The Greeneville daily sun. (Greeneville, Tenn.) 1918-1920, 1919-04-23
y S. Forgetting
Grudges Arising
After Arrnistice
By George Rothwell Brown.

WASHINGTON, April 23.-The
tide Of friendly sentiment is once
more running strongly toward France
on this side of the Atlantic. The re-
action against the wave of resentment
and i'll feeling that followed the sign
Ing of the armistice has already set
in and is growing stronger as more
and more troops come home and set
tie down. German propaganda in this
country that sought to create a
breach between the two peoples has
failed.
There was unmistakable evidence
a few months ago of the existence of
this propaganda, but on proof that it
was organized or financed from Ber-
lin, and while part of it may have
been officially encouraged and sup
ported, it depended for its success
upon the voluntary work of the pro-
German element in the population
working without organized leader
ship. Its presence here was by no
means ignored by those in positions
of responsibility most desirous of
checking it, but it cannot be said that
there was any organized or intelli-
gent concerted effort to check it. The
German schemes to separate the
Americans and French nave fallen
fiat, for the one great reason that
there has never been any substantial
basis for i'll will between the peoples
Of the two great republics.
Friction Real, but Petty.
1t would be idle to deny that fric-
ton has occurred between the Amer
lean overseas forces and the people
of France, although not with the
army of France. This has been vir-
tually officially admitted both in
France and in this country. That
friction was real, but it was petty. 1t
was in no sense basic, and grew al
most entirely out of feeling on the
part of the American soldiers abroad
that they had been made the victims
of proftecring Frenchmen.
This feeling was so strong not
many weeks ago that Mr. Clcmenceau
himself took cognizance of it, and
considerable concern was shown over
the fraternizing between Americans
and Germans in the occupied terri
tories ,of Germany, where the Huns
were shrewd enough to cultivate
American good will by prohibiting
profteering. Yankee soldiers going
from Fernch villages, where they felt
they had been feeced by shopkeepers,
were agrecably surprised to find the
German cities in no disposition to
take advantage of them.
All Mistreated Alike.
The French defense is that if
American soldiers were outrageously
overcharged, they were at least not
treated any worse than were the
French soldiers, but this is not so. 1t
has been my own personal experience
as we'll as the experience of many
Americans with whom | have talked
that two sets of prices prevailed gen
Ierally throughout France, one for the
sYankee and one for the Frenchman
| have been obliged to ask a French
officer to make 4 purchase for me in
order to save myself from being over
charged 100 per cent and | know one
French officer who forbade his Amer
lean wife to buy things from the Paris
shows when he was not with her on
the ogrund that she would be robbed.
1t is true that the American is
largely responsible for the way in
which he was victimized by the
French storekeeper, for the average
American insisted upon showing con-
tempt for his money, bought first and
inquired the price afterward, and gen.
orally succeeded in impressing upon
the French with whom he came into
contact that money, with him, was no
object.
1t was my observation in France
that 95 per cent of all the friction
and i'll will between the American and