Paris went wild with joy. The streets were strewn with flowers; the Stars and Stripes waved a welcome; French bands played “The Star-Spangled Banner� and American bands responded with the “Marseillaise.�
“Vive l’Amérique! vive l’Amérique!�
“Pershing’s boys are here!�
Ah, what a day it was!
The Americans were sorely needed in 1917.
In the west, British and French and Belgians were bravely holding the entrenched long line from the Alps to the Channel. But alas! for the east. There was a revolution in Russia, beginning with bread riots in Petrograd. Patriots echoed anxiously the prayer of the abdicating Czar: “May God help Russia!� as she dropped from the ranks of fighting Allies and became the battleground of warring factions.
German submarines continued to take their toll on the seas. And German air raids grew more frequent. Night after night Zeppelins swept down, like huge, evil birds of prey; day after day airplanes darted and dived like swallows. People heard the whir of motors, the explosion of bombs, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns; in a few minutes it was over, all but the counting of the wounded and the dead, chiefly women and children.
The Village listened with interest to all news from overseas as a part of “our war.� Then it turned to the work at home.
In June men registered in obedience to the Draft Act. One day in July the Secretary of War, blindfolded, drew one capsule out of a great jar; it was opened; on a slip of paper in it was a number. Another capsule was drawn out; and another; and another. All day and until long after midnight went on that drawing of capsules containing numbers.
And the numbers, when they came to The Village and to all the country places and little towns and great cities of the whole nation, were no longer mere numbers, but names; and when they went to the homes of the community they were neither numbers nor names, but sons, brothers, sweethearts, friends—men who had to go to fight, perhaps to die, for the nation.