Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

ticket, you see, because you showed your delegate's card, and that entitled you to order a meal and eat it. That arrangement had been made with the French Government, with regard to the rationing. So That was the only place where we could entertain except the Hotel Californie, and we didn't wish to do that for this big dance. We took the second floor of the cafe and had a dance, and we had the minimum of refreshments, but we had some very attractive sandwiches and lots of grapefruit juice sent over from the American military mission, and of course some wine and so forth because the Cafe wouldn't have known how to send it otherwise.

That was toward the end of the meeting. Throughout the meetings we found that everybody, practically, wanted to be asked to the American headquarters for dinner or lunch. They accepted with alacrity. So we entertained them personally, and it was the easiest thing to do. Luncheon cost forty cents, and dinner cost sixty cents at the Hotel Californie, on military rations. And the people whom we asked--the English, the French, the Norwegians, the Dutch--just fell to and lapped it up. It was a good square meal, you know, and it was very interesting to see with what ardor they ate food. Food was awfully important. One man said, “Why, to feel really full for the first time in years: Really well-fed: Oh, how I wish I could take this home to my wife.”

They were all conscious of their families putting up with





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help