How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm (after they’ve seen Paree)

“How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm (after they’ve seen Paree)?” is a 1919 hit-song expression that gives a popular refrain to the difficulty of returning to rural life after wartime experience. The book uses it to mark a turning point in Harry S. Truman’s life: the war took him from the farm, and he would not return to it except as a visitor.

The Song and Its Question

The book cites the refrain as “How you gonna’ keep ’em down on the farm/After they’ve seen Paree?” Its question links the experience of seeing France with the prospect of coming home changed. In the account, the line is more than a period reference: it gives a concise expression to the distance that war could open between a soldier’s former life and the life awaiting him at home.

Truman’s Changed Life

For Harry S. Truman, the change was concrete. Before the war, the farm had been his life; afterward, he did not go back to live there. The account presents this departure as part of a broader transformation: he had gained confidence, discovered that he could lead men, and found that he enjoyed leadership more than anything he had done before. The song’s question thus resonates with a lasting break in his own life, while his answer was not simply to return home but to carry his wartime leadership into a new future.