WALNUTS : : :
Gale, Zona
Walnuts • • • • • • By ZONA GALE HE SAID; I was five years old when my uncles went to the Civil war. I remember the bands, and the sense of things being done—everybody getting ready for...
...He must fight...
...She knew that it is the very idealism of a nation which makes the situation difficult to deal with: For the dealers in the walnuts of the world trade upon that idealism...
...A little boy, who had never had enough walnuts, who had watched the big boys come in from the woods with bulging sacks, who had seen the nuts drying on the wood-shed roof, who had taken that small share of the rich food allowed to a little boy...
...The thought of one of the listeners went back to a day in the "great" war when a woman had been heard to say, quite suavely: "We can have an automobile if this war lasts a little longer...
...They were not thinking about walnuts...
...But now...
...And again "See," they say, "we must have conscription to keep up our armies...
...It is the mentality which the war-makers always challenge...
...I was too little for the meetings or for the newspapers...
...But something else is true...
...Most amazing of all, she thought of the psychology of a people which can see these things stand out as evident as acts and alphabets can make them, and yet can talk of having sons to give to their country...
...But if he is shown the truth, if he has it demonstrated to him in a variety of ways, and then on the repetition of the question, makes his original reply, he grades at something less than infantile...
...She wondered when walnuts would be outgrown...
...All that I remember is the nice bands and the terrifying feet—and one thing more...
...There could be no question of the idealism of these...
...His intelligence test would not have been expected to rank very high...
...She wondered how long the mentality of the peoples of the world will permit them to stop short at a primitive idealism, a child psychology, when the larger idealism and the adult psychology of a new day wait to be realized...
...And if he could have been told how, as in Russia, a stroke of the pen and the payment of compensation to owners—would free millions of serfs, the little boy would have been unimpressed, and at the end he would have been found going toward the woodshed roof where dried his uncle's walnuts...
...Are we, then, a nation of little boys...
...From Unity...
...She thought too of a bit of the narrative in a statesman's autobiography, which said that after 1914, an American banking house had permitted England to overdraw her account two hundred million dollars, on the expectation that the United States would enter the war...
...See," they say, "the idea of war is a part of man's nature...
...If the little boy could have been told the utter horror of what his uncles were going into—Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Shiloh—then, when the recital was finished, he might have been expected to turn away with his mind fixed on walnuts...
...I don't remember the talk or the dread...
...Having arrived at "the proper point in the ocean, the eel lays her eggs and never afterwards returns to fresh water...
...THE SALMON AND THE EEL NO MATTER how far inland an eel gets, if it's a female, she starts down the rivers, to the ocean, sometime in her life...
...Now, since my two uncles were going to war, I could have all their walnuts...
...But what of the psychology of a people who could see walnuts distributed by the billion, and yet could make no connection between walnuts and war...
...But I liked the bands...
...Now and again she has to wiggle over stretches of dry land to reach the stream that empties into the sea...
...The eyes of those who were listening met his, met one another's, and the basis of a world's wrongs lay in that look...
...Besides idealisms, the people have mentality...
...I remember the bands, and the sense of things being done—everybody getting ready for something...
...I didn't like the sound of the marching feet—it frightened me— it was the trampling of the feet of a loose horse on the brick pavements, at night...
...of the sovereign aspiration of the boys themselves, who have thought more than once that they were going to war to end war...
...She thought of the unquenchable idealism of men and women looking out through their sacrifices...
...The big boys were going to war and he could have all their walnuts...
...That pair of arguments is a challenge to the mentality of any people...
...For intelligence tests, if a child gives a wrong reply once, that is expectable...
...The salmon, on the other hand, seeks fresh water in Which to deposit its eggs, and then dies...
...He smiled—wisdom in his face, kindness in his eyes, humor in his look: "The only thing," he said, "that I can remember feeling about the Civil war was that now, since my two uncles were going, I could have all their walnuts...
Vol. 18 • December 1926 • No. 12
