ion were represented
in the populous delegations who presented their compliments, and
conveyed to the American commander the of the entire people of France.

Under the train sheds on the dock, long stiff, standing ranks of French
poilus wearing helmets and their light blue overcoats pinned back at the
knees, presented arms as the General walked down the lines inspecting
them. At one end of the line, rank upon rank of French marines, and
sailors with their flat hats with red tassels, stood at attention
awaiting inspection.

The docks and train sheds were decorated with French and American flags
and yards and yards of the mutually-owned red, white and blue. Thousands
of spectators began to gather in the streets near the station, and their
continuous cheers sufficed to rapidly augment their own numbers.

Accompanied by a veteran French colonel, one of whose uniform sleeves
was empty, General Pershing, as a guest of the city of Boulogne, took a
motor ride through the streets of this busy port city. He was quickly
returned to the station, where he and his staff boarded a special train
for Paris. I went with them.

That train to Paris was, of necessity, slow. It proceeded slowly under
orders and with a purpose. No one in France, with the exception of a
select official circle, had been aware that General Pershing was
arriving that day until about thirty minutes before his ship was warped
into the dock at Boulogne. It has always been a mystery to me how the
French managed to decorate the station at Boulogne upon such short
notice.

Thus it was that the train crawled slowly toward Paris for the purpose
of giving the French capital time to throw off the coat of war
weariness that it had worn for three and a half years and don gala
attire for this occasion. Paris made full use of every minute of that
time, as we found when the train arrived at the French capital late in
the afternoon. The evening papers in Paris had carried the news of the
American commander's landing on the shores of France, and Paris was
ready to receive him as Paris had never before received a world's
notable.

The sooty girders of the Gare du Nord shook with cheers when the special
train pulled in. The aisles of the great terminal were carpeted with red
plush. A battalion of bearded poilus of the Two Hundred and
Thirty-seventh Colonial Regiment was lined up on the platform like a
wall of silent grey, bristling with bayonets and shiny trench helmets.