Some Americans rigged up a skeleton with a German cap. They followed it singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers." The song was as novel as the skeleton. Where all the Americans came from only Heaven and the Provost-Marshal knew, and there is a strong probability that the latter had no official knowledge of the presence of most of them in Paris! Our soldiers were disconsolate over the fact that they could not buy all the flags they wanted. The shops were completely sold out, and the hawkers were reduced to offering cocardes. We heard one boy say: "If I can't get a flag soon, I'll climb one of them buildin's."
"Gee! better not," advised his comrade; "they'd shoot you!"
"Naw! Shootin' 's finished."
The shooting was finished. That is what the signing of the armistice meant to Paris. And, as it meant the same to the whole world, every city in the Allied countries must have had its November Eleventh.
CHAPTER XXXIV
ROYAL VISITORS
ONE night the future King of Siam came to dine with us. I took him into the nursery to see the children. Mimi sat bolt upright in her crib. She eyed the young stranger and frowned.
"Hello, king," she said, "where's your crown?"
I confessed to a similar feeling when from the balcony of a friend's home in the Avenue du Bois de Bologne I saw the King of England riding into Paris for the first of the welcomes we were giving Allied sovereigns. It was natural that Great Britain should come ahead of other nations. England had been the comrade-in-arms from the first days and aided powerfully in preventing the Germans from reaching Paris in the fierce onslaught of 1914. But it is a pity that the King was not accompanied by Marshal French or Sir Douglas Haig. Parisians are peculiarly sensitive to personality. George V has none. There was nothing in the rôle he had played during the war to make the crowd feel that he personified the valiant armies of the greatest and most faithful ally. If only Beatty or Jellicoe had ridden with him through the Avenue du Bois and down the Champs-Elysées. The war had not deepened the enthusiasm of the French for a monarch simply because he was a monarch. A crown and a royal robe might have helped George with the Paris crowd. I am not sure even then. As my concierge put it when I told her that I was going to cheer the royal visitor,
"Voyons, what has that king done in the war besides falling off his horse?"
And then the weather was against our British guest. I do not care what the occasion is, rain and enthusiasm do not go together in a Paris crowd.