FUNERAL OF JOFFRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20767, 9 January 1931, Page 11

FUNERAL OF JOFFRE.

AN IMPRESSIVE CEREMONY. MUSEUM AT HIS HOME. PARIS, Jan. 7. Before daylight mourners commenced to line the route of the late Marshal Joffro's funeral between Notre Dame and Les Invalided A marshal's flag 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 Vcrdier read tho absolution, and tho coffin was lowered from the pedestal to the accompaniment of bugles, and was carried to a gun-carriage to which six black horses were harnessed.

Brilliantly-uniformed French and Allied soldiers and ex-soldiers formed the advance guard of tho procession. Then camo red-robed cardinals, purple-clad 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 de Ilivoli, ordinarily noisy and hustling, but now packed with a silent, motionless crowd. Tho coflin was placed in the chapel of the Hotel des Invalides until tho burial in the garden ol tho dead soldier's home at Louvecinnes, overlooking the capital, which he saved from capture in 1914. Madamo Joffro said the sole object of her Jifo now would bo to collect all her husband's military belongings and souvenirs and to assemble them at her home at Louvecinnes, which would be converted into a Joffro Museum and left to the nation.