THE KING IN FRANCE.

Grey River Argus, 15 May 1922, Page 4

THE KING IN FRANCE.

VISIT TO BATTLEFIELDS. HISTORIC SCENE. [A. and N. Z. Cable Association] (Received Mav 14, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, May 13. The King and Queen’s visit to Terlincthun Ceintery concluded their tour of the battlefields. The King delivered nn oration, including a message to the war bereaved, saying: “For the past few days, I have been making a solemn pilgrimage in honour of the people who died for all free men. 1 should like to send a message to all who lost those dear to them in the Great War. In this, the Queen joins me. Amid surroundings so wonderfully typical of that single-hearted assembly of nations and races forming our Empire, for ever in their last quarters, lie here the sons of every portion of that Empire, across, as it were, the threshold of the mother island which they guarded, that freedom might be saved in the uttermost ends of the earth.” Touring around Ypres, and beginning with the Ypres battlefield, the King stopped for some time at the grave of an Australian, Sergeant McGee, a posthumous V.C. The King reached Arras on Friday, and motored to Notre Dame, de Lorette Paitau, where 100,000 Frenchmen fell in a battle lasting one year, and where a memorial, with a lighted lantern, is to keep over them a perpetual vigil. The King met Marshal Foch there, and they visited several cemeteries, depositing wreaths of red laurels. The King also visited Vimy Ridge, which the Canadians captured, and they met the Canadian High Commissioner and Mr Rudyard Kipling. While at Lorette, the King listened eagerly to Marshal Foch and Lord Haig, when they wore describing various famous points, and explaining the details of the stupendous battle. He turned to them once confidently, saying, in French, “Toujours bons amis, nest ce pas?” (“You were good friends always, were you not?”) Marshal Foch replied, with fervour: “Toujours! Toujours! Pour les memes choses et les memes raisons! ” (** Always, always! For the same objects and the same ends! ”) Marshal Foch then grasped Lord Haig’s hand. As the two Marshals held hands in a grip of comradeship, King George placed his hand over theirs. The scene was worthy of record by a great painter. On the hillside, scarred with graves, and overlooking devastated France, the British King sealing the comradeship of the two great war leaders made a historic scene.