PARIS MOURNS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 6, 8 January 1931, Page 7

PARIS MOURNS.

FUNERAL OF JOFFRE

Impressive Procession Through

City.

"WAR RELICS FOR MUSEUM.

(United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright)

(Received 10.30 a.m.) PAEISj January 7. Before daylight mourners commenced to line the route of the late Marshal Joft're's funeral between Notre Dame and Les Invalides. A marshal's /lag draped the coffin which lay on a high black pedestal in the centre of the magnificent nave. It -was decorated in black and silver, with French and Allied flags. Cardinal Verdier read the absolution and the coffin was lowered from the pedestal to the accompaniment of bugles, and was carried to a gun-carriage to which six black horsey, were harnessed. Brilliantly-uniformed French and Allied soldiers and ex-soldiers formed the advance guard of the procession, 'then came red-robed cardinals, purpleclad bishops, Marshal Joffre's bay charger, and the gun-carriage, escorted by a company of infantry on either side. It was an impressive spectacle as the long cortege traversed the Rue do Rivoli, ordinarily noisy and hustling, but nowpacked with a silent, motionless crowd. The coffin was placed in the chapel of Hie Hotel des Invalides until the burial in the garden of the dead soldier's home at Louvecinnes, overlooking the capital, which he saved from capture in 1914. Madame .Toffre said that the sole object in her life now would be to collect all her husband's military belongings and souvenirs and to assemble them at her home at Louvecinnes, which will be converted into the Joffre Museum and will be left to the nation.