FRANCE'S DAY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 14713, 19 September 1918, Page 6

FRANCE'S DAY.

ALIIED ARMY REVIEW.

■■ ■ PARIS, July 15. Jt'aris has made its national holiday a fete day for the Allies (writes a special correspondent). From the roof of an hotel I have looked down upon the vrond«rful crowd m the great Place de Ja Concorde, from which a rolling chorus of cheers rosa •as battalion after battalion of men m khaki and blue swept down a broad pathway kept by steelcasqued poilus. Here were the Americans led by a silver trumpet band marching with a swung to "Over There." There followed a glorious sight for English eyes, a battalion of men marching with perfect step and easy assurance of strengths How they marched and how red and sunburned itheir faces under their khaki caps looked even from this height! It was nearing the noonday hour. From early morning they had been afoot, reviewed by President Poincare m the Avenue Bois de Boulogne, witnesses of the decoration of generals and soldiers of the French Army with medals, and orders; and now they were coming to !£ c end , °* a triumphal procession through half a dozen of the great avenues of Paris, acclaimed by dense crowds everywhere. Cheer after cheer greeted all the marching men— ltalians, Greeks, Czecho-Slovaks— as they came down thalonpr way by the Rue Royale to the Tuileries like conquerors and heroes of a hundred fights. This splendid procession of fighting men included half a regiment at least of strong, hefty Frenchmen picked for their weight and endurance, with blue Tarn o' Shanter caps slung jauntily over their left ears, officially Chasseurs d'Alpin but to all France "The Blue Devils." No wonder that some of the children who ran to greet the soldiers with flowers kept a bunch for their own fine men. i For the head of the French nation it has been a busy day and for the crowds of Paris a day of rejoicing, a holiday followed by another to-morrow. At '8 a.m. M. Poincare accepted from a special envoy a casket containing 400,000 signatures of. Italians m an album of 8000 pages, each headed "Homage to heroic France and her Allies." Between 9 and 11 he reviewed the troops. At 2he attended a demonstration m honor of the children whose fathers have fallen m the war. At 430 he signed decrees at the Hotel de Ville giving names of Allied Sovereigns to public thoroughfares m Paris. For the people who are thronging the streets to give the lie to the German story that Paris is deserted there was a free performance at the Comedie Francaise and a, perpetual .movement of troops and patriotic societies performing graceful acts of homage to the memory of the past.