Les Legionnaires

Last week all Paris throbbed. Vivacious midinettes asked, que feras—tu quand ils viennent? (what are you going to do when they come?), and the noon hour re-echoed to laughter, accompanied by much coquetry of response.

On the high seas (see page 12) the better part of the American Legion approached ever nearer the land wherein they will hold their monster congress under the great dome of the Trocadero, on the Right bank of the Seine, Paris. And as they came they surreptitiously glanced every now and then at a little of French Made Easy.

Meantime in the gay French metropolis fierce gendarmes with black, twirled mustachios and bright clanking swords, sat meekly, puzzled, over little books of English Made Easy. “Ah, how fine it would be to tell a U. S. legionnaire, who had enquired, ‘Ou est Place Pigalle?’ ‘Straight ahead, buddy!'”

And as Paris preened herself for the advent of the “Second Expeditionary Force,” certain U. S. citizens began to move away from there. Their attitude was well illustrated by a recent drawing in Life showing two men in conversation on a deck of an ocean liner. One (an obvious cad) says: “Of course, I hated to come home so soon—but I really couldn’t bear to be in France while those American Legion rowdies are there!” To which the other (an honest and courageous gentleman) replies: “As I remember, you felt that way about it when they were there before!”

But Paris thought only of the legionnaires. It was as if Parisians had reserved the gay city for les braves garcons. What other U. S. citizens did, what they thought, where they went was no one’s business, whereas making the welcome to the American Legion the greatest that the city has ever accorded was everybody’s business.

Along the Champs Elysees tall flagpoles appeared, to be followed by other tall flagpoles along the Grands Boulevards. American and French flags began to flap in thousands on both the Left and Right bank of the Seine. The government announced that a silver medal would be struck in honor of the Legion’s visit. Out came the bunting and the banners of welcome all over the city. Signposts in English would direct the former doughboys to the sights of Paris. And immediately those sights began to take on colorful decorations. From base to summit the Eiffel Tower would be a blaze of electric lights. And forthwith the Champs Elysees began to erect two chains of bulbs, six inches apart, from the Arc de Triomphe clear down to the Place de la Concorde. Far more than 100,000 extra electric lights will be used in la ville de lumiere on this occa-sion—perhaps the most brilliant occasion of modern Paris.

But there were other things to be thought of, sighed elderly Parisians, who remembered well the wartime antics of les soldats americains. Certain hotels and restaurants were made by a well-disposed government to standardize their prices in order to prevent profiteering. Police went around cleaning up the streets, arresting those “who nightly seek adven-ture,” raiding “certain low class places.” Declared Le Petit Bleu: “It is perhaps conceivable—with-out being excusable—that we might receive badly those Americans who came to France to amuse themselves and who wish in our noble, laborious country only those amusements not French except in name, and which the French unanimously despise.

“But those of the American Legion deserve all respect and sympathy. They were brothers-in-arms on the field of battle and 80,000 died for the cause of right. With her heart and mind France desires a national manifestation worthy of the great people whom it is for.”

In another direction worked the American Red Cross, aided by the French Red Cross. Along the Cours la Reine, the Parkway along the Right bank of the Seine, the Red Cross headquarters were set up. There Salvation Army lassies got ready to dole out doughnuts to ex-doughboys and there arose serried rows of first aid and comfort stations. Throughout the capital the French Red Cross erected first aid stations particularly along the route of the proposed triumphal march.

Not that this was made necessary by the threats from Communists. The Reds, on the contrary, decided to boycott the parade, to protest loudly, peacefully, far away from the “rich quarter” of the city where the “insolent cortege” is to be held. “Apres tout, mon vieux,” quoth one old Frenchman to another. “Il ne sont que des gosses—n’ importe quoi pourra se passer.”*

But in Cherbourg the authorities, alarmed at the threats of the Reds, decided to abandon a scheduled parade. They had not enough police to control the Communists, who were obviously seizing upon the occasion as an excuse to give vent to their political wrath.

Twenty thousand legionnaires on the sea—hundreds pouring into Paris each day. Some followed one-armed General Gouraud, Military Governor of Paris, through the pouring rain to the Arc de Triomphe, where the Lamp of Maintenance on the Tomb of the Soldat Inconnu was relighted, hav-ing been snuffed out by the Communists (TIME, Sept. 5), who spat upon and “otherwise defiled” the sacred spot.

Twenty thousand legionnaires on the sea—thousands in and converging on Paris. “Ah,” thought the French, “27,000 legionnaires can’t be wrong.”