FRANCE'S GREAT DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1919, Page 3

FRANCE'S GREAT DAY.

LIFE UP YOUR HEADS, 0 YE GATES!

FRANCE MARCHES IN TRIMUPH UNDER TEE ARC DE TRIOMI'HE.

J London, July 18. "Many nations have monuments; but few have an Are de Triomphe, and fewer still deserve one like the French. From to-day on there is no building in the world round which such profound memories will gather as those which are enshrined for as long as atone will stand ty JWs splendid memorial. Napoleon built it to celebrates his victories, and it now commemorates a triumph far greater still. "While you watched,»the granite sides of the Arch sprang suddenly into clear light, catching the tirst rays of the morning sun, and with every minutes the iiuiiance spread until the Ac de Triomphe stood there in all her beauty, shining in the light, glowing as if with the spirit of glad Victory and trust in the. future which that victory had opened." —<j. Ward Price, .in the Daily Mail. WHY PARIS WEPT AND CHEERED. Hide are great moments in historv. Happy is the nation which has the dramatic sense to rise to them when they occur at long intervals in the life of man," says the Daily Mail. "Such a moment came on Momky for Prance when, amid tears and l-heers, on the lliOth anniversary of the fall oi the Lastille and the first such anniversary which France has celebrated since h.*r victory, representative detachments of the ireiich and Allied armies marched under the Arc de Triomphe. 1 hat arcn, which remained closed when the Germans entered Paris in 1871, on Monday echoed for tlie ilrst time in more than titty years lo»the tramp of fiances victorious troops as they moved to the thunder of the Marseillaise, proclaiming that 'the day of glory has arriv- j THE FESTIVAL OP VICTORY. | '.lhe Festival of Victory in Paris was j a wonderful tribute of gratitude to the troops. As the Allied soldiers, led by J jMaisliiil hoch and Marshal Joti're, march-.; i'd under the- -ire de Triomphe the pride and joy of the enormous-crowds knew no bounds. • j "Jlhorc was an armful of roses for every wounded man who passed on a st-ictchei. Most touching of all was the salute to France's 1,250,1100 dead. In tlie evening President Poinearegave a dinner, at which not only great generals, but also six warrant officers, six corporals, and six privates, who had shown valor in the field, were guests." A. GREAT DAY. "ft was the great day of France, the greatest in all her past, marking the end ot an age during which her people have lived (Older the shadow of the German sword and the perpi-uial cruel pressure of Germany. Our feelings in this country ■ue such when we think of the immeasurable sacrifices of France and the magnilicent services which she has rendered to the cause of freedom, that no words can express our gratitude to her and no paean be adequate to her praise. ''We can understand why it was tliVt her President wept as the great defilade passed before him: as the colors of famous regiments, France and Allied, went by; as the generals, whose names are now household words, saluted; and. as the .troops, who had fought in so many fields with such heroic endurance and de. \otion, marched past iiiui, moving with the splendid precision of some vast machine, in an endless panorama of color, through the flower-strewn streets and the crowds which knew not whether to acclaim the living or to weep at thought of the dead and the deep emotions whlea that march aroused. j THE MEN IN BLUE. It was right and proper that the men in 'horizon blue' should receive the warmest tribute of all from the city which they defended as its living wall—the men of the Ma rue, of Verdun, of those long and terrible battles when so much innocent blood flowed, as it sgemed, in vain ,before the balance fo victory first inclined and then turned decisively in favor of the Allies. Foch and Joffre, those two thunderbolts of war, were there and our great leaders who inarched with thym or under them to victory. But the cenotaph reminded all that one and a quarter million Frenchmen had not survived to see this day which they earned by their sacrifice. They rest in the soil which they have doubly hallowed by their deeds and death, their work done, their trials over, the battle gained. The crown gof life for her heroes, the crown of glory for the France whom they saved, will never pass away. WHAT FRANCE HAS DONE. "The Gallic cock has the right to crow. France in this war has been unsparing of herself. She sent into the field 8,000,000 men, more than one-fifth of her population. She has seen some of her noblest cities pulverised under the German fire and her fairest provinces wickedly converted into deserts. Her stocial resolution in the darkest hours went beyond what man had before thought possible. But because she fought from the first and because she endured to the end; because very largely through her ardour, example' and efforts, she has brought us nearer universal peace by ridding the world of , arj# Üb.rtjr, 9 0 gujju I

beat faster at her supreme triumph," Mr. G. Ward Price sends to the Mail a moving description of the great festival march through the Arch of Triumph.' TO THE DEAD. "I have been one of the many who have spent the night, the dawn, and now the brilliant summer morning by the side of this Arch of Victory. "Last night the arch was a vault of gloomy shadow. The strong lights burning on the ground below revealed, but did not penetrate, the datk hollow of its vaulted roof. Beneath it stood a funeral monument, the cenotaph that represented, as well as the work of men's hands might, the unmeasurable sacrifice of life and suffering, obliterated hopes and happiness destroyed, which the victory to celebrated next morning Jiad cost to. France. Past it moved slowly in silence I a dense unbroken throng of mourners, to each of whom that lofty memorial with its impassive figures of victory stood for some dear face that the war lias blotted out.

"Tho pitiless cruelty of war and its futile destruction of human happiness were borne, in upon your heart as you watched that mournful procession creeping by with the wan fumes of incense drifting lifelessly into the still air aroUnd. It was a grim reflection, too, that countless though the tribute-bringing host of the living seemed, it was still far outnumbered by the 1,250,000 dead for whom the shadowy memorial stood."