Description
Here come the Sons of Britain, bands playing, banners flying to the breeze. They have come to France to fight, to stand beside their ancient enemy in battle against a common foe. Heroic France welcomes these soldiers with open arms. Her citizens crowd the sidewalks and cheer ; her streets are brave with flags ; her daughters pin flowers on the coats of their Allies —for these men have come to join them conflict with the greatest war machine the World has ever known. These men are marching up the Champs Elysee (shan'-za’le’za’), that noble avenue extending from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, an avenue that has no counterpart in any city of the world, lined on either side with hundreds of tall trees, with palaces and noble buildings. In the background, with garlands of flowers trailing from its lofty summit, stands the famous obelisk in the middle of the Place de la Concorde. In front of the obelisk a bronze fountain spouts cascades of water. To the left, in the distance, extends the Rue de Rivoli, paralleling the Gardens of the Tuileries (twerre'). These Britons have come to France as to a land of sacrifice. They have come filled with the crusading fervor of the Middle Ages, come to fight a brutal, merciless foe and to die gloriously if need be. In Artois, Flanders, Picardy, their fellow countrymen have shown those fighting qualities, that bulldog spirit, that have made the British soldier a synonym for courage and valor the world over. These men are part of an army which, though trained and armed in haste, showed the mettle of veterans ; which, in the long pitched battle of the Somme, measured arms with the disciplined battalions of Germany and beat them at their own game.
