Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1919 — Europe’s Mecca [ARTICLE]

Europe’s Mecca

P«b la the CW Paint at Interest of Al ABed Kap, Pr—'rlwK Riucea,

Since the signing of the armistice Paris has become the Mecca of all allied kinga, presidents, princes, ministers, generMs and other dignitaries. Paris, to show fitting gratitude for the honor conferred upon her by these visitors, meets them at the little railway station at the far end of the Avenue de Bois de Boulogne, escorts them with full military honors up the avenue of the Arch of Triumph, and then under this and down the Champs Elysees. Cordons of soldiers line both sides of the avenue and their hedge of fixed bayonets as they stand at salute while the distinguished guests pass quite naturally obstructs the view, to say nothing of the fact that back of the soldiers the crowds are massed for a depth of fifty to a hundred feet. Everyone who possesses a stepladder, or who can buy or borrow one, brings it, hours in advance of the parade, to the wonderful Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and plants it at a vantage point where in spite of surging throngs and elevated bayonets they will be able to see the cortege. One may see a thousand or more of these enterprising Parisians mounted on stepladders viewing the pageant Then once the cortege is passed the proud owners of the stepladders endeavor, like the Arabs with their tents, to fold them and silently steal awa y_but they don't get away with the silent part The efforts of a thousand people trying to get through a crowd of 15,000 people with 1,000 stepladders is such that—well, really there is nothing to be done except to rename it “The Avenue of the Forest of Stepladders.”