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Rh suddenly blossoming flags of red, white and blue after four years of mourning, but above all the faces of true friends as they looked at each other and said, "Well, we came through it, didn't we?"

It came differently at different parts of the long line that the Americans now hold. There was a place near Sedan where the New Yorkers of the 77th Division faced the Germans across the Meuse. There was Stenay, where the Americans picked their way across the flooded river, entering and delivering the town at the very moment when the fighting ended.

There was the country east of the Meuse where until almost the last moment the Americans were fighting fiercely. There was the swampy country near St. Mihiel, where they waited in the trenches for an hour and then walked out into No Man's Land.

Everywhere it was the same, in one respect: there was the same sudden and profound silence as the hour struck and the guns ceased for the first time their terrible chorus that for four years has never ceased from the North Sea to the mountains of Switzerland.

Coming into Buzancy as dusk fell last night there was an air of expectancy everywhere in the crowded streets of the town that the German had marked for his own. Troops were pouring through—battered, weary troops with a war-worn