It is the greatest of pities that there should be this wretched element of friction between the two allies. If every American could have been miraculously whisked out of France the day after the armistice was signed the doughboy would likely have been to this day a bit of a popular French idol. It is this hanging about with no ostensible end in view that frays nerves on both sides and leads to a mutual stepping on each other’s toes. No two nationalities I am convinced could be thrown into such an intimate and trying relationship and produce perfect harmony. There must inevitably be a clash of temperaments. The case in this instance, as I see it, is complicated to an extraordinary degree, with human foibles and failings a-plenty on both sides.
We Americans have undoubtedly been guilty of bad manners. Quite openly and persistently the doughboy has called the Frenchman “frog” to his face and this the French have by no means enjoyed. The odd part of the thing is that the doughboy can give no explanation of the nickname.
“But why do you call them frogs?” I ask the boys. Usually they look quite blank.
“It’s ’cause they sound like frogs when they talk,” explained one lad.
“’Cause they jump around like frogs when they get excited,” offered another.
Not one of them suspects that this nickname is a curious survival of the old term of contempt “Frog-eaters” applied to the French by the English in the days when they were enemies instead of allies!
Undoubtedly too the feminine factor, leading as it has to jealousy, has played its share in arousing antagonism.
“The chief victories of the Americans in France,” declared a French officer bitterly the other day, “are his conquests over the feminine heart!”
Indeed from the start it has been an open secret that the “Mademoiselles” have taken a prodigious fancy to the American soldier. This is partly because he possesses the charm of novelty, partly because he has money and can procure chocolate and cigarettes and partly just because he is himself.
“There are three thousand men in this town and three girls,” ran a postal addressed by a joyous youngster on leave to his lieutenant; “I’m going with one of them and Abe has the other two.”