paris, even the usher girls demand tips! What a racket!" Imagine a US person going abroad and being upset about tipping expectations today.

leokennis 5y ago

Imagine the first one being written today: *We came to Europe twice in twenty-fee years to save the French* We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. (...) In this war, France fell in June of 1940, We didn't invade Europe until June of 1944. We didn't even think of "saving the French" through military action until after Pearl Harbor -- after the Germans declared war on us. This would not even pass the lowest paid PR lackey at the DoD in 2021.