I
Monday, November 11, 1918, in Paris. A world suddenly gone mad.
Shouting and dancing in the streets. Blaring of bands in the public
squares. Booming of cannon along the Seine. Ringing of bells. Swirling
masses of human beings along the boulevards and bridges and upon the
steps of public buildings. Color. Autumn trees aflame with gold. Men
and women blown about like autumn leaves. A sea of people, tossing
sprays of color--red caps of officers, sky-blue uniforms, yellow
hair of dancing women, ribbons, waving flags and banners. Spots of
black--women in mourning, laughing and crying at once, singing through
tears. Shouts of _vive la France_! Singing of the Marseillaise.
Incoherent laughter and singing and cries, forming a rhythmic pattern
like the pulsing of sea waves.
Peace at last. The world made safe for democracy--for France, for
England, for Italy, for Belgium, for America--for the smallest nations
of the earth--for white men, for yellow men, for black men.
At the Chamber of Deputies, Premier Clemenceau, faultlessly attired
and gloved, tells the French people that the greatest war of all time
has come to an end--Clemenceau, who nearly fifty years before as a
member of this same assembly, voted against surrender to Germany. As
his proud, clear voice rings out, the guns of victory roar a distant
accompaniment. Wild applause greets his reading of the terms of the
armistice, especially marked at those paragraphs dealing with the
return of the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, the abandonment of
submarine warfare, the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine.
For once there are no political factions in the Chamber. For once
lefts, rights and centers applaud and cheer as one. Even the Socialists
are among those to surround the Premier as he leaves the platform,
and congratulate him. Some one begins the Marseillaise. Immediately
applause, laughter and cheering are hushed. The Deputies stand erect
and sing in unison the hymn of the French Republic. The vast crowd
which has been thronging the galleries and corridors takes it up.
It is carried to the hundreds massed on the stairs and perched on
the railings. From group to group, as far as one can see, the song
is carried along the current of exultant humanity. Men and women
fox-trotting in the public squares and dancing in circles pause to
sing. Then back to their dancing. Another circle farther on takes up
the hymn. And so it goes, from the House of Deputies to the boulevards,
and along the boulevards to the bridges. From the Bastille to the
Madeleine, down Rue Royale to the great corral of captured German guns
in the Place de la Concorde, up the Champs Elysées, on and on and on.
It is Paris triumphant.
Other nations take up the Marseillaise, sing it and their national
anthems--the Star-Spangled Banner, God Save the King.
British soldiers on leave begin a procession and go shouting and
singing down the boulevard. Columns of Americans, French and Belgians
follow their example. Women throw themselves into the arms of the
marching soldiers, kiss them and are off again. At the Elysée Palace
the procession halts just long enough to sing the national anthems of
the allied nations, in succession, and marches on.
Crowded motor busses and other vehicles find every highway blocked,
and the passengers dismount and join the throngs. Men and women who
have never met before join hands, embrace, kiss, dance and sing.
Every public square, the street before every outdoor café, the great
hall of St. Lazarre station--yesterday the receiving station of the
wounded--become dance halls.
On the steps of L’Opera a Scotch band is blaring. It is one of a
hundred bands playing simultaneously.
There is a deluge of wine. Countless bottles are uncorked or
impatiently cracked open at the cafés. Men and women dart down the
streets brandishing bottles and sharing their contents with others.
American soldiers forget the regulation against liquor.
They forget another regulation--General Order 40, forbidding colored
men to talk to French women. The French have not learned to draw the
color line. French midinettes and society women join hands with the
colored men who have saved France, as freely as with the whites. An
aristocratic Parisienne embraces an Alabama negro, while the latter
grins good-naturedly, and the celebrators form a circle about the two.
“They’d sure lynch him for that,” sneers another Alabama soldier,
white, with a scowl, as he leans tipsily against the railing of La
Madeleine. It is the one note of discord in the otherwise perfect
harmony of the moment.
“I say,” his voice rises petulantly, “they’d lynch him--” But the men
in uniform about him are English, French, Italian. Can’t explain a
thing like that to Tommies, Frog-eaters or Wops. Probably wouldn’t know
what lynching meant anyway. And they treated niggers like white people.
But he forgets his resentment when a girl with dancing black eyes
grasps his hand and that of one of his French colleagues and begins
dancing down the street with them.
Out of the gathering twilight, stars of light suddenly flare--electric
lights, search-lights, gas lights, lanterns. Paris, which has lived
in darkness for four years, suddenly bursts into an orgy of colored
lights--glitters like an enchanted city.
Into the city of lights and shadows, the sea of exultant humanity, they
drift. They are part of the city, of the world suddenly grown mad with
joy. Throughout France other men and women are celebrating like this.
In England, in America, in Italy, in Belgium. Peace. Victory. The end
of Tyranny. Freedom for all!