Paris, July 4, 1917.
All France celebrated the Fourth of July. Paris turned out a crowd that
no American city ever surpassed for size, enthusiasm and profusion of
Stars and Stripes. A battalion of the first American expeditionary
force about to leave for training behind the battle front had its
first official review in France and was the centre of the celebration.
Everywhere the American flag was flying from public buildings,
hotels and residences and from automobiles, cabs and carts, horses'
bridles--even the lapels of pedestrians' coats displayed it.
The crowds began early to gather at vantage points. Rue de Varenne
was choked long before 8 o'clock this morning, when the Republican
Guards Band carried out a field reveille under Gen. Pershing's
windows. All routes toward the Hotel des Invalides were thronged even
before Pershing's men turned out. About the Court of Honor where the
Americans were drawn up with a detachment of French Territorials, the
buildings overflowed with crowded humanity to the roofs. All around
the khaki-clad men from the United States were trophies and souvenirs
of war--German cannon, airplanes, machine guns and many appliances for
burning suffocating gas. Behind them in the chapel separating the Court
of Honor from Napoleon's tomb were German battle flags, trophies of
the Marne and Alsace, beside Prussian banners of 1870.
In the chapel before the tomb of Napoleon, Gen. Pershing received
American flags and banners from the hands of President Poincaré. Almost
the entire history of the struggles of the French against the Germans
looked down upon the scene from paintings portraying heroic incidents
in French battles from Charlemagne to Napoleon. There was a sharp
contrast between the khaki and plain wide brimmed hats of Pershing's
men and the gay dress of d'Artagnan's plumed musketeers and Napoleon's
grenadiers.
The enthusiasm of the vast crowd reached its highest pitch when Gen.
Pershing, escorted by President Poincaré, Marshal Joffre and other high
French dignitaries, passed along reviewing the lines of the Americans
drawn up in square formations. Cheering broke out anew when the
American band struck up "The Marseillaise," and again when the French
band played "The Star-Spangled Banner" and Pershing received the flags
from the President.
"Vive les Americains!" "Vive Pershing!" "Vive les Etats-Unis!" shouted
over and over by the crowd greeted the American standard bearers as
they advanced.
The crowd that had waited three hours to witness the ceremony that was
over in fifteen minutes, surged toward the exit cheering frantically
after the departing Americans and trying to break through a cordon
of police troops. Outside a greater crowd that covered the entire
Esplanade des Invalides took up the cheers as Pershing's men marched
away. The crowd in the Court of Honor tried to follow the soldiers, but
the throng outside was so dense, and the exits so small that it was
half an hour before the people could get out. The Cours de la Reine
from Alexander Bridge to the Place de la Concorde was black with people
all of whom seemed to want to rush up to the men and embrace them as
they marched by. When the last man had passed great crowds surged
from both sides to the middle of the street, breaking through the
police military guards and blocking traffic for a long time behind the
marching column.
More people were massed in the Tuileries Gardens than on the Esplanade
des Invalides. Few of them could get a glimpse of the parade but
all joined in a tremendous outburst of cheering when music from the
Republican Guard Band announced the approach of the troops, and the
cheering did not diminish in volume until the last man in the line had
disappeared from view of the Gardens down the Rue de Rivoli.