Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [191]
To bar Coca-Cola from the French market was a flagrant violation of the Marshall Plan agreement on free trade. Yet David Bruce, while angered by the dishonest antics of the Communists and the protectionist lobby, was almost as exasperated with his own countrymen. ‘It is a clear case of discrimination,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘and we have protested vigorously against it, although I think that the Company’s advertising proposals are psychologically extremely stupid.’ Coca-Cola apparently wanted to ‘engage in their usual advertising displays, including among other features a blazing sign on a 142-foot tower. They have relinquished, rather regretfully, the idea of using the Eiffel Tower.’
The Communist Party in France openly proclaimed that American culture was stifling the nation. Laurent Casanova announced that Henry Miller’s pornography and American crime stories were attacking the soul of France. He would have sounded like an arch-conservative if the target of his hatred had not been the United States and its influence. Yet, as one or two writers have pointed out, the Communists’ xenophobic conspiracy theory owed much to a right-wing, anti-masonic tradition.
To complete this curious reflection of right-wing prejudices, the magazine Action, run by Communist writers such as Pierre Courtade and Roger Vailland, attacked ‘the pederasts of the American intelligentsia in Saint-Germain-des-Prés’. In all seriousness it went on to recount: ‘The other day a cavalry colonel in civilian clothes was the recipient of undisguised propositions, even though he was accompanied by his charming wife.’ It was just what one would have expected from a reactionary monarchist publication.
For some time, the sale of Coca-Cola was portrayed in the Communist press as not far short of drug-peddling to infants: ‘Each evening, a Coca-Cola truck stops at the entrance to the Square des Innocents, in the 1st arrondissement, and the driver distributes bottles to unaccompanied children who drink it on the spot.’
31
The Tourist Invasion
Once the war ended, the urge to travel as a civilian, not a soldier, became strong. In Britain, there was a longing to escape the austerity of war, socialism and bomb damage. Only a very few, however, were in a position to afford and arrange such a luxury. In the late summer of 1945 Winston Churchill, recovering from his defeat in the general election, went to stay at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. He registered under the nom de guerre of Colonel Warden and followed ‘une véritable cure de Pommery Rosé 1934’, to use the words of Monsieur Roger, the chef sommelier, who had to beg for more supplies.
Britain remained in the grip of rationing for much longer than France, and appeared no closer to pulling itself out of destitution. The chief obstacle to travel, for those who were prepared to respect the law, was the £25 travel allowance imposed by the Labour government. More and more Britons began to flout it in their desperation to escape the greyness and austerity of Attlee’s Britain, which, in comparison with France, seemed to have progressed little beyond Nissen huts, short-back-and-sides and suet pudding. The appeal of Paris fashions, boulevard cafés and sumptuous food became overwhelming.
From May 1948, American citizens had been allowed to bring home 400 dollars’ worth of goods, but the real boom in tourism began in the summer of 1949. By then, travel arrangements were easier and Europe slightly better prepared. ‘We are informed that 3 million tourists are upon us,’ wrote Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh in April 1949. ‘The Ritz say they have no roomuntil 10th October.’
‘Americans in Europe,’ Letitia Baldrige wrote home from her job in the United States Embassy, ‘do create harm and ill-will often. I hate to think of the careless, complaining, spoiled people who flounce through these struggling countries making the Europeans feel even more embittered and inferiority-complexed.