Alvah Bessie, Men in Battle: A Story of Americans in Spain (1939), p. 135
“

Below us there were hundreds of men from the British, the Canadian Battalions; a food truck had come up, and they were being fed. A new Matford roadster drove around the hill and stopped near us, and two men got out we recognized. One was tall, thin, dressed in brown corduroy, wearing horn-shelled glasses. He had a long, ascetic face, firm lips, a gloomy look about him. The other was taller, heavy, red-faced, one of the largest men you will ever see; he worse steel-rimmed glasses and a bushy mustache. These were Herbert Matthews of The New York Times and Ernest Hemingway, and they were just as relieved to see us as we were to see them.

— Alvah Bessie on Ernest Hemingway

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Below us there were hundreds of men from the British, the Canadian Battalions; a food truck had come up, and they were being fed. A new Matford roadster drove around the hill and stopped near us, and two men got out we recognized. One was tall, thin, dressed in brown corduroy, wearing horn-shelled glasses. He had a long, ascetic face, firm lips, a gloomy look about him. The other was taller, heavy, red-faced, one of the largest men you will ever see; he worse steel-rimmed glasses and a bushy mustache. These were Herbert Matthews of The New York Times and Ernest Hemingway, and they were just as relieved to see us as we were to see them." in the context of "Alvah Bessie, Men in Battle: A Story of Americans in Spain (1939), p. 135" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Ernest Hemingway" (Quotes about Hemingway) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Alvah Bessie

About Alvah Bessie

Alvah Cecil Bessie (June 4, 1904 – July 21, 1985) was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter who was imprisoned for ten months and blacklisted by the movie studio bosses for being one of the group known as the Hollywood Ten. In 1938, Bessie fought in the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade", an all-volunteer unit of Americans who fought for the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War.