III—HOW THE PEACE TREATY WAS SIGNED
A Description of the Historic Ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, June 8, 1919
(Reprinted from the New York Times.)
No nobler and more eloquent setting could have been found for this greatest of all modern events, the signing of the Peace of Versailles, after five years of terrific struggle on whose outcome the fate of the whole world had hung, than the palace of the greatest of French Kings on the hillcrest of the Paris suburb that gave its name to the treaty. To reach it, says the correspondent of The New York Times, the plenipotentiaries and distinguished guests from all parts of the world motored to Versailles that day, and drove down the magnificent tree-lined Avenue du Château, then across the huge square—the famous Place d'Armes of Versailles—and up through the gates and over the cobblestones of the Court of Honor to the entrance, where officers of the Republican Guard, whose creation dates back to the French Revolution, in picturesque uniform, were drawn up to receive them.
All day the crowd had been gathering. It was a cloudy day; not till noon did the sky clear. By noon eleven regiments of French cavalry and infantry had taken position along the approaches to the palace, while within the court on either side solid lines of infantry in horizon blue were drawn up at attention.
Hours before the time set for the ceremony an endless stream of automobiles began moving out of Paris up the cannon-lined hill of the Champs Elysées, past the massive Arc de Triomphe, bulking somberly against the leaden sky, and out through the Bois de Boulogne. This whole thoroughfare was kept clear by pickets, dragoons, and mounted gendarmes. In the meantime thousands of Parisians were packing regular and special trains on all the lines leading to Versailles, and contending with residents of the town for places in the vast park where the famous fountains would rise in white fleur-de-lis to mark the end of the ceremony.
A MEMORABLE SCENE
Past the line of gendarmes thrown across the approaches to the square reserved for ticket holders, the crowd surged in a compact and irresistible wave, while hundreds of the more fortunate ones took up positions in the high windows of every wing of the palace. Up the broad boulevard of the Avenue de Paris the endless chain of motor cars rolled between rows of French soldiers; and a guard of honor at the end of the big court presented arms to the plenipotentiaries and delegates as they drove through to the entrance, which for the Allied delegates only was by the marble stairway to the "Queen's Apartments" and the Hall of Peace, giving access to the Hall of Mirrors. A separate route of entry was prescribed for the Germans, an arrangement which angered and disconcerted them when they discovered it, through the park and up the marble stairway through the ground floor.
The delegates and plenipotentiaries began to arrive shortly after 2 p. m., their automobiles rolling between double lines of infantry with bayonets fixed—it was estimated that there were 20,000 soldiers altogether guarding the route—that held back the cheering throngs. The scene from the Court of Honor was impressive. The Place d'Armes was a lake of white faces, dappled everywhere by the bright colors of flags and fringed with the horizon blue of troops whose bayonets flamed silverly as the sun emerged for a moment from behind heavy clouds. At least a dozen airplanes wheeled and curvetted above.
Up that triumphal passage, leading for a full quarter of a mile from the wings of the palace to the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors, representatives of the victorious nations passed in flag-decked limousines—hundreds, one after another, without intermission, for fifty minutes. Just inside the golden gates, which were flung wide, they passed the big bronze statue of Louis XIV., the "Sun-King," on horseback, flanked by statues of the Princes and Governors, Admirals and Generals who had made Louis the Grand Monarque of France. And on the façade of the twin, temple-like structures on either side of the great statue they could read as they passed an inscription symbolic of the historic ceremony just about to occur: "To All the Glories of France."