Ah, I shall never cease to see him, a heroic portrait in red and white, painted against a great confusion and hung beneath a sun-goldened sky. I was very close to him, and his military cap was lifted; he was slightly smiling, and his eyes were shining islands in seas of tears. His white hair crowned his massive head rather than belied his full and ruddy cheeks; his shoulders were herculean and shaped for the load of a nation; his chest was broad and deep, to hold the heart of France.
In an instant he was gone, but in that instant the Gibraltar of the Marne, the rock against which the flood of absolutism rolled and broke, fixed his eyes upon the place where I stood. While the question, "Is he looking at me?" was shaping in my mind, clear and strong above the shout of the multitude rang the cry, "Vive la France! Vive la France! Vive la France!"
Three times it came, and from a position so close to mine that, when I swung about, I found myself breath to breath with the voice that had lifted it. The man was young and tall; his right arm was bound against his chest; his face was deeply scarred; and he was in the uniform of the French Flying Corps. As he flung up his unmaimed hand and cried, "Vive la France! Vive la France!" he was the incarnation of the chivalry of war.
The mighty Joffre leaned forward, gazed intently, replaced his cap, and then, as warrior to warrior, saluted.
It was a flash, an eternal moment that remains with you and in you and of you. From the souls of the two, the tender, iron hero of the Marne and the young American who had crossed the sea to help pay the debt a young Frenchman left us nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, I caught the gleam of brotherhood that will not die while a grateful Democracy remembers Lafayette and free men bear wreaths to the tomb of Washington.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
p. 40, 180: The text of the letters in these illustrations are transcribed. The images of the letters are also provided in HTML and other non-text formats.
Caption of the illustration following p. 62: COFEE -> COFFEE.