Nice Old Gertrude Stein

PARIS FRANCE -- Gertrude Stem --Scribner ($2.50).

Gertrude Stein writes as always in a way that anyone might like or anyone might not like, as always she mixes things a little. Really though it is simple it is really sensible and it does tell you about France, it tells you what Gertrude Stein knows about France which is interesting. It is also charming of course it is charming. It is also sad because Gertrude Stein was writing when everyone in France was hopeful, she began writing soon after there was a war but before there really was a war.

Explanations even good explanations are easy for Gertrude Stein who never explains everything at once, so it is that she explains why everybody went to Paris about 1900. They needed the background of tradition she says of profound conviction that men and women and children do not change, that science is interesting but does not change anything, that democracy is real but that governments unless they tax you too much or get you defeated by the enemy are of no importance, that she says is the background that everybody needed in 1900.

This is simple and it is nice it seems general it seems vague but isn't there a lot of truth in it. It is the same with Gertrude Stein's stories the stories she tells about the French to show their logic and their sense of fashion, qualities that make them seem peaceful and exciting, for instance Monsieur Lambert. Gertrude Stein met him with his wife and oxen.

And I said you are leaving to go, Monsieur Lambert. Yes, he said, and my wife is crying. Is there going to be a war, I said. No, he said, my wife is crying but there is not going to be a war. Why not, I said. Because, said he, it is not logical. You see I am forty-five years old, I fought the whole of the last war, my son is seventeen years old, he and I would fight this war. It is not logical mademoiselle that I at forty-five who fought the war, with a son of seventeen, should believe in a general European war. It is not logical. . . . But, I said, that is alright for you, the French are a logical people, but the Germans and the Italians.

Gertrude Stein's book has good pictures, peaceful and exciting pictures. There is one of Sacre Coeur and the hill of Montmartre painted gaily like a cake with a frilled yellowish cloud up on top, by Lascaux. There are other pictures, one of them is an 18th-Century script drawing of Voltaire one is by Picasso one is by Sir Francis Rose. The Germans are in Paris but would they paint pictures like these and would they like Gertrude Stein's writing about Paris and the French. Would they yes would they.

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