IMPRESSIVE SCENES AT JOFFRE’S FUNERAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19272, 8 January 1931, Page 6

IMPRESSIVE SCENES AT JOFFRE’S FUNERAL.

SILENT, MOTIONLESS CROWDS LINE STREETS,

(United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Received January 8, 9.30 a.m.) PARIS, January 7. Before daylight the mourners commenced to line the route of Joffre’s funeral between the Notre Dame and the Place des Invalides. The marshal’s flag-draped coffin lay on a high black pedestal in the centre of the magnificent nave, which was decorated in black and silver and 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 guncarriage, to which six black horses were harnessed. Brilliantly - uniformed French and Allied soldiers and ex-soldiers formed the advance guard of the procession, and then came the red-robed cardinals and purple-clad bishops, Joffre’s bay charger and the gun-carriage, es-

corted by a company of infantry on either side. It was an impressive spectacle as the long cortege traversed the Rue de Rivoli, ordinarily noisy and hustling, but now packed with a silent, motionless crowd. The coffin was placed in the Chapel of the Hotel des Invalides until burial in his garden at Louveciennes, overlooking the capital which he saved from capture in 1914. Madame Joffre said that the sole object of her life now would be to collect all her husband’s military belongings and souvenirs and to assemble them at Louveciennes at his home, which will be converted into a Joffre Museum and be left to the nation.