Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 144, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1917 — France Turned Over to Americana On July 4th. [ARTICLE]

France Turned Over to Americana On July 4th.

Paris, July 4. —All France celebrated the Fourth of July. Paris turned out a crowd that no American ever surpassed for size, «enthusiasm and profusion of Stars and Stripes. A battalion of the first American expeditionary force, about to leave for training behind the battle front, had its first official review in France and was the center of the celebration. Everywhere the American flag was flying from public buildings, hotels and residences and from automo- ' biles and cabs, carts, horses’ bridles and lapels of pedestrians carried them. •

The crowds began to gather early at vantage points. Rue de Varenne was choked long before 8 o’clock this morning, when the republican guards’ band executed a field reveille under General Pershing’s windows, and all routes toward the Invalides were thronged even before Pershing’s men turned out. About the court of honor where the Americans were drawn up with a detachment of French territorials, the buildings overflowed with crowded humanity to the roofs. All around the khika clad men from the United States were trophies and souvenirs of war—German cannon, airplanes, machine guns and many appliances for burning suffocating gas. Behind them in the chapel separating the court of honor from Napoleon’s tomb were German battle flags, trophies of the Marne and Alsace, besides Prussian banners of 1870.

There in the chapel, before the tomb of Napoleon, General Pershing received American flags from the hands of President Poincare. The enthusiasm of the vast crowd reached its highest pitch when General Pershing, escorted by President Poincare, Marshal Joffre and other high French dignitaries, passed along the lines of the Americans drawn up in square formation. ’ Cheering broke out anew when the American band struck up the Marsellajse, and again when the French band played “The Star Spangled Banner,” and Pershing received the flags from the president.