The camp's next distinguished visitor was Georges Clemenceau, the veteran French statesman who was soon to be Premier of France. Clemenceau saw American troops that day for the second time, the first having been when, as a young French senator, he watched General Grant's soldiers march into Richmond.
He recalled to the sons and grandsons of those dusty warriors how inspired a sight it had been, and he added that he hoped to see the present generation march into Berlin.
When Clemenceau talked to the doughboys, however, he had more than old memories with which to stir them. He has a graceful, complete command of the English language, in which he made the two or three addresses interspersed in the full programme of his stay.
In one speech M. Clemenceau said: "I feel highly honored at the privilege of addressing you. I know America well, having lived in your country, which I have always admired, and I am deeply impressed by the presence of an American army on French soil, in defense of liberty, right, and civilization, against the barbarians. My mind compares this event to the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed on Plymouth Rock, seeking liberty and finding it. Now their children's children are returning to fight for the liberty of France and the world.
"You men have come to France with disinterested motives. You came not because you were compelled to come, but because you wished to come. Your country always had love and friendship for France. Now you are at home here, and every French house is open to you. You are not like the people of other nations, because your motives are devoid of personal interest, and because you are filled with ideals. You have heard of the hardships before you, but the record of your countrymen proves that you will acquit yourselves nobly, earning the gratitude of France and the world."
At the end of this speech General Sibert said to the men who had heard it: "You will henceforth be known as the Clemenceau Battalion." That was the first unit of the American Army to have any designation other than its number.
Another civilian visitor was next, though he was civilian only in the sense that he had neither task nor uniform of the army. He was Raymond Poincaré, President of the French Republic, the leader of the French "bitter-enders," and sometimes called the stoutest-hearted soldier France has ever had.
President Poincaré made a thorough inspection. He, too, began with the billets, but he was not content to see them from the outside. In fact, the first that one new major-general saw of him was the half from the waist down, the other half being obscured by the floor of the barn attic he was peering into.
President Poincaré made cheering speeches to the men, for the force of which they were obliged to rely upon his gestures and his intonations, since he spoke no English. But his sense was not wholly lost to the doughboys. At the peak of one of the President's most soaring flights those who understood French interrupted to applaud him.
"What did he say?" asked a doughboy.