EMPIRE'S PEACE PAGEANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17276, 27 September 1919, Page 9

EMPIRE'S PEACE PAGEANT.

MARCH OF THE CONQUERORS

ALLIED TROOPS IN LONDON.

A MAGNIFICENT SPECTACLE.

FOCH, BEATTY AND HAIG.

Peace Day was observed in London by a great Pageant of Victory, in 'which representatives of all the Allied troops marched through the streets through vast cheering crowds. The King took the salute outside the Palace, and striking tributes were paid to our gallant dead in Whitehall, where a great white cenotaph had been set up.

Afterwards, there were merry revels in the parks and other open spaces, a chorus of 10,000 voices sang in Hyde Park, and at night there were fireworks and a network of bonfires all over the United Kingdom.

Between two vast living and cheering walls of men and women, under the glowing, swinging canopy of a hundred-thou-sand flags, the great Army of Triumph marched in khaki and steel through the heart of London.

In the great curved bowl that cups the Victoria Memorial at the end of the sweeping Mall humanity was piled as though in a giant arena to see the King take the salute. Built up against the shining marble of the memorial was a white pavilion with a roof of gold. The quick colours of the flags, the green of the sward, the vivid fire of the massed beds of geraniums about the circle, the vast array of wounded soldiers and officers in hospital blue, in khaki or in " civvies," the fluttering dresses of the nurses, and the bright colours of the well-garbed women made a poignant picture, an unforgettable scene. It was the thought of Their Majesties to set aside this -splendid vantage place for those brave men who had suffered that this trimuph might be. The same kindly thought had seen to it that the stands on Constitution Hill were given to the widows, mothers, and orphans of the war, and that there should be seats for the scarlet-clad pensioners of Chelsea and for the orphans of service homes and others.

Ihen, suddenly, the King, in khaki and gold, was standing up at the front of the dais, and on a flowing tide of cheers the swinging armies marched into this great arena 01 expectant men and women. Pershing and the Americans. A line of mounted policemen and then General Pershing came. A big, thick man with a thrusting chin, all smiles, as the crowd let him have it, but steady and soldierly as his hand went up to salute the King. He did not carry a sword as other leaders did, but his flag bearer by him dipped the red flag on which were set the stars of his rank as the general of the American force rode by.

Behind him rode? cavalry, taut and stocky, and very purposeful in their siteel helmets. There was a band with white instruments grinding out " Over There," and then in a brilliant and quickening flutter came the massed flags of America, the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the wind like things of flames, and with them were the soberer tones of the American regimental flags. Behind the flags masses of marching Americans, hefty and springy, flowers in rifle barrels and with a fine heroic air, in their grim steel helmets. Those helmets were a happy touch. Then the Belgians—a warm, wave of cheering as these plucky, sturdy men swung forward, with their blunt, short stride and their mediaeval type of 6teel hat, sitting low, it seemed, on their mus-tard-coloured uniforms. With them they had their colours, wreathed to remind us of their undying glory. After Belgium a handful of our Chinese Allies, riding loosely under their singular multi-striped flag. Slight, thin men, are the Chinese, with, sharp, yellow faces. Close up to them were the men from Czecho-Slovakia, clad rather like the French Alpini, with berets and sky-blue uniforms. And behind them France. A roar all along the line for France. First a band playing a sharp-sounding French, march. And then behind a warmth of —Marshal Foch. Foch's Great Reception. We could not stop cheering for Foch. | We could not cheer loud enough. We saw a very erect and sober man, with a vivid face of pale bronze, and we noticed at once that in his hand he held, not a sword, but a firm, violet, silver-starred staff, the baton of a marshal. And as we watched, with a, superb gesture he lifted this baton high aloft, ho that it seemed as if its staff was a thing of power to dominate the world, and 'with a gesture equally superb, he swept it down in salute. All the great leaders lifted their swords to their lips and lowered them in this great gesture, but none were so impressive as this of the great marshal. Behind the French leader marched the men of France, the infantry, the Alpini, the colonial troops with their red tarbushes, the brave marines with the little red blobs on their flat hats.

Marshal Foch left the procession, got off his charger, and went to join the join the King. His Majesty had sent for him, and he came on to the dais, saluting the King, kissing the hand of the Queen with a quick and virile gracefulness. He was the first of the great generals to join His Majesty in this manner. General Pershing quickly followed. Sir David Beatty left the line and made one of this wonderful gathering, too, and Sir Douglas Haig and others came in turn, until, under that golden roof, all the leaders of the men stood and watched the brave men they had led to victory file past them.

