HEROES: At Meuse-Argonne

The U. S. has paid $14,000,000,000 in bonuses and pensions to soldiers who fought in the War and their surviving dependents—and the payments still go on. The U. S. has yet to be repaid over $12,000,000,000 in War loans—and the question of whether it ever will remains unsettled. But last week, 20 years after the U. S. entered the War, one phase of the 1917-19 epoch was definitely ended. The

President of France (at Montfaucon at 2 p. m.) and the President of the U. S. (from his yacht in the Potomac River at 9 a. m.) took to the radio in an international hookup. Together with dignitaries and politicians of both nations gathered at Montfaucon, they celebrated the completion of twelve European monuments and eight cemeteries glorifying and interring 31,000 American soldiers who died to make the World Safe for Democracy.

Some 8,000 spectators, including 2,000 American tourists, gathered for services around the base of the largest and costliest (approximately $500,000) of these memorials, a 175-ft. Doric shaft conceived in pink Italian granite by famed Architect John Russell Pope after the Emperor Trajan’s column honoring his victorious Roman legions. Crowded about the still shell-torn hill of Montfaucon were armless and legless war veterans, three U. S. Congressmen and General John J. Pershing’s American Battle Monuments Commission-which has spent $4,500,000 on memorials and cemetery chapels abroad. Absent were Senators Russell of Georgia, Gibson of Vermont and Duffy of Wisconsin, who dared not sail until after the Court Bill’s solemn political interment in Washington (TIME, Aug. 2). They were to arrive in time to dedicate other” tasteful monuments at Flanders Field, Bellicourt, Cantigny, Gibraltar, Château-Thierry.

The crowd sang La Marseillaise (well), the Star-Spangled Banner (badly). A U. S. Catholic priest pronounced a solemn benediction. He was followed by a rabbi and a Protestant minister. A French military band played the eerie Hymn to the Dead. In his Rooseveltian voice, bald William Bullitt, U. S. Ambassador to France, introduced the Deputy from Meuse, who spoke no English. Wartime Aviator Harry W. Colmery, Commander of the American Legion, orated for his 4,000,000 comrades, about half of whom got to France before the War was over. Wildly applauded, General Pershing made the formal dedication and an American flag was raised.

President Roosevelt’s famed radio voice was never better than when he intoned: “1 pray God no hazard of the future may ever dissipate or destroy that common ideal [of democracy].” Because more of them understood French, the crowd had more cheers for President Lebrun: “. . . despite the distance separating the United States and France, these two democracies . . . must remain united. …”

From the observation platform high up Montfaucon Memorial tourists can peer across five miles of the world’s bloodiest ground to Meuse-Argonne cemetery. There lie buried over 14,000 U. S. soldiers, most of them under alabaster crosses, a sprinkling of Jews under the six-pointed Star of David. Some have for an epitaph Here rests in honored glory an American Soldier known but to God, which is also graven over the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Theirs the largest U. S. cemetery abroad, containing almost half the bodies not returned to the Motherland.*

Expensive Onslaught. Well might a costly symbol of Victory rise above Montfaucon Memorial, looking down on Argonne Forest. There took place the biggest battle in U. S. History. There was lost the Lost Battalion. There the Tennessee Conscientious Objector Alvin York captured 132 Germans. There, in 47 days of storming into the face of the Hindenburg Line about 123,000 Americans were killed or wounded. Some 900,000 others, nearly as many as the Confederacy mustered in four years, came through unscathed to live to tell the tale of the final break-through to Sedan and draw their bonuses.

*Oniy General in U. S. History except Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, Pershing, his work done, is expected to retire now, having completed 14 years with the Commission. Before returning to the U. S. he will model for an equestrian statue the French are erecting at Versailles to commemorate the A. E. F.*Of 78,734 soldiers who died in France, 46,000 have been returned to this country for burial; 3,652 are still missing, 600 are buried at sea. Some 1,700 bodies remain unidentified. It cost the Government $394 to repatriate a dead U. S. soldier from France.