Description
Here is London, metropolis of the world, with Trafalgar Square and the stately monument to Lord Nelson in its center. Here are English people, men, women and children, lining the sidewalks, most of the men with bared heads in fine appreciation of the occasion. And here are the famous London "bobbies," the best trained, most dependable and most courteous body of police in the world. See them standing at intervals, with their blue uniforms, cloth helmets and chin straps. Flags fly in profusion, streamers line the sidewalks, festooned from pole to pole, and on the base of the Nelson monument. It is a gala occasion, a significant day. Marching through the streets, now as friends and allies, are troops of France, for hundreds of years Britain's traditional enemy. Men bare their heads because these soldiers are veterans of bloody battles, fought against a common enemy ; because this day is visible evidence of friendship and good feeling towards their ancient foe. They bare their heads to honor the chivalry of France, to honor that something in the blood and strain of this people which made heroes of them over night, which uplifted them as fighting men. Frenchmen know the joy of life. Sunny France inspires song and joyousness. Yet in this war Frenchmen threw away their lives Frenchely, with gay abandon, "pour la patrie," dying with the name of France on their lips ; suffering with sublime endurance of pain. These men are here today to fraternize with the Britons, to cement the friendship between the two nations, to give living, pulsing evidence of the bond that unites them.