A little band of plucky Greeks folowed France, and then the slate-blne of the Italians came, and were greeted warmly. Then Japan, behind its brilliant flag of the sun, only one Japanese riding, the rest walking with their unchanging countenances amid the cheering. Beatty and the Navy. The Poles followed their white eagle on a red ground, good men in a curious vivid blue uniform, a blue that captivated ladies and filled them with speculation as to its exact tint. Then Portugal, a favourite, then Roumania, and, in a gust of cheering, the Servians, in their quaint caps and greenbrown uniforms. The navy was all cheering. Before any man could" say whether it was the navy at all. all were asking, " Where's Beatty ?" Admiral Beatty, walking, a trim figure, an alert figure, a figure with a crispness to captivate the mind, marched along amid his officers. There is a quietness about the navy. Hard to distinguish any man among them —only Beatty's excess of sleeve braid, and that jaunty air of his told you it was he. The navy marches solidly, sweeping forward with some of the irrepressible and undeviating impulse of the sea. A whole pageant of the navy, regular and reserve and volunteer; but, though we cheered them all. I think we had a special nftte in our gladness for the men o. the minesweepers, and the trim elastic women of the Nursing Sisters ana the Wrens. "Dame Catherine Furse, I must see her," we said, and "What grit for those women to march so well and so

long under such circumstances." And the men of the Mercantile Marine —well, we went wild over them. Sturdy, crdinarv, wonderful chaps, walking m civvies after a perfect flower garden of Shipping Company flags, and led by a riot of colour, strange, fantastic, and Eastern the garb of the lascars and other natives who had carried on as bravely as anyone amid the great dangers of the sea. Then it seemed, storming up to the sky from the very beginning of the Mall, we heard the concourse cheering "Duggie" and his men.

There is no doubt about it that when Sir I)craglas Haig and his men. appear fcha cheering lifts the sky. He and his men, they are in our hearts, and of oat hearts. They are us, our brothers and husbands, our intimates, our dearest W© let our voices go with our hearts and with our tears when they come by, and the great shout of the soul and the heart that went UP as they marched must have tcld them what they meant to us. Battle Honours on the Colours. Ail the British Army there, regiments from everywhere. Impossible almost to enumerate them; impossible even to distinguish regiment from regiment. ° There were horsemen, squadrons of them, jingling forward musically, and above them hundreds of standards, faded and sober, battle-wreathed and eloquent, their heavy folds hanging stiffly. ioot soldiers carried, too, their regimental colours, on which were emblazoned the long and splendid story of the British wars, and not the least, the story °f this terrible and anguishing war that these phlegmatic, ordinary, marvellous men had brought to the one, the right, the only, conclusion. ° The mass of mep went by libo a tremendous stream of the nation's life-blood. We wearied of cheering, but we cheered. We cheered the masked pipers, not because they were different from those steadily marching others, but because their kilts individualised them. Men and guns went by in a massy river of power. The long, lean 60pounders, and the light and ladyJike field guns. There were long, fawncoloured pontoons, and there were tanks, -hey are very cheery fellows, the tajiks, and always a source of particular, joy. , After the Tanks the Anzacs, the men of Australia and New Zealand, the lithe, purposeful, resistless men who have simply swept us away by their electricity, and who have won us completely by ' their gallant and their fine, free air. With these marched their nurses, a fine company of women, who showed the high standard of womanhood in this pageant of women as well as men. And in their train were the South Africans and their nurses, staunch n.en and maidens, fit companions of that fine company. Nurses in the March. Then to show the fibre of the battle-line that had been fed from all the quarters of the globe, there marched the high dignity of the turbaned Indian force, and springy men from the parched Sudan, and even a resolute company of AngloSouth Americans who had given up their callings under a distant sun in. order to spring to the side of their fellows in blood and breed in the day of danger.' And the nurses themselves, who could say enough about them? Th© flash of the medals 011 their breasts told us that they had known danger, too, and had outfaced it as firmly. as the bravest of the men. And they moved so well; so brave were they, so handsome, and so upright. At the end of that valiant column, last, but to many first, were the Fliers. The knight errants of the air, those invincible boys who had swooped and circled over the line. The yoang gallants who romped like schoolboys in mess and yet went out with an indomitable sangfroid on a lone hand above the pit of danger.