A GALLANT ALLY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3136, 14 July 1917, Page 6

A GALLANT ALLY

JuiA' M is a great day in French history. It was on this clay, 128 years ago, that the people of Paris captured the Bastille arid razed it to tho ground. The event marlcs for all time tho occasion on which tho French nation first effectively asserted the principles of liberty it has maintained so gloriously in this terrible, war. Tho peoplo of Wnl'ington, like those of other parts of the Empire, will have an opportunity today of doing honour to a very gallant ally, and no urging should be needed to induce them to improve it to tlio full. Prance has an unexampled cßiim to the homage of her Allies, and the tribute of esteem and gratitude to which she is so nobly entitled is freely rendered. It is to France that the other nations leagued with her against Germany owe it that Europe is not lying today under German oppression. Britain and Russia, with tho best will in the world, could not have saved Europe. France, with such limited aid her Allies could ab-fnst ren-

dor. stood undismayed in the path of the German host, broke their onset and hold them in play until her Allies had time to arm and [leparc. it would bo base ingratitude if. her Allies did not to-day acclaim her brilliant heroism and unexampled devotion to the cause of liberty am! justice, it is tho peculiar glory of France that she has triumphed time and sign in in spite of material circumstances which made , defeat and disaster scorn mathematically certain. If mere numbers of men and weight of artillery were decisive, the Germans would not have been stopped, and swept back on tho Marnc, and later at Verdun. It was a high spirit of resolve, beyond the ken of German strategists who count men as machines, that gave, victory to the French in these titanic conflicts—the spirit of a noble and gallant nation, whom all tho world, and more especially the Allies, so deeply in her debt, may fitly honour.