Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein Page A

have peace at any price rather than go on suffering and then Germany at the height of its power would throw themselves against a mountain, a holy mountain, that certainly was Moscow because in the time of Saint Odile Moscow was a city of convents and was called the Holy Mountain and from then on there would be a weakening because from then on they would weaken although every one would still say they are terrible they are strong let us have peace and then would come fighting in the streets of the city of cities in the citadel of citadels, and we all wondered could that be Rome well it certainly could be and should be Rome but since it was not very likely to happen we said perhaps it is Jerusalem, perhaps it is Constantinople, well anyway here it is, in the tenth and eleventh of September it is Rome, she said there would be fighting in the streets of Rome and then there would be the beginning of the real end of Germany, and it is all true, as we all have been cherishing copies of this prophecy ever since 1940, and as there is a copy in Latin of the original prophecy in Lyon, which one of the young Seminarists at Belley translated for me into French, there is no doubt about it.
    And it is true we can all prophesy to a certain extent depending upon our knowledge of people and things, some can prophesy from day to day, some the life time of some one, and Saint Odile five hundred years that’s all. Believe it or not it is very simple, it is the same thing only a little longer. And that is the reason why the world is interesting and science which meant progress in the nineteenth century in the twentieth century means simply useful things and now in this war not really that since we all have to eat what we grow and milk in the shape of a goat and feed in the shape of chickens and goats, and smoke in the shape of tobacco they grow in the garden and coffee made of barley toasted and shoes of wood, and clothes left over, and wool made of their own sheep, the discoveries of science are only used for war and destruction, to live it is just what everybody has done since animal life began and not more or less complicated than that.
    So a few weeks ago we had here in the house first the German officers and then later on the Italians. It is funny to be Americans and to be here in France and to have that.
    I like a thing they say if they say it every time they feel it. They say it of my dog Basket, every time they see him and they see him any time and they always say look at him you would take him for a sheep. And so all this time everybody in talking speaks of the Germans, they always were saying, but they are still strong, they are still powerful, just as Saint Odile said they would say and they have been saying it any day and every day and in every way whenever the Germans were mentioned by them and naturally with the war going on and the Germans being in occupation they were mentioned every day and any day and they always said well until a month ago, they always said with meditation or conviction depending upon the person speaking they said they are still powerful, they are still strong. To-day and every day they go on mentioning the Germans, and now any one of them and every one of them as they speak of them they say in the same way, they are pretty sick, and nobody says anything when the Germans are mentioned except that the Germans are pretty sick now, quite sick now, and that is what I like that they repeat every day what they feel each day and that is not repetition that is saying each day what they are knowing, that Basket the poodle you would think he was a sheep, that the Germans until September 1943 were still very strong, that the Germans in September 1943 are sick, pretty sick, quite sick.
    So Saint Odile did prophesy.
    We had the Germans and then the Italians in the house in the months of August and of September.
    When the Germans were here it was very different from ’40, then every one was frightened of them and now it was