She felt passionately that the Spanish anti-fascists were now being similarly neglected, a particularly wicked dereliction since the early resistance in France had been fuelled by so many Spanish dissidents, often but not always communists, whose role in the liberation of France was now being downplayed and sometimes totally ignored. Back in Paris, Benet and Probst started a small underground journal together. Called Peninsula, it was smuggled out across the Pyrenees into Spain in an attempt to fight propaganda on both sides. Its motto was ‘Neither Franco nor Stalin’. But after four years together, the pair broke up and Probst returned to America, her Paris years remaining a defining fragment of her life from which she dates a lifetime of activism. ‘Paris is where I learned to respond to the horror in the world and do something about it. The rest of my working life has been framed by those experiences.’*
While Barbara Probst was feeling guilty about her food parcels, Caroline Ferriday was appealing for all Americans to become a ‘package parent’ for malnourished French children. ‘They are denied milk because there is not enough to go around, rice is an unknown delicacy, butter a luxury for the very rich.’ She recounted heartbreaking stories of children whose parents had been killed and who now lacked almost everything. They needed ‘kind thoughts as much as food’, and she encouraged her fellow citizens to become part of their own ‘personal Marshall Plan’.
These stories were in stark contrast to the experience of the thousands of Americans posted to Paris in autumn 1948, who not only had access to Embassy supplies but could afford to eat in decent restaurants. Paul Child, a middle-ranking diplomat married for the last three years to Julia, a native Californian of six foot two who did not speak any French, was expected to promote America to the French, ‘to build goodwill between our nations, to reinforce the idea that America was a strong and reliable ally, that the Marshall plan was designed to help France get back on its feet … and to insinuate that rapacious Russia was not to be trusted’. Meanwhile Julia, who during the war had worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA), latterly in Sri Lanka and China, was left to explore the Parisian way of life. They experienced ‘annoying’ shortages – ‘coffee rations ran out quickly, cosmetics were expensive and decent olive oil was precious as a gem’ – and they had no fridge, so like most Parisians they had to keep milk on a window ledge. The Childs marvelled at being able to eat so well at numerous restaurants for as little as five or six dollars, including a bottle of vin ordinaire. Julia was immediately won over by the magnificence of French cuisine, drooling over sole à la Normande served with cream, mushrooms, wine, oysters and mussels: ‘I had never imagined that fish could be taken so seriously or taste so heavenly.’ And she learned how the Parisiennes shopped. ‘When you asked at the crémerie for a cheese you’d be asked at what time you wanted to serve it to get the ripeness exactly right. The owner would then open box after box, pressing the cheese until she found one that was perfect.’ The local marchand de légumes taught her not only which vegetables to eat, when and how to prepare them, ‘but also about snails and she’d fill me in on so and so’s wartime experience and where to get a watchband fixed’.