Aphorisms

3. “Souvenir d’une marche ‘boche’”, The Book of the Homeless. Igor Stravinsky (Russia/France/Belgium/US, 1916)

Igor Stravinsky, then a Russian émigré in France, donated this composition to The Book of the Homeless, edited by the North-American writer Edith Wharton, as a fundraising publication for the construction of shelters for the refugees of the German invasion of Belgium. Souvenir d’une marche ‘boche’—a nickname referring to ‘square-headed’ German soldiers—is a coarse and mocking march that was in line with the anti-German advertising strategies used by the Allied powers to encourage people to enlist. These advertisements portrayed Germans as crude barbarians with a lust for world domination, raping women, and murdering children.