"We are doing more to-night than paying tribute," declared the chairman. "We are here to make our pledge. We make our pledge to the people of France. We make our pledge and it is the pledge of a people able to redeem it."
Secretary of the Navy Daniels read a message from President Wilson: "America greets France on this day of stirring memories, with a heart full of warm friendship and of devotion to the great cause in which the two peoples are now so happily united. July 14th, like our own July 4th, has taken on a new significance not only for France but for the world. As France celebrated our Fourth of July, so do we celebrate her Fourteenth, keenly conscious of a comradeship of arms and of purpose of which we are deeply proud.
"The sea seems very narrow to-day, France is a neighbor to our hearts. The war is being fought to save ourselves from intolerable things, but it is also being fought to save mankind. We extend other hands to each other, to the great peoples with whom we are associated and the peoples everywhere who love right and prize justice as a thing beyond price, and consecrate ourselves once more to the noble enterprise of peace and justice, realizing the great conceptions that have lifted France and America high among the free peoples of the earth.
"The French flag floats to-day from the staff of the White House and America is happy to do honor to that flag."
A similar statement was made by Great Britain's ambassador, the Earl of Reading, who declared that Bastile Day was also being celebrated throughout the British Empire.
The climax came when Ambassador Jusserand spoke:
"Your national fete and ours have the same meaning: Emancipation. The ideal they represent is so truly the same, that it is no wonder, among the inspiring events in which we live, that France celebrated the other day your Fourth and you are now celebrating our Fourteenth. We owe so much to each other in our progress toward Freedom.
"Those enthusiastic French youths who served under Washington, Rochambeau and Lafayette had seen liberty and equality put into practice, and had brought back to France the seed, which sown at an opportune moment, sprang up and grew wonderfully.
"The two greatest events in our histories are closely connected. Between the end of your revolution and the beginning of ours, there elapsed only six years. Our flag, devised the day after the fall of the Bastile, combining the same colors as your own, is just a little younger than your Old Glory, born in revolutionary times. And the two, floating for the first time together over the trenches of distant France, defying the barbaric enemy, have much to say to each other, much about the past, much about the future.
"United as we are with the same firmness of purpose, we shall advance our standards and cause the enemy to understand that the best policy is honesty, respect of others' freedom and respect of the sworn pledge.