PARIS AND THE WAR
REWARD FOR TRIALS BORNE
WAR CROSS BESTOWED
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. PARIS, SUNDAY.
To-day Paris is receiving her reward for the trials of the war steadfastly endured. Directly menaced in the early weeks, before the German tide of advance was checked on the Marne, bombed by night, shelled by day, the sound of the guns at the front often in her ears, she yet refused to allow her moral to be shaken. Only a stone’s-throw from the Hôtel de Ville, the centre of the city’s civic life, and the scene of to-day’s ceremony, stands the church of Saint Gervais, where, on Good Friday, 1918, a shell from Grosse Bertha killed and wounded a number of her citizens. For all this, Paris is judged to “have deserved well of the country,” and to be worthy to take her place among the other heroic towns of France which have already received the decoration for valour which France, by a graceful personification of her towns, awards alike to cities and individuals. Paris already possesses the Légion d’honneur. Today, therefore, she receives the cross gained during the four years of war by so many of her sons – the Croix de Guerre.
The Hôtel de Ville is gaily decorated for the occasion. Last night thousands of electric lamps marked its outline against the sky; in its great hall a banquet was held, at which were present delegations from London and a number of other Allied capitula, representatives of French towns already decorated for their bravery, members of the Government and of the Corps Diplomatique. At the end of the dinner the Deputy-mayor of Rome presented the town of Paris with a silver model of a wolf. |A prominent figure among the guests was M. Max, the courageous Burgomaster of Brussels. London was represented by Mr. Andrew Taylor and other members of the County Council.
This afternoon Paris is favoured by the weather. It is in bright sunshine that the ceremony in front of the Hôtel de Ville takes place. The facade of the building is gaily decorated with the tricolour and with shields bearing the arms of Paris – the ship surmounted by the fleur-de-lys and the tower, with, underneath, the Cross of the Legion of Honour. In front of the main entrance has been erected a pavilion, where are seated the official guests of the city of Paris. Tall masts with flags and garlands of flowers rise in front of it. Between the centre pair hangs, high above the ground, a curtain, destined in due course to be drawn aside and to reveal to the crowd in the square an immense replica of the Croix de Guerre. It is three o’clock when the ceremony begins with the arrival in procession of the representatives of the Allied and other cities. The President of the Republic, standing at the front of the pavilion, pins on to a shield embroidered with the arms of the city the Croix de Guerre, Trumpets ring out, the band plays the “Marseillaise,” and at the same moment the curtain up above is drawn aside, the great Croix de Guerre appears, and the spectators, many of whom have been unable to see the actual ceremony, know it has taken place. After some speeches a march past of troops took place.
A great crowd turned out for the ceremony; in a sense it was the Parisians themselves who were decorated this afternoon. But the capacity of the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville is limited, and numbers of the spectators had to content themselves with crowding the streets, lined with steel-helmeted soldiers, along which the President of the Republic drove, or clustered along the quays, with watching the troops defile over the bridge leading from the Ile de la Cité. The actual ceremony was simple, and the words of the President, as he pinned the cross to the shield bearing the arms of Paris could be heard by only a few. The gay flags, the waving handkerchiefs, and the bright sunshine, however, made a brilliant scene.
Paris, in killed and wounded, suffered during the war casualties to a number exceeding 1,700. “Fluctuat neo mergitur” say the arms of Paris. From to-day henceforth they will bear the Croix de Guerre, to show that even in the storms of the Great War the capital remained true to her motto of buoyancy and steadfastness.