Book Smarts

I recently read Graham Greene's The Third Man. (Oddly, I started it on the same day that I bought the White Stripes' new album, whose artwork is credited to The Third Man.) In this fine book is an interesting vignette in post-WWII Vienna in which an MP from each of the four allied powers is in on an arrest of a girl who has been roused out of bed:

The Russian, you see, refused to leave the room while Anna dressed: the Englishman refused to remain in the room: the American wouldn't leave a girl unprotected with a Russian soldier, and the Frenchman - well I think the Frenchman must have thought it was fun.