KING GEORGE AT AN AMERICAN BASEBALL GAME IN LONDON Admiral Sims is presenting to the King the captain of the

IV.

American Navy team

and other high officials, passed along to review the Americans drawn up in square formation. Cheering broke out anew when the American band struck up the "Marseillaise," again when the French band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," and when Pershing received flags from the President. Greetings of "Vivent les Americains!" "Vive Pershing!" Vivent les États Unis!" repeated over and over again by the crowd, welcomed the American standard-bearers as

they advanced. The crowd had waited for three hours to witness a ceremony that was over in fifteen minutes.

Outside, a greater crowd, covering the entire Esplanade of the Invalides, took up the cheers as Pershing's men marched away. The Cour de la Reine, the Alexander III bridge, leading to the Place de la Concorde, was black with people. Thousands of French soldiers, on leave from the front, were seen scattered along the route. Hundreds left the sidewalks and rushed forward to shake hands with the Americans. Other hundreds in trench-worn uniforms, stained and dingy, joined the marching troops on either

side in columns. Some of them wore bandages on their heads; others had their arms in slings. Children ran forward throwing flowers in front of the marching Americans. Flowers were tossed through the air from sidewalks or came fluttering down from windows, to be caught up by American soldiers, who stuck them into the muzzles of their rifles, or tucked them into their belts. From every window women and girls waved handerchiefs or flags. Thousands

of children from primary schools in the quarter, assigned to best places, called out "Teddy!" "Teddy!" "Teddy!" and threw flowers to the soldiers.

At the cemetery where Lafayette is buried, the battalion passed through the arched gateway leading to an old convent, and thence to the little burial-ground adjoining. Here were gathered three or four hundred other persons, including prominent Americans and Frenchmen. In the presence of Ambassador Sharp, Pershing and Joffre, a wreath was placed by the Americans on the plain stone slab above Lafayette's grave. A remark attributed to Pershing at this time, much quoted afterward, was, "Lafayette, we are here." This cemetery, known as the Cemetery of Picpus, lies in the old St. Antoine neighborhood, south of the Place de la Nation, and not far from the Bois de Vincennes. Some of the oldest families in France have buried their dead in Picpus. A part of it was formerly known as the Cimetière de Guillotinés, 1,370 victims of the revolution having been buried there in 1793. The chapel, or oratory, which the cemetery adjoins, belongs to the nuns of the Sacré-Cœur de Jésus et de Marie. Lafayette died in 1837, his wife, the Comtesse de Noailles, who is also buried in Picpus, in 1807.

Various other events, such as a great public meeting at the Sorbonne, the placing of a wreath by the Municipal Council at the foot of the statue of Washington in the Place des États Unis, and one by the French society of Army and Navy Veterans, marked this observance of our great national holiday. It was said at police headquarters, by officials familiar with demonstrations, that at least a million people must have seen the parade along its line of march. When the last man had passed, great crowds surged to the middle of streets, breaking through the police and military

guards and blocking traffic for a long time afterward. More people were massed in the Tuileries Gardens than were seen on the Esplanade at the Invalides. Few could get even a glimpse of the parade as it came back from the Invalides, but all joined in a tremendous outburst of cheering that did not diminish in volume until the last man in the line had disappeared from view down the Rue de Rivoli, bound next day for the American training-camp that had been set apart for Pershing's men behind the fighting line. President Poincaré, at the conclusion of the day's ceremonies, sent a cablegram of felicitation to President Wilson.

General Pershing, in a notable report to the War Department on November 20, 1918, dealing with America's military operations from May 26, 1917, to the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918, declared that the warmth of his reception in England and France was only equaled by the readiness of the Commander-in-Chief of the veteran armies of the Allies and their Staff to place their experience at our disposal. Altho the French and British armies were then at their maximum strength "all efforts to dispossess the enemy from his firmly entrenched positions in France and Belgium had failed," so that it became necessary for the United States to plan for a force "adequate to turn the scale in favor of the Allies." Keeping in mind the strength of the Central Powers-the period here referred to was the eve of the inconclusive Second Battle of Flanders and of the German advance in Russia which promised to make the Germans virtually masters of Russia—“the immensity of the problem that confronted us could hardly be overestimated."

A general staff "broadly organized and trained for war" had not then existed in our army, but in France "as models to aid us, we had the veteran French General Staff, and the experience of the British." By selecting from each "the features best adapted to our basic organization, and fortified by our own early experience in the war," a General Staff for the Americans was finally completed, and soon there was outlined and started "a system of schools" where instruction could be given by "officers direct from the front." One was a school where staff-work "was taught to carefully selected officers," another a school for men in the ranks