(Photo Central News)

FTER the lapse of 136 years the close

AFT

ties of friendship uniting French and American hearts were renewed in a dramatic episode in which the recent French Mission took part at Baltimore, Md. It was one of those moments in which history repeats itself. On Nov. 5, 1781, when this nation was just emerging from its struggle for independence, the citizens of Baltimore addressed these words to the Marquis de Lafayette as he passed through that place on his way from the South: "Your good offices could not but increase a cordiality which must render our union with France a permanent one." The presence of our troops today on the battle front in France is a fulfillment of that pledge. General Lafayette said in reply:

"In the affections of the citizens of a

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so politely to mention, has only shown "that the courage and fortitude of "American troops are superior to every "kind of difficulty."

Like an echo from the tomb of that beloved Frenchman came the expressions of gratitude uttered by Marshal Joffre on May 14, 1917, when the hero of the Marne, with Vice Premier Viviani and other French dignitaries, stood upon the site in Mount Vernon Square, Baltimore, where a monument is shortly to rise in memory of Lafayette. And two months later, on July 14, Frenchmen at home celebrated their own national fête, recall

ing still more vividly the meaning of the great epoch of human liberty which, dawning in America in 1776, reached a new fullness in France in 1789, and is about to culminate in the destruction of the last Bastile of absolutism.

In Baltimore during the Revolution men and women provided General Lafayette's troops with flour and clothing on his march to the South; and today, through popular subscription, they are raising funds to erect a monument to the illustrious Frenchman. Nothing more was needed to stir the blood and sentiment of Americans than the presence of the Marquis de Chambrun, a member of the French War Commission. When he followed General Joffre in breaking the ground on which the monument to his great-grandfather will rise in Baltimore the cheering of the masses rose in volumes for the hero of their ancestors, and the echo passed the gigantic monument of his friend, General George Washington, whose shadow falls on the Lafayette site.

Many of those present at the dedication of the Lafayette site were ancestors of the association of youths known as the De Kalb Cadets, which took part in the great ovation given Lafayette when he visited Baltimore on Oct. 24, 1824, as the guest of the city, through a resolution passed by the City Council. General Lafayette arrived on the steamboat United States, which conveyed him from Frenchtown. After being shown about the city and entertained at the City Hall, General Lafayette was taken to an elevated pavilion at Baltimore and Light Streets. At this point the De Kalb Cadets passed in review and a scene took place which has been repeated in thousands of homes to show how the great soldier of freedom loved the people of Baltimore.

Each Marshal of the De Kalb Association carried a scroll in his hand bound with blue ribbon, upon which was inscribed the word "Gratitude." Each Marshal deposited the scroll at the feet of the General. He repeatedly opened and closed his arms as if in the act of pressing them to his heart; and, when the procession had passed, Lafayette suddenly turned away and burst into tears.

The breaking of the ground for the Lafayette Monument recalled this scene as the earth was turned over by the French Commission. The thousands of school children seemed thrilled and fairly throbbed the sentiments of the noble Lafayette. They each recalled the story of the banner of crimson silk with which Lafayette was saluted on his visit to the city in 1824-the banner whose memory lives in Longfellow's poem, "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns at the Consecration of Pulaski's Banner." The banner was presented to Count Pulaski by the nuns of Bethlehem. At the time he was raising a corps of cavalry in Baltimore, having been made a Brigadier in the Continental Army, and had called on Lafayette, who was wounded.

The visit to our shores of General Joffre, former Premier Viviani, and the French War Commission, coupled with the celebration in Paris this year, brings back vividly the days of the Revolution. It appears singular that after all these years we find ourselves in a rôle similar to that played by Lafayette and his fellow-countrymen in our hour of peril.

Thomas Hastings, who designed the Lafayette Monument in Paris, is now working on the plans for its completion. It is proposed to have the monument erected in Baltimore before the next national holiday of France, July 14, 1918.

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ESTERDAY at dawn I stood on the Chemin des Dames. For the first time in almost three years some one other than the struggling soldiery has been able to reach that bloody ridge. It is called the Road of the Ladies, because it was built by Louis XV. for his daughters. Although grim irony now, the name must remain famous forever as the scene of the mighty conflict still raging for its final possession.

Only a few yards from me was the spot where once stood the monument of Hurtebise, commemorating the battles of Napoleon. Nothing remains of it. It is just a spot pointed out by my officer in that waste of tortured earth. The whole road is the same. It is only a place no different from all that surrounds, and which my officer told me was the Chemin des Dames.

I crawled forward and down deep into the earth through a great granite cavern known as the Den of the Dragons. I passed out beyond the Chemin des Dames and crept slowly and cautiously into the first line of shellholes of the French Army-not trenches, but shellholes vaguely connected by gullies of mud and water. The first line of German shellholes was directly down the ridge beneath me.

The last of the stars were burning out and the light of a new day was just beginning to make things clear. There had been four alarms sounded on that particular section of the line in the twenty-four hours previous, and during the evening a strong but futile German attack. But now it was intensely quiet. Soldiers lay all about me-rifles and hand grenades always ready-but no sound broke the silence. The artillery was taking an early morning sleep, which fact alone was responsible for the permission granted to me to get so close to the very hand grapple of war.

What Our Troops Will See Many miles behind lay an American army. With its early coffee it might dimly hear the artillery awake from slumber-the awakening wafted to it on the breezes of a July morning. I thought of the American Army as I sat in the mud beside a French poilu carefully sighting his rifle on a ridge of wet earth before us. I thought of the day, so soon to come, when that army must march forward to relieve some similar portion of this line that is hell's very own. I thought of the great armies now being organized back home-armies containing my friends and relatives, my own people-which must come soon to take their places in order that the world's civilization may be saved.

Last November I tried to describe the blasted slopes of Douaumont and the battle front of Verdun. That battlefield remains and always will remain the very last word in modern war. Nothing surpasses its appearance. Nothing can ever surpass it. But now the whole battle line is getting just like that. Some of it gradually, some quickly, like the Chemin des Dames, which is almost as awful a sight as Verdun after nearly a year of constant grueling artillery fire.

Along the Chemin des Dames I counted four charred and splintered stumps at great intervals. That was all that remained to mark a roadway, once macadamized and lined with great trees and hedge rows. In a day or even an hour they are likely to vanish, too, so that nothing will remain but a long expanse of tortured, shell-pocked, upturned, and battered earth. It is like a wild sea suddenly made to be still a moment, drawing under the caps of its waves thousands of pieces from the wreckage of sunken ships-the débris of battle and the remnants of men. No other comparison than a sea fits the battlefield,