Page:Armistice Day.djvu/122

100 soon, as you marched, and grew nearer the unknown goal, you heard another shorter, more peremptory, rhythm mingling with the longer shout, repeated over and over:

Now people were beginning to shout: "To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg!" Then you knew that you were being swept along to the Place de la Concorde, to salute the statue of Strasbourg, freed from her forty years of mourning and slavery.

The crowd grew denser and denser as it approached that heart of Paris; and the denser it grew the higher flamed the great fire of rejoicing, mounting up almost visibly to the quiet gray skies:

"To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg!

No evil epithets hurled at the defeated enemy, not one, not one in all those long hours of shouting out what was in the heart; no ugly effigies, no taunting cries, no mention even of the enemy—instead a fresh outburst of rejoicing at the encounter with a long procession of Belgians,